My next painting project

As any gamer who has been bitten by the miniature hobby bug can attest, one often has interests in many different periods and scales. A miniatures gamer will often have a 'pile of lead' comprising a number of armies stashed away in secret places just waiting to be painted. The problem is that the enthusiasm for a certain army will fade when the next 'oooh shiny!' thing comes along. One's miniatures intake will soon quickly outstrip one's painting output. A lot of miniatures gamers suffer from this problem, and I'm no different.

Now let's put this into perspective. I'm probably on the lesser end of the scale of unpainted miniatures versus painted miniatures. I know of guys with tens of thousands of unpainted miniatures who still continue to buy more. It's an addiction I guess, sort of like board gamers who continue to buy new board games with loads of unplayed games already lining their shelves.

I've been pretty happy with my painting output so far this year and I really want to keep the momentum going. With this aim in mind I came across an unfinished project that I haven't touched in over two years. Yep, it's been over two years since I last put a brush to my 15mm Lord of the Rings-themed Dwarven HOTT army. These guys have been languishing for this long in a darkened drawer, waiting until my enthusiasm had reached a point when they would once again be in favour.


I hate unfinished projects and so I've made a vow to finish these guys before the end of March. It shouldn't be too difficult, most of the boring preparatory work has already been done. There are only 47 of them and also a couple of banners that I'll have to scratch build.

When I'm finished I'll have a Dwarven army consisting of the following elements; 1 x Blade General, 1 x Hero, 9 x Blade and 2 x Shooters. And when they're finished they will join in battle against an already completed 15mm Mordor-themed army.

Painting Project - 15mm Dwarven HOTT Army - Part 8

PAINTING ARMOUR

I actually found some spare time this morning to drybrush a coat of Ral Partha 'Aged Metal' over my dwarves. I did this straight over the top of the black undercoat. The drybrushing technique is good for picking out highlights; in this case the dwarven helms, chainmail and plate armour. The next step is to further highlight the edges of blades and armour with silver paint.

Painting Project - 15mm Dwarven HOTT Army - Part 7

PRIMING YOUR MINIATURES

Priming, also known as undercoating, is an important part of the painting process as most paints have trouble adhering to bare metal. An undercoat will provide a good surface on to which your next coats of paint can attach.

What colour to use as an undercoat is up to the individual. If you are painting bright colours such as yellow, reds and whites you may decide to go with a white or grey undercoat. Colours appear brighter if painted on a light-coloured undercoat. Likewise, colours will appear more subdued and darker if painted on a black undercoat. The reason I chose to paint my dwarves with a black undercoat is because most are wearing armour. Armour is best painted black followed up with a drybrushing of silver metallic paint.

Some people will spray the undercoat on. I prefer to use a brush to paint it on so that I can get the paint into all the little nooks and crannies of the figure. I find that spray painting often misses these areas.

And here's a picture of the miniatures primed and ready for painting.

"'Tis as dark as the Mines of Moria!"

Painting Project - 15mm Dwarven HOTT Army - Part 6

SCRATCHBUILDING BANNER POLES


I like my armies to have large colourful banners, flags and pennants. In the case of this dwarven army, I will have two banner bearers, one for the Hero element and one for the Blade general element. Instead of a straight pole with a flag or pennant, I wanted a cross bar on which would hang a large banner.


I use the equivalent of florist's wire. In fact, most of my wire is scrounged from the occasional bouquets of flowers received by family members. I just make sure to strip the green paper coating from it before use. As a result of this, my wire is never straight. A trick I found was to first cut my wire to the length required and then roll it. Yep, just like you'd roll dough flat with a rolling pin, using the same principle I roll the length of wire flat between a metal ruler and a hard surface like a cutting board. Rolling it back and forth, while applying downwards pressure, will soon make your wire straight.


Once I cut and straightened my pieces of wire I then attached the cross bars to the main poles with cotton. I just wound the cotton around and around where both pieces of wire touched and then fixed the cotton with some super glue.


Here's a picture of the finished poles. I now have to work on the banners to attach to the poles.

Painting Project - 15mm Dwarven HOTT Army - Part 5

CREATING PAINTING STANDS

I like to attach my 15mm miniatures to popsicle sticks so as to create a stable platform for painting. This allows me to hold and paint the figure without having to touch it. Cheap popsicle sticks can be purchased from the craft section of any dollar store. I simply put a tiny blob of PVA wood glue on the popsicle stick and stick the figure on it. Wood glue dries relatively fast (around 30 minutes) and, when I've finished painting, allows the figures to be removed quite easily.

The entire army glued to popsicle sticks ready for painting

"Khazad!"

Painting Project - 15mm Dwarven HOTT Army - Part 4

CLEANING THE MINIATURES

The next step in preparing my dwarves for painting was to wash them. Miniatures may still have residual mold-release agents on them from the casting process. Washing them in detergent will remove any chemicals that could interfere with the paint adhering adequately, as well as any skin oil or metal filings from the previous stage of preparation.

