Marine

The recent announcement on a new boxset for 40k had me pondering if I should take a new direction. I have hit a bit of a wall in motivation recently and I figured that a complete change might fire up the muse again. So I dug out a set of primaris marines and set to work on painting them in a desert scheme.

After a couple of changes, the scheme ended looking like this. My idea is to find/design a gryphon transfer for the shoulder pad, preferably in red to match the markings. The right knee pad would vary from marine to marine, a kind of personal heraldry, while the left kneepad would have some kind of campaign marking maybe. Anyway, after finding that even a simple marine like this takes a bit of time, I am not really encouraged to go further. It just seems so bland. I quite like the bolter though, that's really easy and could be re-used in the future.

Back

"Well, I'm back", he said.

And to celebrate, here's a picture of my back. I am back from a long holiday in the Phillipines, visiting family and new friends. We spent pretty much the whole of February doing very little, beach life, taking things slowly to cope with the heat, with a little snorkelling and adventuring thrown in. Batteries well and truly recharged.

I am also back to the hobby, after a three month hiatus. During that time I have painted commission work of course, but I have also been dabbling with new mediums - pencils, watercolours, inks - mostly I have been simply copying sketches from various books or online sources, just to practise holding a pencil, laying on paint. There are a few samples at the bottom of the post for those interested.

The main purpose of this post is to check in again. I am eager to get some of my own miniatures painted, the first time I have felt that way for a while. There are plenty of candidates, plenty of figures prepped, primed or even half painted. I think I might warm up by completing a few that are almost ready, then move on to a fresh unit. In the meantime, here's a few sketches to pad out this brief post.

New Year, New Stuff

Another Yule season gone by, another new year started. I deliberately tried to resist hobby items this year - I have far too many already and tend to buy things as and when I see them available on ebay or kickstarter projects. One minor concession was these replica viking bone dice, for which my wife made a lovely little draw string leather pouch.

And that was it, which suits me at the moment as I seem to have entered a hobby hibernation. My motivation to paint little plastic (or metal) figures has left me, for the time being at least. I am enjoying painting elves for a commission, and dabbling with a watercolour set I received as a Xmas present three years ago.

So the blog will be starting the new year/ new decade with a whimper rather than a bang. It is just a hobby after all, there are no targets or deadlines to meet. When the passion dies, it's best to leave it be for a while, let the flames smoulder for a while, they will re-ignite again when the time is right. In the meantime, here's a little sketch entitled "Tower of Amon Sul".

Tackling Chaos!

This is a photo of my new "studio". I spent all weekend clearing figures out of, and then moving the cabinet to a new location, so that I had this clear, bright corner. I am trying to set the room up re-using as much as possible, I feel guilty about all the stuff I have bought down the years and am trying to reduce my footprint as much as possible. The table I picked up from facebook marketplace for a good cheap price, that's better than buying new. It's absolutely perfect condition and cost me a quarter what it would to buy new, and I don't have to drive 50 miles to ikea to pick it up. It's made from bamboo, which is meant to be more sustainable I think.

The chair is an old one that my son was gifted, and now I am using it. It's a bit tattered in some areas and a bit wobbly, but it still works so there's no need to buy a new one. It's quite comfortable too and adjustable so I can get it right under the table and sit low, which is better for my back (sitting up straight while painting is better for my spine than hunching over).

The figures in the newly located cabinet have been re-organised. I have taken the opportunity to downsize my collection a little, you can see items for sale on ebay here if interested. This photo shows the bottom two shelves of the cabinet. It's not particularly clear, but it's basically the majority of my painted Chaos collection. On the bottom is mostly Chaos Undivided, with a few marked units. On the top, the right hand section is my Khorne Warriors, the left hand section is Tzeentch and Slaanesh daemons, while the middle ground is held by some Nurgle units. It really cries out to be rebased in one unified way, with magnetic movement trays, but that's one of those big jobs that just seems so daunting.

It was sheer coincidence that I had started re-organising all this and I was looking fondly at all my chaos collection, some of it stretching back a good twenty years, when the news dropped about the upcoming chaos releases from Games Workshop. So even if I do get through re-organising all this stuff, there will be more coming along in the not too distant future. The new sculpts have blown me away. They are not too different from the existing aesthetic, but certainly would add a little dynamism to older models. That's xmas sorted for me.

