So I like elves

Howdy all. It's been a crazy week with work and pulling a lot of long hours. That really is one of the major downsides to working a salary job. I like my work and it pays well and most of the time I have a pretty good time figuring things out. Of course there is the usualy stress when things don't go the way I would like, but it is what it is.

Anyhoo, I have done very little this last week, but what I did do is finish I think my Woodelf Noble in Traveling clothes. I am not sure she is done, I look at her a lot to see if something is missing. Usually when I do that I think it needs something more, but I am not sure what it needs. I was thinking a tree of some sort, but that would be really akward to pull off.

So here is the initial figure for you to review before much of anything has been done.

I know I haven't really done a good job of sticking to my projects, but I do get easily distracted when people wave painting contests in front of me, and we have had a few of late around here. I promise to get back to what I had planned, but for now ya'll will have to settle for my rambling method. However, I do fully admit this is why I have a lot of projects half way done and almost none finished. Oh well, at least I am happy with what I am working on. :)

Arwen from Lord of the Rings

So here she is. I am rather fond of this figure and it took best overall in a local painting contest this past weekend. I was really quite pleased with the way she turned out. This Arwen figure is one of those that just screams to be painted, so when I saw it last Wednseday, I bought it and went home and got it ready for the contest. After two days of hard effort, this is what I have to show for it. I mst admit this figure, despite the amount of time I out into it, was really a joy to work on.

I feel that the latest batch of LOTR figures GW is producing is among the best they have done in a long time. Some of the early figures I felt were a bit lacking, but this is one is really something special.

What a weekend!!

Howdy all. I hope everyone had a wonderful turkey day. I spent the day with my family and had a spectacular day eating, watching tv and just being around the family with nothing better to do than to watch my daughter try to crawl, play a game or two with my sons and just be a dad. Its kinda nice to take all the worries away for a day. It was time well spent.

Saturday, we went down to one of the GW stores here in town and played a game of epic. It wa lots of fun with my Tyranids trying to eat some tau. Came out in a draw, but what a fun game. In the evening I entered in a paintig contest and took first in 2 categories and best overall as well with the new LOTR Arwen figure. I was going to paint my woodelf standard, but when I saw this figure it just screamed to be painted. So I dropped the woodelf and did Arwen instead and she took best overall. I am rather proud of this as the competition was very good.

I'll post picture when I take one, right now I am still trying to recover from long hours spent on the figure and a day long game-a thon. But I will post of the Warhammer single I entered. It is an Empire Engineer.
I did him early this year and thought it would good to enter and see how it does. Turns out he won me best Warhammer single and for my trouble I won a limited Gimli on Uruk Hai. Its really a cool figure with Gimli the elf from LOTR sitting on a dead Uruk Hai with his axe stuck in its head and smoking on his pipe. Very cool.

For Thanksgiving Weekend Painting Contest

Howdy. I am getting my Wood elf ready for a Thanksgiving weekend painting contest. I have started with the limited Edition Standard included in the Wood Elf Army Box. I was lucky to even get the box a while back, but one of the fellows who preordered it backed out at the last minute and I was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time. So now I have Wood Elf army. Actually it is a pretty nice looking army. Figures are well sculpted and overall I like the look of it. The previous models were about butt ugly and even the treeman looked lame. Course, I think the new treeman is not much better, and the treekin look like somethin' even my dog would'nt wee on, but hey, some people like 'em. I'm just not one of them.

Anyway back to my original point. I have been working on my standard and have done a decent job of taking some pictures of the Work in Progress. I will post more of the WIP pics over in the forum where you can more easily ask questions about it if you have any. But for now, here is the start up picture. It's really not much to look at, but I am going for a late summer-early fall theme. To be honest I really can't decide which is a better way to go, so I am just going to paint the figure as it tells me to paint it. It's kind of hard to explain, but sometimes you see a figure and it just says to buy it and paint it. Even though you have no idea how to it should be painted, I find that if you look at it long enough, it just kind of comes to me and so off I go with no rhyme or reason, just doing what seems to work and then when it is all said and done, more often than not I have a really nice looking figure for my shelves.
I hope to have him done this week and begin my next figure for the contest. I'll keep updating over on the forum as I think weekly updates are better done here.
Oh and one more thing, I think tommorrow my report on a 54mm Gladiatorial figure I did will be up on The Miniatures Page. It is a decent article on how I painted up a figure provided by Alpha Miniatures for the reader of TMP. I think he is pretty good. Maybe not the best of all the entries, but at least good enough to feel good about. Be sure to go check it out. My write up on a Barbarian Warlord is already there and can be found here :

http://theminiaturespage.com/workbench/73597/

Lots of good articles hear for you all to read. Thanks!!

Something for the New Week

With a new week should come a new picture. This is a Syntha Biomech I did for a online contest last year. I was sorely disappointed that he did'nt even place, but what can ya do??? I think he turned out rather nicely and I like him. My main purpose for doing this figure was to try to develope techniques for unusual patterns. I elected to try a snakeskin type pattern and I think it turned out pretty good for a first time try. I could certainly do one much better now, but that really is'nt the point.

I was also experimenting with doing NMM on the arms. I wanted to do a metallic look, but not the highly reflective Sky-Earth NMM that I think has become a bit of a plague on the painting hobby. I think it came out alright, but it could be better. As I think about what I could have done to improve it, I am at a bit of a loss. It does look like steel ( I work with it on a daily basis) but it lacks something artisticly to really get it across. I plan to but a few more of the Void Syntha minis to do a little bit more experimenting later in the year or next year, but for now this will have to do.


Feel free to tell me what you think and offer any comments here or on the forum. Thanks!!

Howdy. This has been a busy weekend for me with lots of things happening. Saturday was the neighborhood garage sale so I helped my better half move things around for the big day. All in all it was pretty good,. We sold a lot of things we were going to throw out and it was nice to have someone else pay for our junk.

I got some of my Brits on popsicle stick ready to be primed. I also exchanged a lot of odds and ends and got my self a full FOW British rifel company. I am very excited to get these guys on the table, but I really want to do a nice job on them. There are so few figures that it should not be an issue with time spent per figure. If I am enjoying what I am doing, it can't be that much of a chore.

I also am working on my Wood Elves and Skaven for Warhammer Fantasy. I have a grand total of 1 dryad assembled and I am not sure I like one of the arms so I may remove it and get another one in its place. There is a painting contest coming up in a couple of weeks so I think I will do up my Wood Elf Standard Bearer for the contest. It is a nice looking figure and cool standards are always impressive.

Fall is for all things Brown, Green and Gold

Howdy! For the Month of November I plan to start and complete my FOW british infantry army. It will consist of a couple of units of commandos, some armor and one great big unit of artillery. Currently I have 2 units of commandos, a boxed set of Biritsh rifes, a boxed set of Sherman IIIs. Today I will be going over to my local retailer, Little Wars, and pick up a couple of the Royal Artillery batterys consisting of (4 ) 25lb guns.

I hope to have a good infantry assault force supported by lots of powerful arty and armor. On my little forum I will post pictures and articles on how I did what I did until I figure out how to get a couple of pages here or else where to link to. But I think a forum is not a bad place as you can ask question there about my progress and I can respond.

I also plan to work on a couple of figures for an upcoming painting contest end of the month. Not sure what I am going to do yet, but I am leaning towards a Wood Elf noble and some kind of chaos figure for the single mini category. if I have time I want to do some dryads, but we shall see.

Pics of the figures coming later on today when I get home to post them.

Something for halloween

HOWDY

Well, here is my little corner of the net. I hope to soon publish my thoughts, projects and ideas here soon. Thanks!