And Múrin done. Have been experimenting with some snow effects in the past days (for an upcoming proper Frostgrave warband), current favourite is.. salt.

Love it all! The muted colours on the Hobbits work well. It seems like a very realistic way of painting the greens and yellows the Hobbits are said to wear. Very good!

Murin also looks fabulous! Great painting. He looks gritty, though the painting is smooth as always. The salt also works very well, interesting!

Yeah i like that, well painted. What did you use to stick the salt down with?

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Harfoots-The first of the Hobbit people to cross over the Misty Mountains and enter Eriador.

Missed this the first time around, with the downtime of OR.
Snow was done by first painting the sand as normal, then painting the areas which are to be snowy white. Then applied wood glue on these areas and slightly beyond them, for a slight transition. Threw on the salt (sea salt, the chunkier, grind-it-yourself type), pushed it on a bit and.. well, that's it. There are dozens of great snow tutorials online, but then again there are several dozen types of snow - instead of fluffy fresh, I wanted a more gritty, slightly thawing look, for which this stupidly easy method works fine. Not requiring any fancy products is a big plus too.

Quick close-up of a more recent mini with salty snow, gives some impression of the transition.

I have to try this method out very soon. I'm looking forward to seeing the results on my dwarves' bases.

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Time for a reasonably sized update.

Had to get another Frostgrave warband finished for a demo game, so opted for a pretty thematic Isengard band to oppose (among others) my previously shown Hobbits. Short deadline and a bit of battle damage on the third wild man, but they look nice enough overall.

Wild Man #1 (infantryman)


Wild Man of Dunland #2 (thug)


Wild Man #3 (infantryman). Lovely sculpts these by the way, could easily have spent thrice the time on them.


Grima (apprentice to the Saruman I did a while back)


Uruk-hai scouts as archers. Bit of an experimental dark palette, less of the usual browns.



Final warband member, scout with shield and leather armour as Man-at-Arms.


That's not all, however. Some of the above will see use in a Glittering Caves scenario soon (hence the bases), and to oppose them I'm working on a bunch of Rohirrim. All clad in chainmail, many with braids, and with some quick conversions thrown in for more variety. Makes one think, could probably have made an actual chainmail coat in the time I've spent sculpting chainmail on miniatures...

Beautiful work, love it!
The dark colours work very well on them. I love the Rohan conversions though! They all look unique, with the converted poses and slightly different chain mail coats. They seem to walking straight out of the books, this way.
Great job!

And then they were (pretty much) done.

Some quick snaps, better ones no doubt to follow once they're properly based.
Went with a variety of colours for the tunics worn under the armour, assuming it would basically be their own clothing. In a similar fashion, I thought it could be nice if, instead of a uniform green on the cloaks, they would all have slightly different tones. Quite happy with how that turned out. All helmets of the same type were also painted in different ways, combining iron, bronze and leather.

Great work on the conversions - it must take a lot of patience and concentration. The painted minis look great!

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Yep, this looks like a Militia force of the same region! Properly diverse, but also still looking similar to each other. Especially like how the cloaks are all just a little different, but still all dark green.

Close ups of a few of 'em - won't bore you with all 10. ;)





This one used to have the diagonal spear (only model with actual chainmail from the normal set), a horrible model to convert - pretty happy with how he turned out.


This one (as do about half of the others) has a subtle braid, somebody nobody is ever likely to notice, but at least I'll know...



And a few more models to oppose them: Dunlendings. Painted the soldiers as having leather armour, they are, after all, not supposed to have acces to much quality gear. Somewhat repainted over an older paintjob, but it's fine, they're just soldiers after all. Chieftain got some extra attention, rather a great figure.

Love them!
The conversions are great, and so is the painting. The muted colours are beautiful, and the fur is outstandingly realistic!
Was great fun to play with and against these models!

Thought I'd be returning here with something completely unrelated (as it usually goes), but as it turns out, it is in fact more Rohan!

Been planning to get some work on this model done for a while now, mostly to see if something nice could be made out of him. It is of course poor Théodred, a great character with a reasonably bland profile and rather an unpopular sculpt. As I have in fact done before, some years ago on another mounted version of him, first point on the agenda was to give him a beard. Not just covers his face, also makes him look rather more mature - not unimportant, as he's supposed to be 41(!) in the books. Another thing I was looking into was to change the arms: the mounted version is too similar to Éomer to my liking, while the foot version's pose just looks a bit off. Swapping them around works pretty well (plenty of sculpting required to repair some bits though), although I did consider an alternative for the foot version, with a shield on the right arm and a left hand stabbing downwards. Being a lefty fits nicely with Théoden, but I disliked the idea from a shieldwall point-of-view, where everybody being right-handed makes more sense.

Anyway, still very WIP all. Many areas to repair; probably a cloak to be added too.

Mount is from Perry, using 4 different horse halves cut in half again to get a stationary pose. Liked the idea of a more commanding pose. As such, not sure of the shield position yet - slight preference for the first currently, with reins sculpted in his left hand. Shield strapped to his back instead may also look good.





Foot version will obviously also get some facial hair added soon. Much more fighty pose here - he is, however, very open to enemy attacks, which may well prove to be his undoing...

Excellent work on these conversions. I agree with you about Theodred being uninspiring. (Probably why he's not in my collection yet! Haha.)

For the mounted version, I think the shield in hand looks better. As for the foot model, it's just begging to have a couple Orcish arrows sticking out of it.

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Love the conversions! I especially like the mounted pose. Very commanding and worthy as an heir to the throne. I slightly prefer the aesthetics of the second version, but the first one (with the shield on horse) has the benefit of looking less like he's fighting and more like he's commanding. Depends on what you're after I suppose.
One questions though: where's his chain mail? Or are you less obsessed with it than I am?

The horse and the new pose also look great by the way!

Love those Rohan conversions! Personally, I prefer Theodred mounted carrying the shield.

Orc arrows? Feh. He's going in for a Viking shield bash!

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The mounted Theodred conversion is excellent, he looks so commanding.

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Hi Coenus,
I can only agree with the others, the Theodred conversion is amazing!
I had to look the original model up again, I couldn't imagine him any different, the arms swap looks so much better and with the beard he looks badass immediately!
With the shield both options look good, a cloak on the mounted model would be a nice touch indeed! Also some scale mail on the horse's head piece would blend the horse nicely into other Rohan forces.
Best wishes,
Bennet

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Thanks a lot guys. About time there was an update, no?

Foot version basically done now. Will see if I'll be in time to enter him and Grimbold (nice pairing) in this month's painting competition.

Getting the hang of sculpting cloaks now, but not looking forward to the mounted version - having one draped over the horse is very different indeed, and probably not something I've done before (previous ones on Haradrim commanders were free flowing, as they represented the riders galloping along at speed).







Ehm, clearly visible between his padded base layer and the leather outer layer? A typical byrnie, with short sleeves and covering the upper legs seemed fine to me... ;)

Beautiful cloak, very realistic!
Also great work on the shield, seems like a tricky thing to sculpt..!

Can't wait to see it painted!

Haha yeah I see the chain mail now, guess I wasn't paying attention!