Wood Elves Durthu

So I got this fellow for my birthday and was eager to paint him and just as eager not to mess it up.  Obviously putting  paint on the figure was a good start on the way to messing it up so I was a bit torn.  At a $113 doing a poor job would be a disappointment difficult to accept.  Anyway having it sit in a box forever would also be a shame so I stuck it together and primed it.

I recently changed my superglue from some rubbish GW stuff to some traditional salleys glue.  The later sticks fast on contact and is super strong unlike the GW stuff which has become weak and tacky.  Unfortunately this meant that when I stuck it together I didn’t have much time to position it and alas the sword and the head aren’t quite where I would have like them to be.  Rectifying this mistake would have required a saw and some greenstuff, and I wasn’t prepared to go there in light of my desire not to mess the figure up, wimp I know.

it is a beautiful model very three dimensional which made it tricky to paint, although not as bad as I thought it might be.  It’s also surprisingly durable, though I still managed to break of a bit of a branch and the longer of the two splintered pieces of wood sticking out his elbow.

I’ve tried to faithfully reproduce the paint scheme even though I have few of the colours and was constantly mixing paint as a result.  Wasn’t sure about the blue, still not to be honest.  Was tempted to make the blue mostly grey but struggled to get it right so just went with the blue.  Anyway very happy with the result, it is a stunning piece and whatever you think of the colour scheme it is a striking piece and I believe/hope that I’ve done it justice.

(hmm I think the blue looks even bluer in the picture too :-\)

Gorbad Ironclaw (two)

Finished painting Gorbad, my favourite sculpt from Games-Workshop I think.  Not sure I really did it quite the justice I was hoping for but it certainly passable I think.  Little annoyed with the varnish it seems to have if anything ‘unblended’ some of my work.  I think this was because I used a mixture of blending and shadowing with the shadowing being done with ink.  When I brushed the varnish on it smudged the ink.  Normally I would have probably written this off as a fancy and that I was just imagining things however I had used ink in the checkered pattern on the cheek guards, which when they smudged looked rather obvious on the white.  Anyway I fixed the checks but wasn’t going to try repainting the entire thing so here it is.

[edited: 21/07/2011 – new photo]

Gorbad Ironclaw

My current work in progress.  Gorbad Ironclaw.  Keen to do a good job on this since the model cost like $70 (nz).  So far painted the skin dark angels green highlighted up through snot green and goblin green with a bit of thakra (or whatever it’s called, it’s green) wash.  Red paint was done with scab red and highlighted with a mix of scab red and ruby red.  Applied a little bit of black wash to shaded areas.  Chainmail paint chips on all the high wear areas / edges.  Fur cape is mostly graveyard earth, devlan mud wash, kommando khaki and bleached bone.

The photo is not great the black undercoat is absorbing most of the light but you get a sense I guess.