Sorastro's Painting

By Sorastro, in The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth

2 hours ago, Vince79 said:

In the upcoming Shadowed Paths release for this game, does it come with a balrog? If you scroll down near the bottom, is that a balrog?

Yes.

Finished Hill Troll today. Went with lazier option and I didn't add any tonal variations to the face. And I skipped highlighting the hammer shaft. I feel like I should have highlighted the left side of the troll's belly more though.

lotr_hill_troll.jpg

lotr_hill_troll_back.jpg

Overall I'm really happy with it and my color choices (except for my laziness). I didn't have any vallejo colors so I went with Citadel and Army Painter but I feel like I got the skin tone pretty close to what was in Sorastro's video. I love the closeup shots of the color mixing in these videos. It makes it so much easier to get a close-enough color mix done. I usually compare paint pots to the screen or paint few strokes to a paper and compare that to the screen to get a closeish color mix.

Here are my substitutes in case anyone finds them interesting:

Scaly hide: Army Painter Hardened Carapace (I wanted to try the paint because of its name) highlighted with Citadel Eshin Grey and White Scar.

Skin: Citadel's Baneblade Brown mixed with a little bit of black. Highlights with a mix of Ungor Flesh and White in a separate well (to simulate Vallejo's Buff) and that mixed into the base color mix.

Loincloth: About 1-1 mix of Citadel's Steel Legion Drab and XV-88 with highlights done by mixing in further XV-88 and then Citadel's Screaming Skull.

Scale part of loincloth: Citadel's Stegadon Scale Green mixed in with Army Painter Necromancer's Cloak

Loin cloth stitching: Citadel's Ushabti Bone. Highlights with Screaming Skull

Rope: Karak Stone

Hammer's stone: Citadel's Dawnstone, Mechanicus Standard Gray and Mechanicus Standard gray darkened with some black.

Hammer shaft: Citadel's Gorthor Brown and some black mixed into it

Now I just have the heroes to paint. Also, so excited for the balrog. The shadowy creature with flaming mouth is going to be a fun challenge to paint.

Coalfang.thumb.jpg.da134bf340e5eafcba2d6bef262ccff3.jpg

Finished Coalfang! I had to improvise a bit since I didn't want to spend all that money on the contrast colors Sorastro used (hoo boy are they expensive). But I'm pretty happy with how this turned out.

Instead of the contrast colors, I used a roughly equal mix of Flat Brown and Buff, followed by a 2:1 ratio of Army Painter Strong Tone and Red Tone wash for the short fur. And for the rest, I used some Flat Brown with Flat Red followed by a similar wash (although I flipped the ratios, and added a touch of Dark Tone). I also thinned the paints down significantly so that they would flow better and show the zenithal highlights more prominently, but I left the shades basically undiluted to compensate.

With that done though, the only ones I have left are the troll and Atarin. I'll do the troll this weekend, and then wait and see how Sorastro handles Atarin. But I might just wing it if I get bored and don't want to wait.

Edited by Annette Soleil

First half of heroes finished. These are the ones currently in our campaign which is why I prioritized these. They are painted using Sorastro's video and PDF guide with the exception of Legolas's quiver where I took inspiration from the gorgeous prop in the movies. It should be lighter from but I really liked the dark red leathery look so I went with that especially since it contrasts so nicely with the gray inscription. Incidentally the red color of the quiver I used follows Sorastro's Diala robe recipe from his Imperial Assault tutorial video.

lotr_heroes1_front.jpg

lotr_heroes1_back.jpg

Also, just realized that I completely forgot to highlight and fix Bilbo's vest buttons. Argh! 😫

Just asking, if you do white clothes fast.

What ink you should use if you want to add shadows to white cloth and still maintain the white color near white or is highlighting the only way?

Is there good option in contrast paints to do white clothes?

7 hours ago, Hannibal_pjv said:

Just asking, if you do white clothes fast.

What ink you should use if you want to add shadows to white cloth and still maintain the white color near white or is highlighting the only way?

Is there good option in contrast paints to do white clothes?

Don't know about contrast paints but white can easily show as uneven. You can paint the white areas first all gray and then highlight to white. Or you can paint white and then use shades to darken the shadows. This sort of thing works very well on sleeves in my opinion. Just dillute the wash with medium since pure wash is going to be too dark. The fastest way might be to wet blend. Paint shadowed areas gray and upturned areas white and blend the transition with a brush. You can then use dilluted wash to darken the darkest areas further.

