Painting Journeys in Middle Earth: Shadowed Paths and Dwellers in Darkness

Hello, painters! It has been some time since my last painting post. The semester was of course a bit stressful, but I think the primary reason for the slowness has been that I've been trying to read more. I read a wonderful collection of Flannery O'Conner stories and letters, I'm currently rereading the Dune series that I first encountered back in the early '90s, and I wrote about how I took a deep dive into Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. In between these, I painted all the figures from the latest expansion to Journeys in Middle Earth: Shadowed Paths, including the Dwellers in Darkness villain pack. 

Regular readers may recall that I painted the base set and the first villain pack. The sculpts were in the same style, and I approached this set in a way that would keep the figures looking coherent. All the figures were zenithally primed from the airbrush as usual. I'll present the figures roughly in the order I painted them.

Shadow-Men

I approached these Shadow-men as an experiment. I had heard a few murmurs online about this trend of "sketch painting," where ink glazes are used over zenithal prime for quick paint jobs. I wanted these figures to look like the oathbreakers in the Paths of the Dead as represented in the Peter Jackson trilogy of movies, so I mixed up a glaze of green ink with a touch of yellow and painted it on. That's it. It is exactly what I wanted, and I think it gives these figures a haunting presence, distinct from the other figures.

A quick note about the basing may be in order. In the base game, I based all the figures using brown earth basing paste and a mix of flock. I used that approach on some of the figures in this set, but I also gave some a rocky base intended to be reminiscent of a cavern. I used a technique I have deployed before: a layer of superglue followed by a scattering of different sizes of grit, some larger cork rocks, and overall texture of baking soda. This is then painted using a combination of black ink wash and drybrushing.

Giant Spiders

I am happy with the color selection on the giant spiders. Keep in mind that, unlike a lot of my board game projects, there is no color game art for any of these figures. After some image searches, I found inspiration for these spiders in the spelungula cave spider.

Pit Goblins

For these pit goblins and the following orc taskmasters, I turned to the approach I first experimented with in the JiME base set: acrylic washes over zenithal priming to get large groups painted quickly at the expense of being a bit desaturated. I was a bit lazier with these, using basically the same skin tone and uniform for all of them. Getting these painted quickly allowed my boys and I to replay the Hunt for the Ember Crown campaign using the new minis and heroes, while I continued to work on the unique villains for our eventual delve into the newer campaigns.

Orc Taskmasters

As with the Pit Goblins, these were done fairly quickly, though they had more interesting details to pick out.

Nameless Things

If I left the caption off, would it be funnier? Anyway, these were fairly straightforward paint jobs, but I think the results are good. I used some two-brush blending to layer in the initial highlights and shadows, drybrushing to accentuate raised areas, and then more focused washes to bring more darkness into the depths. Looking at these makes me wonder if I would do a better job now on a rancor than I did two years ago. Reviewing that blog post, I am reminded that the photos were taken in the era when I could just not get good color balance on my camera: the real figures look very little like the photographs.

Cave Trolls

Cave Trolls

I am really happy with how the cave trolls turned out. I used a slight variation in skin tone between them and then different colors for their ... well, I don't know what those are. I think they show a good combination of techniques, including two-brush blending for the skin and washes with layered highlights for the ... well, the thingies. It's not how I imagined cave trolls but they were fun to paint and look good on the table.

Gandalf

Gandalf

What fun it was to paint Gandalf, the iconic wizard. Every blue-robed, white-bearded guy with staff is trying to be as cool as Gandalf. I'm looking at you, Elias from Massive Darkness. Taking some inspiration from Sorastro's video, I used variation in blue-grey mixes and tried to get some textural differences across the materials. For the staff, I ended up leaving the top without a base coat, glazing on yellow ink to make it look lit up. I used only subtle OSL here. I should mention that I'm wary of OSL ever since listening to Dr. Faust's fascinating editorial on the topic, which can be found starting at about 11:30 in this video about painting Darth Vader.

