ME82 Hobbit Personalities: Gollum, a fistful of lead, a proper mag and a new painting set up!

 

Hello again. It has been an odd few weeks for me, and very busy. I've been supporting my mother after my Nana passed away and mistakes have been made with the funeral arrangements which mum found distressing. Quite a bit of the last few weeks and most of this past bank holiday was taken up with dealing with it all.

Still, I found time today to get some miniatures painted and was eager to get Gollum completed and alongside his adventurous fellows. I've got a proper set up now (thanks to the ongoing house renovations) which should be fairly permanent for a year or more. Gollum was the first figure I worked on in this new space. I've taken to standing up to paint, which is largely due to necessity - my work station space is quite high and we own no stools as of yet. But I've not found it hard to adjust to a new way of doing things and my back is much the better for it.

Gollum was great fun to paint. He gave me the opportunity to work on my flesh painting skills - something I used to take pride in. For his flesh I mixed Skull White, Electric Blue and Bronzed Flesh together to create a base which I highlighted with Bleached Bone and a little Skull White. I was aiming for a suitably pale finish and Peter Jackson's take on the character was very much in my mind. I wanted him too look almost wraithlike after all those centuries under the mountains being warped by the power of the Ring. I mixed in a little Brown Ink with my initial basecoat to create the depth shading. 

His loincloth was my new favourite shade; Snakebite Leather with Bleached Bone highlights. Again, this was shaded with Brown Ink. His lip saw a little Worm Purple glaze while his eyes are Sunburst Yellow with a little Bleached Bone on the top. I debated with myself whether to paint pupils on him... the jury being still out but I tried to base this paintjob on my image of the character. Since Mrs. Baker first read me the story when I was 10 years old, Gollum has always had luminous eyes. Hence my decision.

The fish was picked out in Ork Flesh and then just highlighted with Bleached Bone. With hindsight, I should have gone for blue as the tone of the fish is now lost alongside the completed base. But it is a minor issue. I feel with this figure the general trend of improvement has continued, which isn't bad considering it has only been five months since I started painting again.

What do you guys think?

David Cammack and Andrew MacTaggart both sent me some bits and pieces over the Easter/Bank Holiday period and I need to thank them both here for their generosity. Sadly, David's things are lost in the postal system somewhere with me being on the receiving end of a dreaded Red Ticket and the post office having no idea where the package has gone. Still, David.... I salute you for being so kind and here's hoping those little treasures make there way back to you eventually. 

Andrew MacTaggart sent me the bunch of random Citadel you can see above. Some lovely clanrats, some Chaos thugs and an Oriental Hero... I've never had one of those before and I look forwards to investigating that range in the future. Those Advanced Heroquest models really quite excite me in a reclaiming your boyhood kind of way. I recall enjoying painting these up when one of my step-brothers got the boxed game way back in the 1990s so they will be on my new painting table alongside my skellies. 

Andrew... thank you so much... I salute you too! 

GregG emailed me a while back saying he had a surprise for me and he wasn't wrong. Knowing that issue 108 of White Dwarf was the signature issue in my Citadel journey and finding he had a spare, he sent me the duplicate last week. It is fantastic to have this issue back and flicking through the venerable magazine was wonderful. Every word held a memory and there is so much inspiration for old Orlygg within the pages. 

GregG I salute you as well! Thank you!

Finally, my new retro set up was completed this Bank Holiday Weekend. I have combined my love of '80s Citadel with '80s and early '90s computing. My C64, Speccy and A500 mini now spend much more time actually being used rather than collecting dust under the bead. To celebrate a workspace all of my own, I had a good run through the FUN levels of the original Lemmings. I really enjoyed listening to the tunes while I was working on Mr. Gollum, though they were perhaps too happy and zany for the former Mr. Smeagol to approve. 

More skellies next time I hope.

Orlygg