Last Orktober was an unusually productive month for me: I completed three (3!) projects! To be fair, in addition to finishing Ironskull’s Boyz, the two other projects were very small single figures.. Nonetheless, the first of them was an an ancient Uruk-hai Warrior.
The model is from the Two Towers Uruk-hai paint set, so from around Christmas 2002. The box came with 10 Uruk-hai, half armed with swords and the other with spears, and some sample paint pots. I originally painted three of the sword guys (see the end of the post), and then lost interest. The spear guys, and apparently one sword fighter were tossed in some move, but this one guy had sat unpainted in my collection for 15+ years.
As he was a type of an ork, and seemed like a quick win, I decided to get him painted up. Indeed, he took just two nights of painting, even with my slow pace. Being a single mini that I don’t have any intention of expanding into a bigger collection made it perfect for trying out new things. I wanted to achieve a dark metal armor, like in the movies, and Leadbelcher just wasn’t going to cut it. I mixed some black into it, and applied a black wash on top for good measure. Then it was just a matter of some quick highlights and I was done with the armor. The result was a dark, dull metal with worn edges, and the recipe would come in handy with an Ork Dreadnought later on.
I’m not as happy with the rest of the colors, but I guess they’re good enough. The skin could’ve been smoother and the cloth, straps and hair have more detail or contrast. But I noticed that as the LOTR/ME minis are smaller in scale, and true-scale to boot, there’s much less area to work on, and everything has to be really tiny! I do like the handprint though, it’s my favorite part of the model. The freehand was thankfully pretty easy to do as it was supposed to be rough, and I think I even got the scaling about right.
This post was supposed to go up quite a bit earlier, but it turned out I was busier than expected during the weekend: my mates threw me a bachelor party! So rather than doing any hobby related stuff, I got to solve puzzles in an escape room, try to set highscores in old arcade cabinets, eat good food, drink a lot, sit in a sauna, play dice games, and best of all, catch up with my closest friends! And to my surprise, virtually no hangover on Sunday. What a brilliant weekend!
mcmattilaminis 