Elanor

Elanor

It's Elanor of Gondor, whom I first wrote about painting in last year's Middle Earth Quest post. This figure is probably twice the volume of the tiny MEQ one, and she was mostly straightforward to paint. However, where MEQ Elanor had the White Tree of Gondor engraved into the sculpt of her cloak, this one did not. I decided to freehand, which regular readers may recall is a struggle for me, and this was doubly so for being on a rippled cloth surface. The final image shown above is actually my second attempt, but I took some work-in-progress shots of the journey, so I will share those here.

Here she is back in October:

Here she is after the first pass at freehanding the White Tree:

The photo is actually not as bad as I remember the figure, but I was unhappy with a few things here. First, I thought the tree was too stocky, looking to thick. This was accentuated by what looks like a bad baseline on the bottom: it does not line up with the hem of the cloak. This is troublesome though because I think the cloak itself is not sculpted realistically: if you unfolded it and laid it out, it would not be a regular shape, which adds complication to attempts to paint anything on it. Finally, I did not like how the tree is too far down on the cloak, since it seems that if it were embroidered on the back, one would cover the whole canvas and not skip the part under the hood.

So, here it is after covering up the first approach and reapplying the cloak's highlights.

Finally, here it is after the repainting but before the basing and varnishing. 

On this pass, I was more careful to sketch the outline of the tree with very thin lines and to build up from these. There are still some things I like about the original approach, but overall, I am happier with the second take.

OK, enough of FFG's expanded universe characters, let's get back to the canon!

Arwen

Arwen

I am happy with the color scheme on Arwen. Even though her yellows and greens are muted, they offer more color than almost every other figure in the set. I think this is fitting for her character. 

Balin

Balin

All the way from The Hobbit comes Balin in his distinctive red cloak. Similar to Arwen's gentle forest colors, I like how Balin's red makes him stand out. I tried to balance the warmth of the red by using cold greys to paint the raven on his shoulder. One thing I like about the dwarves in this set is that they are physically distinct from the humans and elves (which are pretty much indistinguishable from each other). The dwarves are not just small stout humans but really wide and stocky. The thing I don't like, which I mentioned in my original comments about Gimli, is that what they are wearing makes no sense. I'm with you from the hood down to the padded armor, but what kind of shoes are those? Why are there vertical striations across them? Dwarves are supposed to be master smiths and craftsmen, but I don't see that in this interpretation.

Dis

Dis

Barely-mentioned in the books and of obvious representational intention comes Dis. I think the figure is fine, although what's much more interesting to me is the contrast between her inclusion and how I understand the dwarves of Trudvang. In Tolkien's world, the unspoken assumption seems to be that the dwarf men and women mate like humans do, but the women stay in the mountains rather than soldiering or adventuring around Middle Earth. In Trudvang, dwarves are very different and exotic; not only do you only see male dwarves, their own legends about the mythical presence of women dwarves is what I interpret as evidence that they are not even males. That is, the dwarves tell stories about females who live far underground because they witness in other creatures a binary of sexes, but these same legends seem to me to mean that the dwarves are generated by the Earth itself, meaning they are no more men than is the stone. Fascinating, but I digress.

I like how Dis turned out, although after reviewing the cover art of the expansion, I understand why other painters have put her in golden armor. Once again here, the stockiness is really interesting, but practically, I don't see how she can walk in those greaves, her hands are exposed, she has the same oddly striated metal boots, and it doesn't look like she could put both hands on that hammer's handle if she tried.

This is the point in the set where, with the heroes and non-unique heroes painted, my sons and I revisited the Hunt for the Ember Crown campaign. We had tried it months before but suffered a loss near the end, so we ran it again, this time using Gimli, Elanor, and Balin, employing three of the new skill decks. Meanwhile, I moved ahead with the unique villains from the expansion as well as the three from the villain pack.

