76 minutes

Some progress on the balrog at painting club Sunday (though I need to re-glue and pin his sword hand). Today I painted an old Reaper vampire for fun. It took from 2:21 pm to 3:37 pm, bare metal to drying. Which is not too shabby I thought, especially just for tabletop.

2:21 pm - Ready to prime

2:23 pm - Spray primer applied and drying

 3:37 pm - Ink Wash applied and drying.

I put a couple coats of spray varnish on about 4:15 (one gloss, one matte), so now it's table-ready.

paint, but no progress

I painted a little on Memorial Day, but I got wrapped up in trying some speed-painting techniques on an orc berserker from Reaper instead of the Moria project. Gaming is tonight, so not likely to do anything then. However, our painting club is this weekend, so I hope to make some more progress on the balrog if nothing else. If I am really clever, I'll make the other tentacles between now and then so I can work on those too.

Sucker Punch

I worked on the Watcher tentacles last night. I used a tip from Sytgianheart and added suckers using little press blobs of greenstuff. I super-glued them to the dried tentacle and pressed in the center with the wooden end of a detail paintbrush. Overall, I am pleased with the results. This arm may have to be just a prototype, though. I think I can do better with the sizing and spacing of the suction cups. You can see the effect is cool, though.

I also worked on the cracked lava skin of the balrog. Both shoulders are blacked in now. I added a yellow ink wash to tone down the white parts that showed through, but I think it may be too much yellow. A little more white left showing would have been better, IMO.

This weekend I may try working on the pool some more. 

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.