LotR Wood Elves wip

I have a lot of Lord of the Rings (LotR) figures from Games Workshop, almost 350 on last count.  Among the last to be painted is the plastic set of 24 wood elves (not the new Hobbit versions).  They have been undercoated for some time as I wasn’t really sure I wanted to paint them.  I impulse purchased them, then put them on the back list and did the LotR dwarves instead and then stopped painting LotR figures as I wasn’t playing the game that much.  Then I considered selling them.  Not much love there to be honest.

The sculpts have that unfortunate blending of detail that some of the single piece GW figures have.  Ie a cloak becomes a leg without any clean separation in the mould.  This put me off them a bit.  Long enough for the Hobbit movies to come and and so I waited to see what the Hobbit version of the wood elves would be like.  They are ok, but with half (only 12) the figures and prices at $50+ it was back to the old ones.  The last of the LotR forces…

I wanted to go for an autumn colour scheme so I spent some time getting a combination of greens/tans/yellow/oranges to go together.  In the end my colour palate was

VMC Flat Yellow (70.953)
VGC Orange Fire (72.008)
VGC Charred Brown (72.045)
VMC Goldenbrown (70.877)
VPA Shadows Flesh (70.343)
VGC Dark Green (72.028)

The Goldenbrown and Shadows Flesh were the primary colours, Dark Green and Charred Brown the secondary and the Orange Fire/Flat yellow tertiary.  For the flesh my base was VGC Dark Flesh (70.927).

Again I’m attempting the zenithal painting technique and spending a lot more time on the blending.  These figures are the first two trials.  I’m thinking of replacing the Dark Green and it pops out a bit much.  Then again that does add a bit of contrast to the flatness of the other colours.  Also I had the most trouble with the shading on this green.  Out of the pot the paint is quite thin.  Next time I’ll try some underpainting to bulk up the colour.

The faces are really small I’m finding.  Maybe my eyes are getting old.  Lots of deep breaths and occasional harsh language was needed for painting the eyes.

I’m happy in the most with the result so far.  However quick this process is not.  The cloak alone I almost spent an hour on (I hope later figures will be a bit quicker).  Normally I would take 1.5 hours for an entire figure.  But these two figures do look a lot better than my usual army standard.