Watery Works (many pics)

I was going to work on the balrog last night, but that didn't quite work out. I did manage to do some work on the Watcher in the Water portion of the set.

Back when I had made the modular river for Song of Blades and Heroes skirmishes, I had cut a bunch of other pieces of MDF in various shapes. The plan was to use them for things like swampy ground and ponds. The largest of them was for a small lake.

I pulled that out and decided it was big enough for the pool in front of the entrance to Moria. First I placed the board on a piece of foam core.

(The grid in background are 1" squares from a Chessex mat)

Next I traced it. Since the foam core was black I used a white correction fluid pen.

Once the trace was dry, I cut it out with an Xacto knife.

I traced an internal line about 1" from the edge of the foam core and cut that out.

The resulting ring will be the "shore" of the lake. I glued it down and put a couple heavy books on it to hold it flat while it dried.

The next phase will be to shape and bevel the edges a little, as well as fill them with some spackling or pumice to make them seem more natural. When that's done, I'll paint it. 

While that was drying, I took a first stab at a greenstuff Watcher tentacle. It's about 3 1/2" long, rolled around some copper wire. I made the sucker marks with the end of a detail brush handle and the point of a toothpick. It's pretty basic, but I think I'm on the right track. I may have to paint it up before I can decide.

Prepping for a push

I haven't gotten much painting or sculpting done the last week or so, but I have gotten the basement cleared out a little. That will make working on this project (and painting in general) a bit easier. Also, the warmer weather will make things like outdoor spray priming or sealing easier to manage.

I'm on the precipice of a major surge of painting & terrain productivity. Honest!

Sucker-punched

Well, not literally. But I got sniped on the eBay auction, so no Watcher tentacles for me. I think I may take a stab at sculpting some. Who knows? Could be fun!

Shadow & Flame WIPs

As promised, here are a few pics of the balrog so far. Apologies again for the less than great photos. I need to set up my camera stuff properly again.

You can see how I covered the "fiery" area with white first, then added yellow and orange. Flame is tricky because you sort of "reverse shade" it. The brightest colors/shades are in the deepest recesses.

This side is closer to done. I've added the cooled skin basecoat back on in places.

Compare and contrast.

You can see some freehand cracks in the wings with the fire showing through. Again, just white then yellow and orange. (You can see a little of the same on the wings' undersides in the first pic.)

There is a similar fire effect inside the mouth, but it still needs some work. 

And there you have it. Besides a Dheneb Stone basecoat on the base. To be continued.

Watching for the Watcher

I mentioned GW's Watcher in the Water before. For those who are unaware, the current model is the second version of the creature for the LOTR game. Originally, there were just six independent tentacles on 1" bases. Now it's the whole monster (head & all). The drawback to that, apart from the price, is the idea that the tentacles can't be positioned separately around the pool. 

The old version:

The new one:

GW can suck it, re: images on the page.

I found a "tentacles-only" set on eBay. Hopefully I'll win that auction. However, I did see an interesting scratchbuilt version online over at The One Ring. You can see the image over at the member's photobucket page. 

I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty darned impressive. It's inspired me to make an attempt at modelling a head for the beasty. Time to break out the Sculpey!

Progress

I made some good progress on the balrog at the painting club Sunday. Mostly I worked on the "fiery interior/lava" effect. I'll post some WIP pics soon. Basically I had to paint the mane and shoulders white, then paint in the recesses of the cracks and the mane with yellow. I followed that with a thinned, semi-transparent orange. The real pain is going back and repainting the surface with black. I also freehanded some "splits" in the wings to show lavafire peeking through. Once that's all done, I'll probably get to work on the firesword.

I still need to find a good solution for the Watcher's tentacles, too.

Some Cruddy "Before" Phone Pix of the Balrog

Primed and based.

The sword hand had cracked off at one point. It was a separate piece to begin with, so I just re-pinned and re-glued, so the black primer gaps there. You can see a little of the basing detail I did (crumbled bricks, a shattered shield, etc.). They should look pretty cool once I've painted them up. 

I plan on trying for the whole "molten fire inside" look with flames for the crest on his back.