Ulvar Vileblood, Greetings from Texas and filthy goblinoids

Hello everyone. It has been a long two weeks for me. Parents' Evening took its toll on our free time here as did the needs of my children. As I said before, I am now Robert De Niro most weekends, so you'll see me taxi-driving around East Anglia ad nauseum. 

A week or so ago I was chatting with Stuart about the Warriors of Chaos project and he was arguing a case against just going for the same old same old colour schemes. He supplied several old Dragonlord paintings from the Dragonlance fluff as examples, though it took some time until I could really have a go at putting his advice into reality.

You can see the finished result above. Ulvar Vileblood is a tricky figure to photograph so apologies for the slightly blurry image that opens this post. The image I took inspiration from is below.

Originally, Ulvar had yellow greaves matching his shield and helm but the figure seemed to lack a final touch, at least to me. So I repainted the legs with Red Gore and highlighted with Blood Red with increasing amounts of Sunburst Yellow. I made full use of the blues from my newly restored Monster Paint Set (thank you again to all of you dear readers involved with that) to work up his armour, a process I enjoyed immensely. This was largely due to the lovely Spring weather we had yesterday which resulted in me spending several hours outside with 'My Favourite Miniature' while she cross-stitched. 

So what do you think of him?

I am in two minds. I like the brightness of the figure and the simple look of the colours however, it seems a little too Marvel for me to be totally sure. Ulvar looks like he could be strapping on a jetpack and chasing down some Infinity Stones with Robert Downey Jr. The finished miniature doesn't sit alongside my more recent work either all that well either due to the more comic book colours but as I've only finished a few miniatures my views could change in time. 

A few more completed figures from the range will give better context.

I also heard from Mack since last post, who was kind enough to send me four more skeletons from the Horde. All the way from Austin Texas too... Mack, thank you for your generosity in sending these over as I believe that I have all I need to finish that initial project come the Easter holidays. He included this little note that made me smile and the sight of the armour pieces from the Skeleton Horde sent me racing back to 1989 for a heartbeat or two. A priceless moment in time.

Mack, I salute you!

Thanks to Mack's generosity I should be able to build a few armoured champions to lead the shamblers or perhaps do something more interesting with the single plastic skeleton horse Bree sent me a few months back. 

Graham F emailed me a while back to confess he had a shameful collection of old figures in appalling condition that he was never going to paint. They were mine if I was willing to clean them up and restore them as I did with the liche and the wizard. When Graham said they were in a bad way he wasn't wrong. They arrived last week in a sealed plastic box that had leaked something out into the wrapping. They stank to high heaven of ghastly chemicals, stale cigarettes and off cat food. They were stuck together with some extremely sticky residue too. I dried them out in the sun for a few hours and dunked them in the Dettol. I'll update you how well they turn out next post.

Yuck!

Despite their shocking state, thank you Graham for your kindness. I salute you too!

Finally, 'My Favourite Miniature's' younger child wanted to have a go at painting a figure yesterday. He had shown quite a bit of interest in what I had been doing along our old window sill so I gave him an old Stormcast Eternal. He was very happy to try out a classic Woodland Green shade from nearly forty years ago and wanted to show you all. So here he is...

Orlygg