Here's a tip. Keep your old worn-out toothbrushes. They come in handy for cleaning miniatures as well as for scratch-building purposes. For example, I used the bristles from an old toothbrush as eyelashes on my Black Beast of Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh model. Toothbrush bristles can also be used to represent whips, antennae, rope etc.

After a rinse in fresh water and then being left to dry overnight, my dwarves are now clean and ready for the next step which will be to prime them with an undercoat of paint.

Painting Project - 15mm Dwarven HOTT Army - Part 3

CONVERTING THE MINIATURES

There's not much converting I need to do for this dwarven Hordes of the Things army. The only changes I'll be making are to convert two miniatures into standard bearers. One will be a standard bearer for my Hero element and the other will be a standard bearer for a Blade element. In this way I'll have the option of using either the Hero or one of the Blades as my general.

The only tools I'll need will be a craft knife for cutting away the spear and axe, and a pin vice to drill out the hands to hold the standard poles. For those of you not familiar with a pin vice, it is a tiny hand-held drill and an essential piece of equipment for converting miniatures.

Pin vice (top) and craft knife (bottom)

First up is the standard bearer for my Hero. I cut away the spear from where it was attached to his hand and the base with my craft knife. Next, I carefully drilled out his hand to accept a piece of wire that would be the main pole supporting the standard.

The dwarf with spear (left) and the converted miniature (right)

Next is the standard bearer for my Blade general. Once again I used the craft knife to carefully cut away the axe from his hand and body then used the pin vice to drill out his hand.

The dwarf with axe (left) and the converted miniature (right)

And there you go, a fairly easy operation. I'll now have a bit of a think about what sort of design I want on their standards. Meanwhile, in my next entry the dwarves get a bath!

Painting Project - 15mm Dwarven HOTT Army - Part 2

PREPARING THE MINIATURES

The first thing I do when preparing a miniature for painting is have a close look at it. I check it for any flash (AKA flashing) which is any thin areas of metal that often form between the arm spaces or in between the legs of a miniatures. There are also mold lines which are thin seams that are formed from the pressure of the metal being forced into the mold. As well as that there may be long stringy bits that hang off the miniature which are called venting. I use a craft knife with a scalpel blade and small files called jeweller's or needle files to clean off all this mess.

These days, most manufacturers produce pretty good models with relatively little flash or mold lines. Most of the dwarves were fairly clean with only minor filing required. Below is an example of one of the worst. Note the flash between his arm and axe shaft and also around the top and bottom edges of the shield. I used a jeweller's file to clean this off.

After I've finished filing and cleaning the flash off the mini, I work on the bottom of the base. Miniatures rarely have smooth, flat, base bottoms. As I'll eventually be gluing the completed miniatures to a card base I want a nice flat surface. To achieve this I rub the base carefully across a sheet of sandpaper.

And there you have it. In the next entry I make some minor conversions.

Painting Project - 15mm Dwarven HOTT Army - Part 1

CHOOSING THE ARMY

In my opinion, Hordes of the Things (HOTT) is an excellent set of rules for fighting fantasy battles with miniatures. It doesn't require many miniatures, you can use any minatures you want, the rules are clear with a lot of supporting illustrations, and best of all it plays in under an hour. I've read the rules front to back numerous times, have visited just about every HOTT site on the internet, viewed scores of galleries of painted armies, devoured countless battle reports, subscribed to the HOTT mailing list, and spent many an hour just thinking about the rules. And you know what? I'll let you in on a little secret - I've never even played a game! Well, that's all going to change this year. My goal is that I'm going to paint myself a couple of armies and I'm going to play HOTT in 2007!

For me, I have to be in the right mood to paint miniatures. There must be an availability of time for me to sit down and actually paint and there must also be an enthusiasm for what I'm doing. Having just finished reading The Hobbit and now reading the Lord of the Rings, my enthusiasm for painting a fantasy army is at an all time high. Combine that with currently being on two weeks holidays means the time is right to start this project.

Some time last year I bought a bunch of 15mm dwarves on eBay. They appear to be a mixture of Grenadier, Ral Partha and perhaps some other company I'm not sure of. If anyone can identify them please let me know.

The first step for me was to think about the design of my dwarven HOTT army. The HOTT rules have an army list for a generic dwarf army. It consists of a Hero General (Dwarf King), 9 x Blades (dwarves with axe or warhammer) and 1 x Shooters (dwarves with bow or crossbow). I felt this was a fairly good representation of what I imagined a Tolkien or Dungeons & Dragons-inspired dwarven army would look like. I decided to go with this list but to add an extra Shooters element as an alternative for one of the Blade elements. I also decided to make one of the Blade elements an alternate general element. Here is the army all laid out into its various elements. You can click on the image for a closer view.

Here are some close up images of the actual elements. If anyone can tell me what company made the individual miniatures I'd really appreciate it.