You might remember that quite a while back I painted some Lord of the Rings Dead of Dunharrow, and said at the time that I’d built the army so I’d be able to slot in the three hunters and make it exactly 800 points. Well it took me a while (and waiting for those models to come back in stock!) but here they finally are.
These are the new plastic set Games Workshop produced for the trio, and like all the new Middle-Earth plastics they’re excellently detailed and go really nicely together. I’ve actually had these on my painting desk since December, with Aragorn completed and Legolas and Gimli only about half done. I finally decided to finish them off tonight after a few months of staring guiltily at them.
The paint jobs relied pretty heavily on contrast paints with some selective highlights over the top, with most of the leathers and cloth areas done that way. The main exception are the elven cloaks, which I decided to paint in a more traditional manner (basecoat – wash – highlights) with Vallejo Field Grey, GW Agrax Earthshade, and Vallejo Green Grey respectively.
I tried to add a bit of texture to everything with highlights, although to be fair I spent a fair bit more time on Aragorn than on the other two, and therefore he has much more texturing on his clothes! I suppose I can rationalise that by his being a ranger with presumably poor access to new clothes!
Part of the fun of finishing these three off was to be able to put them alongside the Army of the Dead and recreate that scene from Return of the King where they disembark from their stolen corsair ship. Although I lacked an appropriate photographic background so picked the one that matched their colours best.
Anyway it was nice to tie a bow around this particular Middle-Earth SBG army, and I look forward to using them in some games!
Lair of the Lagomorph 
Those are really nice, Nic! 🙂 They do look good leading the Army of the Dead!
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Thanks John!
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Excellent work on these Nic! I’ve thought about getting these three to try and paint Gimli mostly (as I think he is the best sculpt and probably the most interesting to work on) but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. It’s tempting to do something similar to what you’ve accomplished and make them look like the movies for a diorama. Its a bigger project than I’ve got time for but its certainly entered my mind. The final shot that you put together looks fantastic!
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Thanks Jeff! The only thing I’ll say about Gimli is that his shoulder pads are cast completely flat so any attempt at recreating the small plates that make it up in the costume have to be freehand. I suppose it makes sense from a scale point of view, but worth knowing about if you want to paint him for display.
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I just looked at GW’s page for some close-ups and I see what you mean. That does make it quite a bit harder. I see some of the trim in his armor would be very hard to paint NMM too. Maybe that’s why I’ve never actually attempted this idea 🙂 I will get some Middle Earth in my painting queue soon regardless!
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Wow, excellent work on these three. The lighting gives them a bit of a luminous look – which really works with them leading the AotD!
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Thanks a lot! I have a bit of a mix of light warmths pointed at my photo area at the moment some warmer some cooler, not sure if it’s a bit weird looking or not, does make things stand out though!
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