I know I said I was going to work on Khamul, but I haven’t yet figured out a way to make the mask look convincing! And since the Theoden model was so tempting, I decided to get it out of the way to encourage me to keep up with my Rohan backlog.
I primed in grey, which made the layer of ulthuan grey go on fairly well, and it is a convincing white I think, and the rest of the paints went on easily. The armor proved to be a challenge. Most of my paints are Army Painter, and I lacked something darker then the barding, which I did in oak brown, but not being black. A mix of matte black and oak brown in a 1-2 ratio did the trick! On one hand it might be hard to replicate, but since Theoden wears such bespoke heirloom armor I figured it was worth it. The gold inlay took a fair bit of time with my shaky hands, but I painted late at night when my nerves are typically at their best!
I did the foot model at the same time; This is good because in the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game a model can either dismount or have the mount shot out from under them, and you need a model for both occasions! Luckily Snowmane( His horses name) will usually run away so I don’t need a third model for that, since Theoden is molded on and would be tricky.
All in all, really happy with it. It is weird, once I stopped trying to compare my painting with everyone else’s and painted simply for the joy of it, it has stopped being a chore, and is now something I look forward to! If now I could conquer my hobby butterfly tendencies I might get something done. Sure, it won’t win any awards, but it looks good on the tabletop and in front of my Riders of Rohan will look sharp!
Until next time, Forth Eorlingas my fellow hobbits!
Not by Strength, By Guile 