Welcome to the voting thread for the Sauron Painting Challenge (February). Sorry it's taken me so long to post this but I've been very busy filming and planning Sport Relief stuff in the last week so finding the free time to organise this has been difficult.

Voting in this challenge should be based not just on painting skill, but also for application of different painting techniques, individual artist improvement, creativity and originality etc.

Voting will be open for 7 days and will close at 16:13pm GMT on 12th March.

The Entries are:


valpas' Sauron:




edge67's Sauron:





General Elessar's Sauron:




PowerofWill's Sauron:







montizzle's Sauron:







Good luck to all!

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Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
Jake

I was hesitating between valpas and edge67 work. Edge 67 is my favorite, great helmet spikes.
I also like POW's lava effect.
Congrats to all!!!

A lot of good mini's hard choise here

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Want to see all my work and my collection of mini's? Check here http://bloodiest-frodo.blogspot.com/

This month has definitely been the toughest to decide who to vote for....

Valpas - stunning paintwork as always
Edge67 - Great Sauron and amazing base well done!!!
General Elessar - You have captured the highlights on Saurons armour perfectly, great job
Montizzle - I really like the red on your Sauron it brings something different to the challenge.
and last but not at all least PowerofWill - You get my vote my friend - the dark coloured armour is very fitting to the Dark Lord and the freehand ........fantastic, mount doom, the writing round the bottom of the cloak and the osl from the base sets this model apart from the other challenge entrants. Well done mate an amazing paint job

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Commission Availability : BOOKED SOLID (again lol)

More of my work at

www.ShadowandFlame.co.uk

I vote for Valpas' Sauron. There are many great entries this month, but this one, I think, really captures the Sauron I've always pictured.

edge's Sauron has a nice base, but the statues on either side take the focus off of Sauron, and shares it with the statues. It would be better if these were smaller and therefore focused on Sauron.

General Ellessar's Sauron is quite similar to Valpas' but has some slight defects. The ring on Valpas' is much more prominent and captures the "darkness" effect that Ellessar's is missing.

POW's Sauron was a close second. He has some great details on him and I LOVE the freehand Mount Doom on his back, but, again, there seems to be no ring and the fire details take the focus off Sauron and focuses on the base.

Montizzle is very original, and I give him points for that, but it was simply not what I was looking for...

Great job everyone and may the best Lord of all Middle-Earth win!

All these are equally good. General Elessar looks like he really improved on his painting. Montizzle has a unique Clone Wars Sauron , Valpas is solid as always. Edge has that tie-breaking base again, and PoW has a nice unique fire reflective Sauron that interacts well with the base.

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My Lotr backlog: 305/952[][][][][][][][][][]32% completed
Painting Lineup: Mumakil x2, Rohan Heroes x8, Haradrim, SKoDA

such a hard choice, really nice entries:

montizzle - a unique and original Sauron, although it isn't quite to my taste, it is individualised
PowerofWill - I really like the OSL, Mount Doom and lettering on his cloak, although the ring and his eyes don't stand out
Valpas - I really like the way you've painted the ring, nice and vibrant
General Elessar - The ring and eyes don't stand out enough, I think that if you'd made them more vibrant then it would have been as good as, if not better than, Valpas
edge67 - really well painted Sauron, although to me the statues don't fit with Sauron (maybe if they were crumbling/the tops smashed off they'd look better), although everything is fantastically well painted.

I think I'm going to vote for POW, the OSL and lettering wins it for me

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C.A.P.T.A.I.N. = Crazy And Proud To Admit It Now
http://chrisgomhobbyblog.blogspot.com/

Edge, Valpas, may I ask, what colors did you use for the Ring?

Thanks for the kind comments and votes - much appreciated. I was disappointed the armour didn't turn out darker in the photo. It looks darker in real life, but cameras play funny tricks!

Well done to everyone else for such a great job! And it's nice to see everyone get a vote.
Pasi - a beautiful paint job as always. Your skill level is something I'm trying to aim for.
GE - excellent mini. Really shows your improvement over the last months. Well done!
Montizzle - really original Sauron - full marks for creativity.
PoW - brilliant idea, well executed, fantastic freehand, great base - you got my vote this month.



