Ollieholmes WIP thread

[ollieholmes]

I thought i would start a thread here to show what i am working on at the moment and to pick up tips and pointers on my painting. Ive been playing the hobby now for about 10 years and have gone through phases of collecting armies. I few years ago now i sold off almost all my armies and just kept my sisters of battle. I am now aiming to start up again and improve my painting. For now i am working on lots of Lord of the Rings models as i have recatly realy liked the idea of War of The Ring.

First off on my bench is some Elf warriors, i decided to go with gold armour and red cloth on these to make a change. These photos are now out of date, the models now are ready for varnish coat which i will apply tomorrow with an airbrush and then basing. I will get some new photos once they are based.
img]http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/5849/dsc506301.jpg[/img]

And their shields which i have had great fun painting. I would be happy to put together a tutorial on how to get this effect if there is interest. I have some more shields now so it would not be hard for me to do.

And this is my troll drummer conversion which i am not realy pleased with. Im not sure why but i just dont like him.

Please ecuse the messy movement trays, they are a WIP and i just use them to keep small groups of models togethr to paint at a time.

As for whats coming next well its going to be something special. I have just got one of the plastic Balrogs and i am going to airbrush the wings to look like smoke and also airbrush the flames and whip to make it more realistic.

 

[ollieholmes]

I will fix that first image code as soon as i can but every time i try at the moment it wont do it, i click to save the changes but it just doesnt let me.

 

[ollieholmes]

I appologise for this but here is the missing image on its own, for some reason i cannot get the edditor to work. If a moderator can merge my posts i would apreciate it.

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[ollieholmes]

Im also working on plans to make my own arrmie of the dead models and cast them in clear resin to allow me to produce that lovely translucant effect seen in the film.

 

[gsr15]

Hi ollie, a few comments (I'm far from an expert but these are the first things I noticed.) Maybe its the lighting/photo, but the gold doesn't appear to have much depth (something I'm struggling with too, getting depth with metallics)...perhaps a targeted black wash and then a round of highlighting on the edges of all those ridges and plates would make it pop more? It also looks like you need to do some cleanup work at the transitions between robes and armor etc., you've got some red bleeding over the gold and vice versa. As for the troll, the one thing I noticed the most was that the left arm looks like its reaching out in front of the drum, is it possible to maybe bend it and pull the elbow back a bit? Either that or raise his arm up over his head? Right now it looks more like he's trying to kill someone with the mallets instead of use them to drum (I assume you want him to look like he's drumming?) so repositioning the arms and the orientation of the mallet might go a long way. I'm no sculptor though so I have no clue whats involved in doing any of that...kudos to you for diving in headfirst!