Shading the Elves...

Here is the next stage of painting for the LOTR elves.  With the initial "shaded basecoat" complete, I could get down to using my glazes to shade them and tint the figures.  The whole idea is to simplify the colors involved, so that they could be easier to match in the future (long after I have forgotten what went into them!).

Besides, lots of colors tend to "go away", and they always seem to be favorites or army essentials, don't they?



I had a few glaze colors out on the palette... a Reikland Earthshade, an Agrax Earthshade, a sepia shade from vallejo, and a lamenters yellow.  Using a very small brush, I used toned down lighter glazes to hit the least shaded areas of the gold armor.  Where I wanted it to be darker, I used the Agrax mixed with some coelia nightshade.  I will be doing a few more tints on the armor.





The cloaks had a mix of druichi violet and black.  I used some Reikland mixed with the coelia on the flesh tones.



I will be going back in with more accents in the darks, and then begin working back in some lighter colors.  Then it will be time for freehand and the shields where needed.



I will be sure to post the images of the finished guys!  They are all supposed to look like the central miniature...

Some fun from the past...

Here's one from a few years ago.  The base was a fun project.  I used sculpey and various polystyrene tubing to create it.

So you want to have a green thumb...

Today it was back to the Dragon Shoppe to do some more work on the game board!  All that was left was some drybrush on the road, and then flock.  That can be a messy prospect, so we brought out the newspaper once again.

We were fortunate to have a nice variety of flock on hand:



We tried to create a few mixes that had distinct colors (some more bright green, others brown, and even a very dark brown), and textures.  The coarse turf was mixed with the fine turf, which was easier to glue to the board.

These mixes made it much faster for the two of us to work our way around the board...



We brought out the wood glue again, and brushed out some areas near the road to help set that off a little more...



Once the flock was placed in the wet glue, we tapped it down a bit, and that was great for keeping the loose turf at a minimum. :-)



Here we are moving around the board..


As an added bonus, we got to see the big makeup game between the Sox and Tigers (big win for the Sox!!)


We are just about done getting all the flock on the board...


The turf is in!  I realized that it was a very good idea to scumble all those different colors on the board as I was painting it.  This allowed us to play with the flock mixtures more than if the whole thing was a uniform green.


Now the road gets its lighter drybrush.  As cathy did that, I washed off my green fingers!


Stay tuned for tomorrow's episode where we flock the hills and rocky outcroppings.  Here is a sneak peek of the final result...