Saturday 28 October 2017

Bleak Fell Guardians

The Lord of Bleak Fell is gathering his forces. Freed from his icy tomb, he wanders the dank caverns deep in the mountain, waking his legions of faithful minions. These guardians have lain quiet for centuries, sleeping, waiting for the return of their master.....

It seems like a long while since I started these figures, back in July. I have been working on them sporadically since then. My aim at the time was to paint them in an unusual (for me) palette. It would have been easy to stick to my tried and tested muted formula, but I wanted to inject a little more colour without them becoming garish. I stuck to the cool end of the spectrum - blues, purples, a little green and red. At times I hesitated and pondered, but finally they are complete. Well, these first six are done - there's another set waiting to be finished.


These are plastic Lord of the Rings Army of the Dead figures, with a few skeleton bits added here and there. They are lovely figures to work on, lots of detail but very easy to paint with a few basic techniques such as drybrushing or glazing. The shields are from various sources - some from the GW skeleton sprue, maybe a chaos shield or two in there, plus some historical. The designs are mostly inspired by my love of Norse and viking lore.


In gaming terms these figures are the elite troops of the army - the Lord's Royal Guard from days long ago, now risen once again through dark magics. They are well equipped and heavily armoured, hopefully the heavy hitters of the force - much needed to supplement the pathetic zombies and only slightly better skeletons.

I am pretty happy to have stepped out of my comfort zone and tried something a bit different. The end result I like. They are a real contrast to my previous efforts on these figures. It's good to try something new - proof that you definitely can teach an old dog new tricks.

5 comments:

Steve Williams said...

Fantastic models! I think the injection of colour worked really well. When I first saw them I couldn't place which range they were from because those models are usually fairly monotone. I own the metal versions, but am now sorely tempted to get the plastics.

Ana Polanscak said...

This paintjob suits them so well! They usually get painted monochrome, so this made me see the sculpts in a new light.

Michal DwarfCrypt said...

Excellent work sir!

Matt Crump said...

They look just like they have crawled out of a nasty bog, nice 😀

Nord said...

Thanks guys. They really are lovely figures, it's almost a crime to paint all those different textures a ghostly blue!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...