Magua - Huron War Chief & Entwife

Finishing Stuff on a Friday

Finished off both the figures I have been working on this week. First is: Magua - Huron war chief and chief antagonistic from Last of the Mohicans. This model is with his war paint and tomahawk ready for battle. Hunting for Colonel Munro and his daughters. 

Second was the Entwife, which needed the base finishing off. After the leaf spiral around the dryad from last month, I decided to go for a similar effect as if she is summoning a whirlwind around herself. 

'When the Grey Hair is dead, Magua will eat his heart. Before he dies, Magua will put his children under the knife, so the Grey Hair will know his seed is wiped out forever.'

“God gave him enough, and yet he wants all. Such are the pale-faces.”

Entwife of the Dreadwood

Rob 

Entwife of the Dreadwood

A Very Quick Finish

This Salute purchase only just got onto the paint queue today. As I was doing the next batch of airbrushing, and I decided to add her at the last minute which is why the base isn't even prepped. I usually do the airbrushing in batches to cut down on paint mixing and cleaning etc. This miniature is from Conquest miniatures and the mould is very crisp with very little flash (Unlike the Last of the Mohicans from Warlord games). 

Anyway, she looked really great after even the zenithal highlight and I was tempted to stop after I put the contrast paint on the leaves. 

Ok, so I did add a couple of washes and a bit of highlighting but she was done in about 45 minutes. Just the base left to finish. After doing the leaf storm on the last dryad, I have a couple of ideas. 

The Entwife alongside a Grenadier barbarian shaman. As you can see she is about 80mm tall. So stands above the rank and file.  And she will join the ever growing army of the Fae Queen. 

Rob

Painting an Ent

Mountain Root of the Darkling Wood

Painted (mostly) using the painting guide by Borgnine's guide for Coniferous trees as outlined in the previous post. After spending many hours sculpting the miniature. It didn't take long to paint him as much of the detail was easy to pick out with dry brushing. I did change my basing method by using Stirland mud followed by a light tan drybrush and then using just birch seeds to create a woodland floor. 

Overall this was fun project to do and I feel that I have advanced my sculpting skills and knowledge a bit through this project. In particular using a mix of green stuff and Milliput as a sculpting medium  definitely made it easier and completing the project in stages was absolutely the right approach. This project also highlights the need to made a good wire armature in order to give the miniature the necessary strength for the table top. 

Time to take on some chaos trolls

Also got round to printing off some new backgrounds which are a bit wider and with a neat join which can be easily photo shopped out. 

Rob 

Not Much Painting Going On...

 But I Have Been Attempting to Sculpt! An Ent

I have been focusing on doing a bit of sculpting over the last few weeks. I wanted a large Ent to form part of the large monster contingent for the Fae. There are plenty of nice Ent models out there but it is a bit of challenge to sculpt your own and I may add a few purchased ones later.

Obviously sculpting a Ent doesn't have some of the challenges associated with sculpting a human etc.  Plus the larger size also helps for the novice.  I have completed a couple of other sculpts including a smaller Ent and the Fungal Shrooms (see earlier blog posts under the Green Stuff tag). But this is the most technically difficult one, I have attempted to sculpt  so far. 

I have been using a mixture of two parts yellow/grey Milliput to one part green stuff. Which seems to combine the advantages of green stuff without the tackiness. As well of making the green stuff go a bit further.  This idea as well as a great tutorial on sculpting trees came from Borgnine's Miniature Painting blog (Borgnine's Miniature Painting: Coniferous Tree Trunk Tutorial (borgninespainting.blogspot.com) Which I used to create the bark texture  and as a basis for painting my Ent. 

The other major source of inspiration for this miniature was the Ent done by Time Prow of Diehard miniatures Treeman, Beechspur - Bestiary - Diehard Miniatures. I really like the look of this miniature. He has a great sense of presence. I know mine doesn't look that similar but I did say inspired by and not copied from!

The Ent was sculpted over seven sessions to allow time for each section to dry before moving on to the next section. It is very easy to ruin the bit you have done by trying to do too much in one go. I also spent a lot of time making the wire armatures particularly for the arms and hands.  As I wanted each finger to be supported by wire frame. I used paperclips for the wire armatures as they are cheap, readily available and flexible.

In the case of the shoulders by leaving the wire ends exposed,  this gave me something to fix the arms on to a later stage. I would like to say I planned it that way but it was a lucky decision that worked out. 

The side branches were made from left
over branches from GW Dryads. 

A 28mm Ral Partha Hobgoblin for scale. 

I was undecided about the head at this stage
 and was thinking about adding branches
but it just didn't look right. 

Plus some other WIP

I also found time to make a killer snail, using a water snail shell I found whilst cleaning the pond. Which will join the Fae sprite horde. 

Beware the killer snail

Rob

Last Minis of the Month

 Sculpting Attempting Mark 2 - Lesser Forest Spirit

A Druid providing helpful and friendly instruction

Finished my second attempt at sculpting, this time a lesser forest spirit.  Unlike the Fungoid Shrooms, this sculpt has legs! As before I made a metal armature from paperclips. This armature was more involved than the previous ones with upper branches and hands. 

The metal armature

Again I covered the armature with Milliput to form the bulk of the figure.  The pose is a bit stiff but this I think is a feature of the metal armature I made. Which I will attempt to make more animated next time. Ironically it is also a bit thin! 

The exposed metal parts, I planned to cover with Green Stuff. I made all of the fingers from metal to give them strength but it may have made them too thick. Overall I quite happy with the Milliput stage but I think I need to spend more time on the Green Stuff stage, as some of the fingers/branches are bit misshapen for my liking. 

Tree Spirit alongside a scenic tree for a dryad base

Alongside an Excellent Mark Copplestone Elven Druid

On the Paint Bench at Month End

WIP including a 2nd Forest Spirit

Rob