Painting Lord of the Rings Journeys in Middle Earth

My brother got me excited enough about Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth (JiME) that I pre-ordered it not long before it was scheduled to be released. The idea at the time was that it would make a great summer painting project, and that my sons and I could get into the campaign in those quiet summer evenings. Turns out, I did not get as much painting done this summer as I hoped to. Instead, almost all my creative energy went into Kaiju Kaboom. It wasn't until today that I finally finished painting the JiME miniatures.

Box Art

Several of the techniques and color palettes that I used were taken from Sorastro's series. For most of the mob characters, I took a new approach to try to speed them up. I zenithally primed them via airbrush and then used thin paints in single coats followed by a wash to darken the recesses. This allowed me to let the zenithal highlights show through the paint. One thing I learned using this approach is that one has to be much more careful with the individual layers than I normally am with the first coat. When taking more time with each layer, it actually matters less if the first one or two run into each other, since it will be touched up. However, with this approach, a little slip of the brush can lead to a contamination of one area with the wrong color. There were some parts of the following figures where I added manual highlights and shades, but they were primarily done with single thin coats and washes.

Ruffians

Goblin Scouts

Orc Marauders

Orc Archers

Getting through all these was pretty quick. The results are certainly adequate though a bit unsaturated or washed-out looking. You can probably tell by a quick glance here that I had some fun mixing different flesh tones for both the humans and the goblins & orcs.

I painted the wargs in a similar way, just spending a bit more time on some of the highlights. I also added glowing red eyes. Now that I look at the eyes, I'm a bit ambivalent about it as a visual effect. It seems to be a common design in illustrations of the wargs. I spent a few minutes trying to determine if it was canonical or not, but it's still inconclusive.

Wargs

The wights were mostly one color, and I gave them a little more attention than the orcs and goblins, though still working rather rapidly. These were the only ones in the set where I added some weathering, namely, mud on the cloaks. I did this with drybrushing, although in retrospect, I wonder if I should have just painted it on more boldly. I still struggle with weathering. I love watching painters make figures look like they are part of their environment, but I personally feel lost somewhere between not being good at it and not wanting to risk ruining an otherwise good paint job.

Wights

You cannot actually see the weathering so well from the front, so here's a rear view.

Wight, Back

You cannot see it so much there either—hence my comment about drybrushing perhaps being the wrong path here. That said, I am pretty happy with the weathering on the sword and armor: they look old and corroded.

The last of the villains is the Big Bad of this set: the Hill Troll. I like the way it turned out. I used wet blending to get nice transitions between its two skin tones, and some purple glazes add nice color variation around the face and neck.

Hill Troll, Front

Hill Troll, Back

With the villains out of the way, I moved on to the heroes. I'll show them in the order I painted them, starting with the elves.

Legolas, Front

Legolas, Back

Elena, Front

Elena, Back

Legolas and Elena both use essentially the same palette since I figured they probably have the same tailor. For basically all the heroes, my standard approach was to use basecoat, wash, and highlight for everything but the cloaks. The cloaks were basecoated, then the shadows and highlights painted in using two-brush blending.

Given Tolkein's elven names like Legolas, Glorfindel, Elladan, and Luthien, I wonder who at FFG decided that a great name for an extended universe elf would be "Elena?" So mysterious! So otherworldly!

Berevor, Front 

Berevor, Back

I started Berevor and Aragorn at the same time, giving them the same base skin tone. I intended to do a similar palette-sharing as with Legolas and Elena. However, as I started working with Berevor, I found I was content to just buckle down and work on this one figure. I think she turned out quite nicely. Although she is not an original Tolkein character, I have a special fondness for her as she is the ranger in Middle Earth Quest, which I finished painting earlier this year. It's interesting to compare the figures to see how Fantasy Flight Games' philosophy regarding miniatures has changed to match popular demand. The MEQ figure is fine for what it is, but the JiME one is much more interesting. It also benefits from being a larger scale, about a head taller.

Aragorn, Front

Aragorn, Back

I tried to make Aragorn look a little more mature, his hair starting to grey. I think I have conceived of Aragorn as progressively older as I have gotten older. It's been over a decade (maybe two) since I've read Lord of the Rings. So many things to read and so little time. Anyway, I was partially inspired by watching Ghool's Quick Tip video on painting graying hair. I didn't follow his approach, but the video did get me thinking about trying to get that aesthetic.

I will mention here that all the heroes above have very similar earthy tones, being almost entirely greens and browns. I kept each one internally consistent so that the same colors are used, and I think this helps them look coherent without being too bland. I dressed up Aragorn a bit by painting the trim on his leather accessories in multiple colors, which may draw too much attention when rangering around Bree-land. I figure that for his sculpture, he wore his dress leathers.

Bilbo, Front

Bilbo, Back

Bilbo's red vest and gold buttons gave a much-needed reprieve from the greens and browns of his companions. I should mention that I still haven't played the game, and I find myself quite curious how their story will get Bilbo Baggins—only three feet tall!—to do any adventuring after his experiences in The Hobbit.

Gimli, Front

Gimli, Back

Dwarves. I swear, there must be some kind of curse upon them, or maybe sculptors just really don't like sculpting them. The card art for Gimli has him wearing a very reasonable chainmail jerkin with leather bracers and belt. The miniature, on the other hand, has... well, I guess it's a leather shirt over chainmail jammies, and a plate mail belt, with massive steel pauldrons and bracers. On his right arm, you can even see that the sculptor had to run the bracer and pauldron together, which just goes to show how unreasonable this would be in combat. I understand that sculpting to scale must be really hard, but look at the size of his hands! It's all very strange. Yet, I have a suspicion one my sons will be very excited to play an axe-swinging goblin-smiter, so I'll have to get used to seeing him on the table.

For the many metallic parts of this figure, I busted out my P3 Armor Wash, which really is like magic for this kind of figure. The highlights on the hair are just zenithal highlights showing through thinned paint. I thought about darkening his hair, but basically all the other heroes have such dark hair that I wanted someone besides Bilbo to have different colored locks.

I based all the figures in this set using the same technique. I prepared some rocks by cutting pieces off of a cork trivet that I saved from the trash many years ago; these pieces I painted a neutral grey and set on a corner of my painting desk. I started basing with an application of Vallejo Brown Earth basing paste, embedding some rocks into it. had ordered the basing paste after watching Sorastro's Star Wars Legion painting series. When I first applied it to one of the ruffians, I was shocked and disappointed in how red it appeared. I decided to work with it to see what I could do. After drybrushing the rocks, I mixed a wash using black and sepia inks, and this served to tone it down a bit. Then I applied flock using my usual approach: dab some glue, sprinkle some flock, wait for it to dry, repeat with a different material. After finishing my test model, I wondered what would happen if I just mixed all my flocking material together, so I did.

Mixed Flock

That container holds a mix of black tea, burnt grass fine turf, and medium green fine turf. I sprinkled this on to the other figures over dabs of thinned white glue—except for the wights, which used a less green mixture—and it saved me a bit of time and mess. After varnishing, I then added the green static grass. The results were pretty quick and look fine for a wilderness setting. At least, I think they will; I will find out for sure when we finally get the game to the table.

Here's a picture to help compare the size difference of the Hill Troll and the other characters. The Big Bad here is not as big as some of them I have painted, yet I think he's plenty big to be intimidating.

Aragorn and the Hill Troll

Finally, here are some group shots.

Fellowship of the Fanfic Prequel

A Medley of Villainy

Thanks for reading!