Hey all I've been out of the game for a while now and just starting to find my way back into it all !

I'm really more into the collecting, painting, building and converting sides of the hobby and I'd thought I would show you guys a little of what I do and to document my foray back into the miniature world of middle earth I'm not any sort of grand painter or master sculptor and everything I do is self taught, so don't be expecting anything too over the top! But I'm hoping you guys can help me grow as a painter and over all hobbyist ! And without further chitchat here goes !

First thing I wanted to do was decide on a direction for me to go in. Can't go in all willy nilly. As FotR was my favourite film I decided that would be a great place to jump back in, so I grabbed some models to help me in my favourite scene, The Last Alliance !


So I got myself some Hunter Orcs, thinking that they could pose as 2nd age orcs as those models are OOP. I also grabbed some regular warg riders, because Sauron had to have used them at some point right?

Waiting for the primer to dry, I ended up finishing my Sauron model i received as a gift a while back ..

Probably my best work I've done in a while, which was surprising because it was the first model I put a brush to since coming back
What I liked about it was that i got to try the new agrellan earth technical paint which added the cool effect to the base.
Here's a close up -

I was going for a cracking, broken, desolate rocky landscape effect, and I think it worked well for just being paint !

and finally last night I was able to make headway on converting some old High Elf warriors -

They still need basing before I would call them done. I'd also like to give them a new paint job but I'm unsure of how to strip the paint from plastic minis. I keep hearing horror stories of plastics turning to goo when people try to strip them with the wrong method. Does anyone have any tips in that regard?

Thanks for taking a look guys ! Obviously C&C's are more than welcome as I would like to develop my skills. I see some of the peoples work on here and im just blown away at how realistic and beautiful is is.

I'll be updating regularly so keep an eye out !

They look great! I especially like your sauron, the basing and paintjob are spot on

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Thanks! i appreciate it ! The armour wasn't too hard to do, it was the cloak that threw me. I wanted to make it dark, but painting it pure black just made it look flat, and I never tried highlighting and fancy stuff like that before. I ended up drybrushing a light purple ish colour onto it. It turned out ok but I think it could be done better I'll post a picture of it tomorrow

I really like the conversions you have made with the high elves. I have always thought it would require significant work to get a decent pose with converting them. I now see its much simpler than I imagined. I haven't seen that done before and intend to now convert some of my own. Thanks!

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That's exactly what pushed me to make my own high elves like this there are 1 or 2 WIP threads on here that featured some really well done high elf conversions in them that inspired me to make these. Im useless when it comes to using greenstuff so i stuck mainly to chopping and repositioning the plastic on the mini with no sculpting, so mine turned out rather rough. The first try is the trickiest, but once you figure out angles that make the pose look natural it gets easier to do. If you have any questions feel free to ask !

Sauron looks awesome. His cloak has got to be the best part too!

When I did Sauron I gave him a wash all over his armour with a very thin Scorched Brown, it gave him that dirty,slightly rusty look

I hope you can see.

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That looks awesome ! I liked how you were able to make the chain mail darker.
I also tried something similar on the armour with an agrax earth wash, although its a little hard to notice.

Finished some painting on a warg banner this morning !





I copied the banner design from the book Lord of the Rings Weapons and Warfare in the Dagorlad section. I thought it looked pretty cool and savage and would represent my finished force nicely. If you can see in the picture (its not very clear) i also added some straps to the saddle on the warg.

Unusual paint, that technical stuff. It does look like dried up soil but since it is acrylic, my only question would be how permanent will that effect be? Does sealing it with a matt varnish protect it in the same way as normal paint?

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I haven't tried sealing it yet so I'm not sure what that would do to it. But applying the actual paint is a little.. technical. haha It took a couple tries to get it right. If you apply it thin the cracks are small and shallow and will not flake off, but if you apply it too thin then it won't crack at all, or will be very small and almost imperceptible. With Sauron I applied it pretty thick, especially in front of the stone. The thicker you apply it the bigger the cracks will be. I think I got its limit on Sauron, as I can still touch the base and handle it without it flaking off, but any thicker than that and I think the paint would start to lift off the base.

I'm actually really interested to try it out on a balrog to see if I can get a cool cracking lava effect I just need to figure out how to strip the paint from plastics so I can repaint mine haha

Great looking warg. I like the freehand banner, good work.

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thanks it took a while to do it right, and then realizing you have to do it again on the other side is always daunting. It's always hard trying to draw the same thing twice.