Friday Showcase - Elven Ranger Mage

I know I am late with this post. Ran into more games of WHQ then I expected to play last week, which of course required the mini to play, then also coming down sick sure didn't help me have any more motivation.

Anyhow, there he is. Looks decent enough I think, shiny as all get out thanks to the dip, but I've learned to live with that.

As I am more of a fan of Warhammer when it was very gritty, but not so 'skull-ified' as it is today, I made the Elven Ranger Mage very dark. I know that the Elven Range Mage is always supposed to use his scale mail armor he starts the game with, but the term Ranger just screams leathers to me. Also, the fluff behind the Elven Ranger Mage says they are more or less Wood Elves that refuse to accept they are Wood Elves (Like the Elves from the novel Gilead's Blood)

The Sword came out interesting looking. I used the same basic technique as I used on my Retribution Halberdiers, with less blue wash used. Gave the sword just enough color to look like it is a special, but not over the top special. Other then the sword though, I tried my best to keep the figure pretty much dark toned. The sword is a nice eye catching part of the figure.

The demon/summon/spell/thing came out a bit more tame then I envisioned at first. When I first starter, I was going to do a blue hot fire with a white core. It quickly became apparent to me as I painted the figure that I have no clue how to accomplish such a painting job. I know that I didn't want to use basic fire, as I expected the Elven Ranger Mage would use something so eye catching if he's supposed to be zipping in and out of combat keeping a low profile, but it should still be something that could be intimidating.

I won't lie, another reason I think I made it the way it turned out is the fact I already did the phoenix on my other Elven Hero figure I recently painted, and wanted to try another painting style. He still came out decent looking enough that I think I accomplished the overall goal. It might not be made of fire, but certainly doesn't look like anything from the mortal world.

The cape came out looking pretty amazing I think. The highlights and shading, ignoring those given by the dip, just seemed to click. Was really happy with everything here it was just bright enough to add some flourish to the figure, and yet look dark enough to fit in with the rest of the figure. When I first painted it, I tried to do a custom red highlight, but the red came out pink for some reason, so once that shade was dried went back over it with the standard red. That light pink color helped the normal red though by making it far more vibrant and 'right'. In the end it came out pretty much exactly how I was expecting it too.

I think the part that turned out the worse on this figure was actually the hair. If you look at the face and chest, those skins tones turned out really well, and the shadow were just right and gave the Elven Ranger Mage a very dark tone to him. I can't really complain about this at all, as it just came together with little effort.

The hair however, the hair I am just not happy with, and no matter what I did I couldn't get it any better. For me hair has always been a weakness of mine. There is a reason why many of my figures I paint tend to have minimum hair expose if possible. It's obvious that I tried to go for the greyed/white hair style, but for some reason I simply could not get the highlighting to work right. You can tell that I just can't do white in general if you look at the Elven Hero I painted up last, as the fur on the top of his cloak apears to have almost no shading although I really did try to give it some. The hair doesn't look bad by any means, but it didn't come anywhere close to what I wanted. In the end, I settled for the best I could do and moved on with picking out details.

So there is Kelarion, the Elven Ranger Mage I am hoping he sees a long and glorious life on the tabletop.

Friday Showcase - Gamezone Elf Hero

On this week showcase is a miniature I painted only yesterday, and for being a rush job, it came out looking better then I was expecting. This is the Gamezone Elf Hero with Phoenix that I decided to use as my Kings of War elven king. I still haven't locked down how to get good shots without one or more parts of the pic going out of focus, but the general idea is still pretty clear.

I painted my a bit differently to how the studio paint job for the miniature was done. I think this was mostly due to my history with the Warhammer High Elves, that I naturally went back to something akin to those schemes even though I didn't really plan on it. namely the silver armor, white cloth, and blue and red accessories.

I went into this project more or less blind, as I had the miniature for a while, but never really thought about how I was going to paint him. At first I was thinking of doing the phoenix in blues and whites, but decided that would be overloads of blues. When I first got the miniature I was thinking of using him as a Lord of Aenarion in Warhammer Quest, but eventually that idea fell to the way side as I just didn't care for that particular class as much as I did about the Elven Ranger.

Only a couple things annoyed me about the miniature overall, and it was the runes they placed on the cloak and the 'under-cloak" (Not exactly sure what that white part of the miniature is supposed to be exactly). The runes were so small and close together,that, as you can tell from the pictures, I simply could not get the runes to come out entirely crisp. most of this was due to the fact that while I have a detail brush, it simply wasn't detailed enough for those runes. I needed a brush with far fewer bristles in place. The runes on the white came out looking far worse then the runes on the blue though due to how much they crammed into the various spots.

Another thing that really irritated me was how flimsy the blade staff was the hero was using. I continually found it bent on one side or the other, and had to flex it back into shape. I could see it easily snapping off with even a slightly wrong fall. I think I have become spoiled by Dream Pod 9's amazingly tough pewter they use.

Overall I am happy with him though since I did only take a short while to paint him up, he came out looking decently tabletop ready. The only thing that really bugs me about how he ended up is the shine he got from the dip. I expected this, as I saw what happened after I dipped my PRDF a while back, and I would use a matte varnish if I didn't have such terrible luck with the stuff.

Like any of my other paint jobs, I'm not aiming to win any awards for him, but as long as he looks good on the table I assume that's a victory. I am hoping that as I get the rest of the Mantic Elves painted up, he matches in well enough to look like part of their force.

Friday showcase - Relthoza 'Borg Fleet'

Part of my blog's plan moving forward., I am doing a Friday Showcase day, a day where I show off either my own, or something I found on the internet that somehow left an impression on me for one reason or another. Any works that I post from other people, I will of course tell you where I got the pic from.

Every now and then you stumble across a miniature on the internet that just stuns you with its beauty. Today just happened to be one of those days. Today I decided, pretty much on a whim, that I wanted to see the last 7 days top minis on CMoN, and was shocked at one of the options were to look at. I'll let the picture speak for itself, but you can find the official post here.

The painter did an amazing job at making the ships uniform, and the end results is certainly a well designed force that looks like it was built to be flying together through the depths of space. This is one commission job that I have to admit I love, and could only wish I had anywhere near that skill level and love for painting.

It probably doesn't help I already had a Relthoza fleet for Firestorm Armada, but the color scheme was amazing in the way it was applied. I would love to see how a blue would work instead of green.

Another thing this fleet shows, that i hadn't had a chance to see before, was just how the Relthoza dreadnaught looks alongside others in the fleet. This has done a lot for me to get me excited about playing, and painting, my Relthoza fleet, as well as an idea of what my fleet will look like once it is done.

Of course my fleet won't have the two Venom class cruisers in it, instead I am choosing to use:

• Apex Dreadnaught
• Hive Carrier
• 2x Scarab class Heavy Cruisers
• 3x Bane R&D Cruisers
• 12x Drone Frigates

I picked the Scarabs over the Venoms for a couple reasons. Most notably I like the idea and appearance of the Scarabs as a swift killer in the fleet, thus it not being 'tall' like the others.

I never really cared for the Relthoza Brood class Battleship, it just didn't look right to me, but the Apex is just an amazing miniature. Most of the dreadnaughts are for the most part, but the Apex always stood as top of the chain along side the Aquan Prime's Medusa dreadnaught.

Once again, this painted Relthoza fleet that is an excellent source idea for anyone interested in some type of inspiration.