Balrog

Balrog

We'll start with the Balrog. It sat primed on my painting desk for some time while I considered how to approach it. One one hand, I had Sorastro's video, with its intense OSL and sparks, and on the other, I had also discovered Barks' more enflamed wings. I'm still on the fence about whether the source material should be interpreted as Balrogs being winged in the way a dragon is winged, but the sculptor already made that choice for me. After a few missteps, I settled on an approach that tries to emphasize the inner fire of the creature. There is subtle OSL on the underside of the wings, and I did very little highlighting besides that. The unfortunate result of the attempt to make the figure look shadowed and glowing is that, in regular light, it looks just unlit. I had initially thought of the Balrog like the Rancor, as being the showpiece of the set, but in truth, I think the result is just OK.

Spawn of Ungoliant

Spawn of Ungoliant

The Spawn of Ungoliant is the other unique monster from the expansion set. I agree with Barks that it was a fiddly model to paint. I think the egg sacks on the base turned out to be the strongest part. Honestly, I lost steam on the rest of it. I kept it on my painting table, and I would alternate between thinking that I could add some more colors and hue variation, and then thinking that it really wasn't worth it for a figure that would barely hit the table and that I wasn't really enjoying.

Incidentally, I think part of my lack of enjoyment has been my tools. I realized when looking at my order history that I've been using my "good" workhorse brush--a #1 Winsor and Newton Series 7--for four years. It lost its tip ages ago. I picked up some cheap brushes just to beat on, and I had kind of forgotten how it changes things when you actually pick out small details. I've bought myself some new good brushes for Christmas, so I'll stash those in my stocking and act surprised on Friday morning.

Ursa

Ursa

Here is Ursa, who, I must emphasize, is not a bear. I painted this figure as I did the Shadow-men, although it was months later so I had to try to recreate the hue of the glaze from memory. It turns out it is not a perfect match, but it should suffice: they still clearly are the same idea even if the tone is a bit different. After the initial glaze, I added a few spot washes to bring out the contrast in this figure. It gives it a bit more visual interest without taking inordinate time. I thought about painting the hammer or crown as metallics, but I really do think the monochromatic approach is the right one for my imagination of these ghostly characters.

Ollie

Ollie

I think I spent the most time on Ollie, in part because I was unhappy with my first pass at the skin and had to repaint that. It was strange, but I think what happened was that I didn't have a solid coverage in my original base coat, which meant that some of the underlying zenithal priming was showing through. When I added a highlight, it actually made the highlights darker because they were more saturated. What was especially strange though was that when I looked at it in the natural sunlight coming through the window, it looked OK, but once the sun went down and I looked at it with my office's artificial illumination, it looked terrible. This prompted me to just give it a clean coat, and I think the results speak for themselves.

I believe this photo is of the original skin, which even in the photograph does not look bad, but I'm telling you, there was some weird lighting stuff going on.

In any case, as with the other cave trolls, I like how mixture of techniques produces a strong model. I did hardly any weathering on any of these models, but I did stipple in some rust on Ollie's manacles. It was a weird observation, though, that it made the manacles look better, but almost made the rest look worse for the lack of weathering. In the end, though, they are not showpieces, so a strong tabletop quality suits me fine. (Although it makes me wonder: what would be a good project to practice weathering, and would it bring me joy?)

Supplicant of Morgoth

Supplicant of Morgoth

I don't know what a Supplicant of Morgoth is, but I did paint one. I gave this goblin a more pale tone than the rest in the set, and I like how the red surplice contrasts with the cold black robe. His robe is also curiously tattered, with numerous stitches and irregularities, and I think it gives him a unique look. My first pass on the figure had the beads hanging from his belt as metallic, in an attempt to keep a restricted palette, but I'm glad I juiced it up with a few different simple colors. I admit to some curiosity about how this figure shows up in the campaign, though I don't know yet if the boys and I will start this now or wait until after the excitement of new Christmas boardgames.

That's the whole set! Thanks for reading. As always, feel free to leave a comment, unless you're one of those spam bots who drops one here every few days. Those guys should knock it off.