Glade Guard Prototype

Hey all,

I have been working on a single Glade Guard model recently to test out a colour scheme, and to see if there was anything that needed improving/ changing, and the above model is the finished prototype. I really enjoyed painting this guy as I used a new blending technique for the paint rather than my usual heavy highlighting method, and this technique was learnt from Ron over at From The Warp who kindly answered my call for help about blending colours on a model – check out his site for dozens of excellent tips and tutorials to add that special something to your miniatures. I am basing my army around an Autumn/Winter scheme, so I opted to use Earthy tones such as Graveyard Earth, Kommando Khaki and Desert Yellow. I also suffer from a problem that appears to be very common amongst our fellow hobbyists; Perfectionism! I often get bored of an army if I do not put every effort in to them or if their eyes aren’t aligned properly, and that has been the case with countless hundreds of my miniatures, so I thought the best way to avoid that same path with my Wood Elves would be to go all out on modelling them so that I can satisfy my annoying obsession. In this case I have decided to use some extremely thin fishing line to create the draw-string of the bow, and added some lichen, leaves and snow to the base for the final touches.

As a prototype model, I would really appreciate any input, advice, comments or criticism about this fella so that I can perform the improvements on his kin as I slowly put them together.

Thanks for stopping by!

W.I.P Wild Riders

 

 

After some careful deliberation and a bit of shopping around I came across some great models that could be used as Wild Riders. These fellas are from the range of Rackham miniatures – Confrontation, and given the detailing on these minis they really couldn’t be better suited for a Wood Elf army. Centaurs to me represent the epitomy of forest mythology, and so I set about getting on with a bit of conversion work to make these guys fit in perfectly with what a Wild Rider was. The original models carried axes, and so I carefully removed them and took a selection of spears from my bits box and a spare sprue from another box of Centaurs and modelled a set of individual spears with a bit of chopping and changing. To hide the joints I cut a thin line of sticky rubber tape and slowly wrapped it around the handles making sure to keep the threading even. This will later be painted as cloth or leather, keeping with the Wood Elf feel of things. I usually paint my miniatures in pieces before glueing them together, but this time around I decided to glue them completely so that I could fill in the gaps with blue-stuff (like green stuff, only blue…) and then model it in to the neccessary shape. I’m hoping to get these guys painted sometime in the near future, and will be purchasing 2+ more models to get them to a legal unit size for my army.

 

 

 

Bow-String Tutorial

Hey guys,

After hearing from Peter ( The Aspect Portal and his new site The Forlorn Forest ), he mentioned for me to do a little tutorial on how I went about creating a bow-string for my recently finished Glade Guard model. Now it literally takes about 15 minutes, if that. Once you have formed a routine, the time will be reduced, and before you know it you will have an entire unit equipped with bow-strings. Please click the images for a larger view. Now on to the easy bit, my equipment:

Now you will notice I have 0.2mm thin fishing line (easy to get hold of – some hobby shops stock thin line/cable like this, and every fishing tackle shop does too), a full length ruler, a stanley knife, a pair of wire cutters (these can be replaced with scissors or clippers), some super glue and of course a Glade Guard model. A pair of tweezers could also be very useful to help you position the string when it is ready. After collecting your equipment, the next step is to measure the amount of fishing line that you will need to cut. I did this by roughly measuring the length between the Glade Guard’s fingers, and the tip of the bow. I did this again for the lower piece of line as it will need to be cut in to 2 separate pieces as follows:

Once you have your 2 pieces of line, the next step is to use the very tip of your knife to indent a tiny hole in to both arms of the bow, where one end of each piece of line will be glued shortly:

Once you have scored yourself 2 tiny marks where the line will be attached to, it is time to get out the super glue. Now carefully touch the tip of the first piece of line in to the superglue and using tweezers to avoid glueing your fingers, place the glued end roughly in to the tiny mark you made on the bow. Hold it there until it dries which should take a few seconds with the majority of superglue. Now make sure that the other end of the line fits neatly in to the finger joints, and if it is too long, carefully cut the neccessary amount away to create a proper fit. If it is too short, then uh oh, time to detach the line from the bow completely and cut yourself a new piece! Once attached at the bow and the finger joints, your model should resemble this:

Now do the same for the lower half of the bow with the other piece of line, and a key point to remember is not to worry too much if there is a slight bend in either piece of your line, as it will only add to the authenticity of the model resembling the way that a real piece of bow-string would bend and move. Once this is finished, you should let it dry for a few minutes if you are planning on painting immediately, but if not, it should look like the following, with both pieces of line appearing to form one complete line from the top of the bow, through the fingers, and down to the bottom of the bow. Please keep in mind that it looks even more effective if you position your model as if they are about to fire, or have just fired as I have tried to do here:

I hope this tutorial has made sense to everyone, and I hope you enjoy the results for yourselves. Any questions, comments or feedback is more than welcome, and thanks for stopping by to read this through!

SpellWeaver

Hey all,

I recently managed to complete my SpellWeaver with a little inspiration from Tom over at Tom’s Boring Mordheim Blog – I borrowed the Autumn/Winter colour and basing technique as his models look absolutely brilliant. I tried to blend the model when I painted him rather than my usual technique of extreme highlights but it took a whole lot of getting used to – especially keeping the paint from drying while I added consecutive layers. I decided to sculpt a cloth covering his eyes, as to me that always seems like a good way to give a model with Magical capabilities a bit more mystery, and made it out of a bit of green-stuff which I carefully shaped to fit properly. The leaves are from www.barrule.com and the snow is from the Gale force 9 collection. This has to be my favourite snow effect by far as each individual piece looks authentic, even under a microscope, and they just flake in to place so naturally that you can shape their position as the glue is drying. I used PVA glue for the basing on this model as I wanted to glue each leaf individually and super-glue just doesn’t give you the time to do it.

Any comments are welcome, and thanks for stopping by!