I used shining gold as a base and red ink as a wash to try to get that 'glow' effect. It was just a matter of adding a little bit of each to get the balance right.

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"...that there's some good in this world Mr Frodo - and it's worth fighting for."

Well, it had to be valpas for me.

The way I see it there's two options when you paint sauron;
1. Paint him 'normally' and have his eye's/ring really stand out and make the mini
2. Paint him normally but have something else (90% of the time a lava base with osl) be that 'spark' that makes him stand out.
Or, 3. not paint him normally (aka montizzle)

I didn't really like montizzle's, partially cause it was abnormal. (no offence, the red racing stripes/war paint just doesn't really work for me)(The only way I would like an abnormal sauron would probably be if it was painted more like the necromancer; with glowing colours. It wouldn't even have to be normal red/fire colours a blue, purple, or green glowing sauron could look cool (with normal armour of course, or maybe colured armour....))

Anyways, I digress. So for me it was between pasi and pow's sauron. In the end the fact that pasi's looked so good on just a simple gaming base, and with your 'normal' scheme without any fancy osl or anything tipped the scales for me. Pow's looks great, but the pictures are a bit dark so it was hard for me to tell how his actual sauron looked. I could see the cool osl and freehand nicely, but the mini underneath was hard to see.

My choice was clear the first time I saw POW's Sauron in the challenge article itself, you got my vote!

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Ours is the fury!

Yeah, I'm still working on those photography skills. I just can't seem to find a place with decent lightning any more. I have to agree with you though, Valpas' Sauron is really well done. It's just so smooth and simple. I seriously wanted to repaint the One Ring on my Sauron after Valpas shared the secrets on how he did his, but I didn't think that would be very fair at all.
I really like the other entries too. Like others have said, GE is definitely improving, and montizzles's is also very good. I really like the chain mail on edge67's Sauron, and the rest of it looks great.

I'm going to have to go with Valpas' though, it's just too good!

-Pow

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My WIP thread: http://one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=18247

That was a tough one to vote for! all of them look great, I finally went with Edge67's cause of the awesome base he put it on. great job everybody!

THis one was especially hard to vote for!

I give the vote to PoW, when i think of Sauron, i think of evil demonic etc. Well captured.

My vote is for Valpas, that Sauron really looks like a screenshot from the movies, it's that realistic and well painted.

POW, a very nice Sauron with very nice OSL, but just, just not as good as Valpas'.

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"... Telchar wrought it in the deeps of time."
-On Andùril, The Lord of the Rings

I don't remember the exact paints, but it starts with dark red base (I think I used Mechrite Red), then Fiery Orange, then yellow (a bit brighter than Golden Yellow, it came in a small nameless pot with my very first LotR miniatures in 2001), some highlights with white to represent the glowing runes and finally I brushed in a couple of thin glazes of old Yellow Ink, which is very nice and bright colour. I like the new washes a lot, but some of the old inks are still very useful for glazes, because the new wash range does not have as bright colours as the inks did. I think Vallejo still has traditional inks in their range.

Anyway, thanks for all the kind words (and all the votes too )! My own vote goes for PoW because I like his lava base and the directional light coming from it. I like the other entries too, edge's great base, GE's very neatly painted Sauron. Montizzle's armour looks good too, but I wasn't quite sure of the red decorations, they seemed a bit out of place.

-- Pasi

First off, well done everyone!! You all did an excellent job!
My vote went to Pasi's (valpas) Sauron...the ring and the armor are outstanding!!

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No one feels as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.

Wow! I've got two votes!

Thanks to whoever voted for me.

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

Some amazing Sauron models. Wish I could have finished mine.
Well, my vote went to Valpas. The colours and highlights blended in very well together and it still had the evil, dark feel about it. Job well done!

My 2nd vote would have to go to edge. The painting was spectacular but the statues took away some of the spotlight from your Sauron. Other than that, great job!

Spectacular work to the rest of the contestants.

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My WIP page: Click Here! -->So It Begins

Current Project: Ringwraiths - Haradrim - Mumakil

I would like to thank everyone who had positive or constructive comments. It seems Sauron is someone it is tough to "get right" in most people's eyes. I really like everyones offerings. I quite selfishly voted for my own, seeing as the exceptional competition meant no one else would