Bilbo Baggins

It's Bilbo Baggins' birthday! September 22nd is the date the hobbit celebrates his birthday, and as mentioned in yesterday's post he is 80 years old - in publishing terms that is. It's also the autumn equinox today, I wonder if Tolkien chose the date for this reason?

I only have one Bilbo in my miniatures collection, which I hastily painted up today! I had to mark the day somehow. For colours, I copied those from the movie. It's a very small mini, so I skipped some of the teeniest details. It's quite lacklustre if I'm honest, reflecting the way I feel today having come down with a cold :(

To properly celebrate this day, I spent some time browsing fellow painters' work on the little chap, and present a selection below. Each has a link to the original source, if any of the owners/painters object to me using their image just let me know in the comments and I will remove it.

by Bragon on CoolMini

by Joan Carles Ros on Putty&Paint

by TheChromaticCircle on Putty&Paint

by David Powell on Putty&Paint

by Winterland on Putty&Paint

I have also been scouring the web for other renditions of Mr Baggins. It's interesting to see how he has been portrayed down the decades. For a thorough examination of early artistic renditions, I can recommend you browse the PowerOfBabel blog, there are a number of posts showing various printed illustrations.

Of course, there are also plenty of more modern renditions too. I have deliberately excluded art based on the movies, I'm sure you all know how Martin Freeman looks by now. Again, the list below contains a link to the original source, if there are any objections to their use please let me know.

by breath-art on deviantart

by Simon Buckroyd on deviantart

by John Howe

by Rodney Matthews

by yoggurt on deviantart

And finally, an image that does not contain Mr Baggins as such but is instantly recognisable as a scene from the book. After the multi-coloured marvels of all the previous renditions, there's something rather beautiful in these simple lines, from the Folio Society version of the book.

Happy Birthday Bilbo!

Bilbo Baggins is eighty years old!* Or rather, the book The Hobbit was first published on September 21, 1937. You could argue that this is day zero for all the fantasy stuff we read, we watch on TV and the cinema, we play games over. Without The Hobbit there would have been no Lord of the Rings, which is widely regarded as the grandfather of the fantasy genre, from Dungeons and Dragons to Warhammer Fantasy gaming.

Legend has it that Tolkien, an Oxford professor, was marking exam papers and was so bored that he doodled in the margin, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit", the first line of the book, thus beginning his epic tale.

*As any self-respecting Tolknerd (that should be a word) will tell you, Bilbo's birthday is actually tomorrow, September 22nd. As is Frodo's for that matter. 

I am a self-confessed Tolkien nerd. And to prove it, here's a photo of my nerdy bookshelf. There is a lot of Tolkien material there, either written by him, about him, or art based on his works. Look closely and you will see that I have five versions of The Hobbit, from a pop-up book designed for young readers, to an annotated version for the full-on geek.

The pop-up book was recently rescued from a trip up into the loft (attic), I presume it was bought for my two young boys years ago - I really cannot remember! It's very sweet and the illustrations are actually very well done. 

Another unusual format is this graphic novel - a step up from the pop-up but still plenty of pictures for the word shy readers. Again, there are some lovely art spreads in this version.

Moving on to the more typical versions, I have an illustrated version and a facsimile of the classic standard version, with a few illustrations by Tolkien himself, which I find to be very charming.

And finally there's the wordiest, nerdiest version - The Annotated Hobbit. This book describes in detail possible sources of inspiration that Tolkien used, from experiences in the trenches of World War 1 to landmarks of his home environments, and plenty of references to academic and mythical influences. If you are the kind of person that would be fascinated to learn that nearly all the dwarf names come from the old Norse poem "Voluspa", that Rivendell was probably inspired by a walking holiday in Switzerland, or the origin of the name Baggins, then this is the book for you. 

So let's raise a glass to the old boy, without whom none of us would be here now, blogging or gaming or watching the movies. Cheers!

Lord of Bleak Fell

Shunned by man, haunted by dire wolves and ice trolls, Bleak Fell lies deep in the jagged mountain range known to the dwarfs as Helsberg. At one time in the distant past, it was the burial place of kings, a place where the dead were honoured. Interred in palatial tombs, those people are now long gone, a lost and forgotten civilisation, whispered of only in ghost stories. And yet, a few still seek this place. Most perish, for the road is long and hard, the old paths are gone, and many terrors lie in wait. For any mortal foolish enough to seek out the rumoured treasures, there can only be pain, failure and death. 

