Gloin - Baby Daddy of Gimli

I'm still working on those darn dwarves.  Will the insanity never end?  As I continue to paint, I'm also in the process of photographing and posting the completed furry-faced fellas.  Today I offer Gloin, son of Groin, and the father of John Rhys-Davies (also known as Gimli).

I have mentioned before that, with the exception of Fili (which is an absolutely horrible model), GW did a wonderful job on the miniatures in the Escape from Goblin Town set.  Gloin is a well-detailed mini with an exceptionally pleasing dynamic pose.  With legs spread and arms poised for battle, one can almost sense the kinetic energy built up in the sculpt.  Gloin is definitely one of my favorites in the set.

 

Painting was fairly straightforward and mostly agreeable to the GW scheme.  His armor was basecoated with Dark Flesh.  Scorched brown was then mixed in to provide shadows while several flavors of red were added for highlighting.  The armor looked pretty good but it needed something else.  So I looked at photographs and searched the web for inspiration.  My efforts brought me back to the source however.  I was very much impressed with the freehand work on the Gloin miniature by the GW painters in the December 2012 issue of White Dwarf.  So I attempted to add a bit myself by adding a dwarven themed cross pattern on the armor after the highlight phase.  I used a watered-down darkened brown (Walnut Brown from Reaper if I remember correctly) to allow the paint to flow freely from the brush during the freehand.  For the most part the technique worked.  Though it's tough to see in the photographs due to my washed-out pics, it's much easier to discern in person.  I was thinking of going darker but then I would be worried that the effect would be too harsh and not appear to be part of the leather.  What do you think?

The under-tunic was painted with Reaper reds.  Deep Red (09002), Blood Red (09003), and Fire Red (09004) resulted in a deep rich red hue that suggests a fairly nice item of clothing.  Though the movie makes much of the fact that the dwarves were without a home, it must be remembered that according to the books, the dwarves abiding with Thorin before the Quest of Erebor did rather well for themselves and would have had access to above average garb.  Just as the under-tunic needed to look warm and vibrant, I tried to do the same for the trousers.  I basically started with Highland Moss (09083) and fudged the color up and down for the shadows and highlights to suggest a material of higher quality.

 

The rest of the miniature was pretty standard stuff....leather trim, boots, and metallics were all completed using basic colors.

So Gimli's father is now complete and can join Thorin and Bilbo on their trek over the edge of the wild.  Hopefully the rest of the company will join them ere the break of day 2014.

Thanks for reading......