The Witch King and fun with greenstuff...

So the mission to clear my painting desk continues – I've had the Witch King model sat around waiting to be finished for a long, long time (more than a year) – I've been stuck on painting the flaming sword.  The GW studio paint job just doesn't do it for me, so in the end I bit the bullet and had another go with OSL.

It’s by no means perfect, but I think it looks OK, and it at least gives a good effect, even if the technique needs some work.  The black was highlighted with Charadon Granite and Dheneb Stone, then glazed over with diluted black again, which works pretty well, and provides a good surround for the flame and light.

Originally I had painted the sword metallic and tried to blend the flame colours into it, but that didn't look at all right, so I went for a solid yellow, highlighted out to a very pale yellow on the opposite edge of the blade. The OSL on the sleeve looks pretty good - I tried to imagine the sphere of light around the blade and paint the OSL effect with that in mind - I think it might stop a bit short on the end of the sleeve.  From the back view, I'm really pleased with the way the helmet looks - it actually looks like it's reflecting the flame properly.

My local model shop had run out of the Humbrol matt varnish I usually spray on my models, so I took a chance and bought a can of the Tamiya equivalent.  Now bearing in mind I've not had the best of experiences with Tamiya paint (I still can't get that one pot open), I probably should have thought twice about it.

I was a bit impatient however, and bought the Tamiya stuff, without doing any research (yeah, I know).  Looking on the web afterwards, some people recommended not using it as it can do funny things to the paint beneath, but after trying it out on a test model first, the Witch King got a coat of varnish.  What I didn't notice from the test model was it's a little shinier than the finish I get from the Humbrol spray - it appears somewhere between the Humbrol Matt and GW's Purity Seal.  It's not bad, but it is noticeable - I think I will be going back to the Humbrol spray, or, finally getting around to ordering myself some Testor's Dullcote.

...and I'm going to be leaving anything made by Tamiya well alone.

In other news, I've actually used green stuff for the first time!  Yes I know, it's taken me long enough, and I haven't done anything particularly clever with it, but the results are pretty good for a first attempt.

I followed Dark Templar's advice and sculpted in more trunk and some roots, so it looks a little more natural.  The base will be the first thing I paint on this mini, so I should have some work in progress shots soon.

Work on the next article continues, as the deadline is the end of the week (I'm not panicking, honest).  I've done a bit of practicing with the camera recently and I'm going to be looking at some new backgrounds for the photos.  I've set myself a target of one blog post a week, usually on a Saturday or Sunday - we'll see how that goes...

As always comments and criticism welcome!