Kulgin Bachensteiner long gave up his mortality. His foul necromantic rituals and unspeakable acts have extended his life far beyond the span of any mortal. He has studied old maps and lore for decades, to seek out the Lord of Bleak Fell, to enact the magic rituals to restore his corpse, to learn from him the deep, dark knowledge. And so he braved the dark forest path, hidden from the wolves and beasts by his magic. He ascended the long, icy road to the summit, the freezing winds and snow no hindrance to his cold, unbeating heart. He found the hidden entrance and descended into the dusty crypt, with no fear of the spirits haunting those old passageways. Finally, he unlocked the mystery of the tomb, chanted the forbidden verses, and saw the Lord of Bleak Fell rise once more, to do his bidding.......

Or something like that. This is an old metal figure from the 1990s, a wight. Back in those days, the Undead army book contained wights as a unit and a small number were released. At the time I thought they were really cool. Now I look back and think that the Undead were possibly the goofiest army ever released!

Still, when I was looking around for a figure to lead my new Undead force, I chose this old wight for nostalgic reasons. The Undead were my first fully painted army, the first army I took to a tournament. Though I never actually owned any of the wights at the time, I did pick up a few on ebay in later years, again mainly for nostalgic reasons. And finally one of them is painted. The only concession to the modern era is the plastic skeleton shield.

In truth, as an Undead lord, it's not a particularly special figure. The plastic army of the dead figures would have probably been better candidates. But I wanted to pay homage to the old times, so here we are, the Lord of Bleak Fell rises once more......

Skyrim fans will recognise the setting I have stolen from been inspired by - the Bleak Falls Barrow. I live on the edge of the Lake District in the north of England, and here our mountains are called fells. It didn't take much work to arrive at Bleak Fell as a location for my Undead Lord.

X.III - Daemons

In this, the third of my celebratory posts, I am looking back at the year 2010. I painted lots of fantasy in that time, and played it almost exclusively, so there's a good selection of potential candidates. I added a few units to my orcs and goblins army - black orcs and green squigs stand out - and made more progress on the wood elf army. I also built but two pretty big conversions - a treeman and a shaggoth, which get honourable mentions. I reckon that already qualifies as a good vintage, but my biggest achievement for the year was putting together a small contingent of daemons.

I started by building and painting a unit of daemonettes. My aim at the time was to try something a little different, and a pink/purple palette was definitely that. These days I tend to paint in small batches of eight or twelve, but I obviously had more stamina in my youth - eighteen daemonettes.

After that I rewarded myself with a character model, a herald built from an old Warzone figure, with a whole host of (cute?) little attendants.

Then I finished off the project with a unit of pink horrors, the classic metal figures from that time and still my favourite renditions of the model.

Though the daemons started as an add-on for my chaos warriors, I did have grand plans to develop them into a full army. I have metal plaguebearers painted up and bloodletters half-painted, plus more daemonettes, screamers and various other figures. However, as with so many grand plans, nothing came of it.

One figure I did add a few years later was a Daemon Prince, converted from an old Azazel model. I left off the wings and replaced the head with that of an old school metal Fiend of Slaanesh, the tail I forget the source. I had this model half-painted for a good few years, but thought it would be nice to finally complete it as part of my celebrations.

X.II - Chaos Marauders

The second of my celebrations of ten years of blogging. 2009 was a return to a more typical year for me. I returned to my wargaming heritage - painted and played mostly fantasy. I made a solid start on a chaos warband, painting marauders, spawn, hounds, warriors and a few characters. Then I had a crazy idea to develop an elf army that could be used as either High Elves or Wood Elves. From all those models I have chosen this unit of chaos marauders as my pick of the year.

This was the first time I had tried something new in painting terms. Previously, I had stuck to the prescribed method of base coat, shade, then highlights, but I felt that this was only really suitable for darker coloured models. With all the light flesh to paint, I tried a white primer, then used glazes to add the colours, in just one or two easy steps. It proved to be very quick and very effective and I started to use this method on more of my painting. So this unit marks that significant change in the way I paint. It saves time and looks better (in my eyes) to the old layering method.

This unit was also the first of a chaos army that was to feature heavily in coming years. Chaos had always appealed to me for so many reasons. There was huge variety, there were so many units to choose from. The background pantheon allowed for great creativity - these marauders as followers of Slaanesh would have looked different had they taken up arms for Khorne, or been blessed by Nurgle. The army could also be built up quite quickly as many units (though not marauders) were low count - chaos warriors, ogres, knights, trolls and the like. This unit was the start of a big, ongoing project.