Armies never get finished, they sometimes rest for a while, but always they evolve. Embrace Chaos.

Royal Armoury of Malta

On a recent spring break in the city of Valetta, Malta, I visited the Royal Armoury, dedicated to the arms and armour of the Knights of St. John. It was a huge collection, based in two rooms stuffed with cabinets. It's not really a period of history I know much about, but for sheer spectacle it was a memorable visit. Photos below with captions, hopefully they are mostly correct from memory. The official website can be found here.

Armour Room

Armour of the Grand Master

Shield (ceremonial) of the Grand Master

More ornate armour

Cases of helmets

Ottoman Turk arms and armour

Arms room

Cannons large and small

Powder cannisters

May The What?

Incident at Hab Zone 161

May the Fourth Be With You. It's a thing, apparently.

I am not really much of a Star Wars fan, but I do like a good pun. To celebrate this great day for geeks everywhere, I put my sci fi collection together with my newly painted  rocky outcrops for this little image which I have grandly titled Incident at Hab Zone 161.

The figures are from the (long forgotten?) Sedition Wars range. They painted up really nicely and would make a great little force for a skirmish game. I really should get some more of them painted.

This is the kind of sci fi look I prefer, less Star Wars or 40K, more Moon Base Alpha.* The base in the background is the start, potentially, of a little side project, just primed at the moment. I really should not get distracted, this is what happens when you tidy your garage!

*from the series Space 1999, with hair styles courtesy of UFO

It's Beardecember!

It's that time of year, when beards start to appear everywhere. No longer confined to your local hipster bar, they spring up - on store shelves, advent calendars, food packaging. Almost everything suddenly has a beard (or antlers).

And that's my rather flimsy excuse to launch Beardecember. You might have noticed that hobby activity on the blog has been a little bit sparse of late. In the past three months I have painted seven undead figures and a hobbit. That's not sparse, that's pathetic! So I hearby solemnly pledge that I will do better in this month of Beardecember and paint more than seven figures.

Anything with a beard is a potential target for my brushes. Dwarfs spring to mind, maybe some vikings, possibly even stalwart warriors of Rohan. If it sprouts hair on the chin area, it's fair game. While I ponder on which beard to tackle first, here's a rather nice selection for inspiration.

My New Facebook Page

I have decided to start a facebook page for all my painting. It's called Nord's Painting Saga and you can visit it here if you like. It's early days as yet, there are just two photo albums loaded in and very little else - it's still at the little acorn stage.

Why are you starting a facebook page when you already have a blog (and a website)? I hear you ask. The blog was originally designed purely as a diary for my personal use. It was (and still is) a space to record my hobby activity, my gaming and my painting recipes. Rather than scribble these down on scraps of paper and Word documents, it was a handy place to have them all stored in one area that would, theoretically, never get lost/burnt/eaten by a dog. Note that many of these recipes I do not publish, especially those that are commission projects, as I never really detect much enthusiasm for such posts. Blogs are ideal for diary like activity, I can easily look back at past articles, all neatly catalogued, for example when compiling my recent ten year retrospective ramble.

Facebook is a more immediate platform. Post a picture and there is an immediate response, even if it's just a like thumb or two. It also has a very fine photo facility. I use it to hold all my holiday snaps, they are easy to load, it's easy to restrict the audience (if necessary) and the picture quality is good. Blog photos seem to compress and degrade a little in the uploading process.

In the past I would load my commission photos on to my website griffinpainting, but recently I have had problems doing this. Combined with the lack of feedback of a website, I think it's time has come. It's still there, but currently has not been updated for several months. Whether this has been noticed by any of the visitors, I have no idea!

New facebook page, yay!

The blog will continue to be the place for my hobby ramblings, gaming exploits and bad puns. If you simply need more, more, more, then Nord's Painting Saga is the place for you. There will be an overlap with the blog, the Undead project for example will appear on both as it's a personal project. If you want to get a look at my commission work, like these lovely little guys and their many mates, it's worth a visit. If you like what you see, please share with like minded friends.

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!