Bilbo Baggins - A Baggins of Bag End

I should have titled this post:  A Long Expected Update.  I've been pretty quiet online lately.  For whatever reason, this is only my second post of the month (and just barely at that).  While many of my favorite bloggers try to post several times a week, that's way too much for me personally.  I don't have the time, and even if I did, I don't think I'd have enough to say to fill the blank screen.  I do try to post at least once a week however, but even that has been difficult this month.

Anyhow, here's a quick one to bring up my average for January.  Since picking up the Escape from Goblin Town set in December, I've been mostly working on Bilbo and the dwarves.  If you've been following my Thorin & Company updates, you can see that the miniatures are coming along at a glacial pace.  I have finished almost half but I have yet to publish any close-up photos of the completed minis.  I'll remedy that with this post by presenting the miniature I first completed.

For the most part, I followed the general GW color scheme on Bilbo Baggins but chose to use Reaper paints instead.  For the jacket, I first started with an undercoat of Clotted Red (09134).  This is always my first step when painting reds over black primer.  I've found that Clotted Red brings out the vibrancy of the regular reds used in the main palette while reducing the number of coats needed overall.  Next I applied Carnage Red (09135) as the basecoat then blended up and down to add the highlights and shadows.  In the movie, the coat is rather dark and I wanted to avoid bringing the reds too high in the spectrum and appearing orange-ish (is that even a word?).  By adding very small amounts of brown I was able to keep the coat somewhat subdued.

For the trousers, I did use GW's Scorched Brown as the basecoat.  I then added a bit of Reaper Intense Brown (09138) to the mix for the highlights and used Blackened Brown (09137) for the shadows.  Doing so resulted in a nice soft brown color that suggests a finer weave of cloth for the well-to-do Mr. Baggins.

The vest was basecoated with Reaper's Highland Moss (09083) and simply mixed with other components from their triad system for the next stages.  The colors don't always work well together with their triads, but when they do, mixing paints is greatly simplified.

 

After undercoating with a mid-level brown, I finished up with a coat of Chestnut Gold (09073) on the scarf.  Several coats of brown wash followed by additional applications of Chestnut Gold resulted in a deep, richly colored scarf.  I was going to apply a bit of freehand on the scarf to add some detail to an otherwise plain sculpt, but if I remember correctly, at the time, Christmas was rapidly approaching and I had tons of other real life projects to do.

So that's it for now.  I'll try to post the close-ups of Thorin, Gloin, Oin,Ori, and Dori in the next week or so as well as another Thorin & Company update.  Hopefully I'll have this project wrapped up soon so that I can move on to other things.

Thanks for reading.....

Thorin & Company Update #3

First of all, Happy New Year!  I can't believe January is almost half over and I have not even had a moment to post an update, much less ring in the New Year with fellow bloggers.  It's been a busy one so far for me and I fear it's only going to get worse (which is better I think??) as the year progresses.  Big changes are on the horizon....

Anyhow, despite my hectic life for the past few weeks, I have been able to put in a bit of time at the hobby desk.  Though it hasn't amounted to much free time, what I have had has been focused entirely on those pesky little dwarves from the Escape from Goblin Town set.  Every morning when I wake up, I check on Thorin & Co. hoping that maybe some little painting fairies have finished them for me.  Can you imagine my disappointment when that's not the case?

Despite the obvious work strike from the painting faeries, progress continues on the adventuring company.  As you can see from the photo, Bilbo and Thorin are basically finished.  All I need to do is a bit of base work and then they'll move out of the work queue.  Balin, Dwalin, and Gloin will probably be the next three to be completed.  I'm getting ready to do some freehand scroll work on Balin's sleeve and coat trim then I'll shade and highlight the beard.  Dwalin needs work mostly on his tunic and armor then a bit of minor highlighting.  Gloin is nearly complete.  His bracers and axe handles need highlighting and that's about it.  The last three have had little attention thus far and will be in the queue for some time I think.  Fili is taking the longest because truth be told, I really dislike the sculpt.  It looks terrible!

The rest of the fellas are moving along very slowly.  I'm still playing around with color selection to do justice to Dori's rich velvet tunic and robes and I haven't even started on Nori (except for the face).  Really only Bofur and Bombur have received any significant attention in this group, with the big fat boy being the closest to completion. 

Hopefully I'll get another update on Thorin & Co. posted within the next week or so.  Since most of my basecoating is basically finished, I think the next update will show some significant progress....especially if the painting faeries get off their butts and get to work!

Thanks for reading....