Bridge of Khazad Dum diorama

`I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.'

The Balrog made no answer. The fire in it seemed to die, but the darkness grew. It stepped forward slowly on to the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall; but still Gandalf could be seen, glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.

 

 

 

 

 I've dreamed of making this diorama for years, but I've missed several pieces of the puzzle. I needed to get plaster molds for the rock faces, print out the pillars on my 3D-printer, get a texture roller for the surface.. and oh yes, learn how to do OSL effects with my airbrush. But in the end? Worth it! I'm really happy with the results, especially with my limited experience with the airbrush.

The dead do not suffer the living to pass

Although the Army of the Dead from Lord of the Rings wasn't on my to do list, I had these as expendable models and they gave me an opportunity to goof around with some Liquitex inks I got and practice doing some glowy effects on my airbrush. Good fun and really easy to paint. The models are surprisingly nice for lotr plastics, I bet they could be used as undead warriors in a whole lot of settings.

 

 

 

 

 

6mm panthers

Here are my first painted 6mm scale tanks. I tried if I could do an acceptable German tank camo using my cheap airbrush and yeah, it can be done without much trouble. I painted these with Vallejo Model Air colours and gave them a wash of Winson & Newton nut brown ink. The ink brought out some detail but really dulled the colours, that's something I still need to work on. It's funny that camouflage attempts to make the vehicle blend into the terrain while the wargames modeler wants to make them pop out!

Having a label on the base is a good idea for WW2 and onwards. The vehicles start to look similar and you have to be a true treadhead to recognize WW2 tanks at a glance on the table in 6mm. Kind of starts to blur the line between a figure and a counter though.

The models are Heroics and Ros (not 100% sure on that as they were second hand) and based on 30mm mdf bases, ripe for a number of systems, including spearhead.