If you try it with washes, remember to dillute it with wash medium such as Citadel's Lahmian Medium. It's better to be careful with the darkening effects so that you don't go too far and then have to work hard to highlight back. That's a mistake I've done plenty of times and always regretted it. Now I always mix in Lahmian Medium with my washes. It's easier to add a second layer of wash than highlight.

Edited by Elrath'

Thanks! Now extra question. I am not familiar with mediums. There seems to be different ones of them. Is there any collected info about them somewhere? I did get an idea how They work, but how different mediuam work differently, or do they. And how medium is different from flow enhancer that to my eye does the same thing...

Edited by Hannibal_pjv
Typo

I'm not really an expert with the various mediums and flow enhancers. That said, I've tried few different ones.

I think flow enhancers might be the same thing for the most parts. Usually, mediums are the same stuff as the washes and glazes but they don't have any pigment. Vallejo's Glaze Medium also slows down drying time making it great for wet blending. I have Army Painter's quickshade medium too but its consistency seems weird so I don't like that. Citadel's Lahmian Medium is probably the best medium I've used but unfortunately Citadel is costs 50% more than Army Painter or Vallejo.

My guess is that you'd be fine with mixing some flow enhancer to a wash to dilute it but maybe someone more knowledgeable than me can help with that.

On 2/19/2020 at 8:36 AM, Hannibal_pjv said:

Thanks! Now extra question. I am not familiar with mediums. There seems to be different ones of them. Is there any collected info about them somewhere? I did get an idea how They work, but how different mediuam work differently, or do they. And how medium is different from flow enhancer that to my eye does the same thing...

Hi! The main difference is that flow enhancer greatly alters the surface tension/viscosity of the paint (or wash) - making it much thinner, and enabling it to flow much more readily. It's tricky to fully describe in words, but the moment you add just a touch it really alters the feel of the paint. :)

Hello!

In preparation for the arrival of the Shadowed Paths expansion, I've finally completed work on the Villains of Eriador:

49691094608_7e711f3b3e_b.jpg

Alongside the video I produced for Gulgotar , I've also produced a couple of PDF guides detailing how I painted Coalfang and Atarin if you're interested.

Now - where's that Balrog... 😁

LotRJiME.jpg.041a65479103f5c55eb2dfbd176aebee.jpg

Finished the entire set! Aside from Atarin, anyway, who I'm gonna try and finish in the next couple weeks. (P5R is going to wind up stealing a lot of my focus) Annoyingly there's a bit of a chip on the back of Aragorn's cloak, despite spraying with varnish. I'll have to retouch that at some point. And Elena would up cross-eyed. A few of the orcs/goblins are also a bit sloppy in some places (especially those hunters with their stupid bows) because trying to batch paint them all got really tiring. Other than that though, I'm really happy with how most of them came out. Gulgotar's cloak also ended up being my first semi-successful attempt at wet blending. (I previously attempted it with the IA Medical Droid a few months back, and wound up so frustrated with it that I just blended all the intermediate tones on a wet palette to save myself the hassle)

I wound up not going crazy with the lighting effects on the wights, because I didn't have the fluorescent paints and wasn't entirely confident I could pull it off. Which ended up making them the easiest figures to paint out of the entire set, aside from the wargs. But considering how the final scenario of the base campaign plays out, I might go back and do something a little special with one of the wights at some point. Just to make that final encounter a little more impactful. But I'm still on the fence about it, since it'd be a little weird if all three wights show up in an earlier scenario, and one of them looks out of place in comparison, hahah.

Edited by Annette Soleil

Atarin1.jpg.bc5ac66fe612302dd8983d9dcb91eb33.jpg

And Atarin is done! Now to sit back and wait for that expansion. Hopefully it won't get delayed, anyway. But I've got plenty of IA minis to paint in the meantime.

Edit: Wow I think I jinxed myself there didn't I?

Edited by Annette Soleil

I'm so berating myself for not ordering the Villains of Eriador expansion. Now it's sold out in most places 😞

The figures in it look so cool. Nothing to it but to wait for the reprint. I still have Gimli, Aragorn and Beravor to paint from the base set.

Thank you very much for the painting guide! These are the first figures I have ever painted, and with the detailed instructions I'm fairly pleased with my results. It is still a work in progress, but I will share once I have completed them.

Thanks to these excellent videos and everyone else's posts showing their painted minis, I've bought the supplies I need and plan to have a go at it myself. I'm excited to get started and have been browsing though every pained mini thread I can find for inspiration.

Edited by Birdman137

I promise I won't be posting every group I finish, but I had to share the first one. They probably took me about 5 hours to finish. I'm hoping I get a little more efficient as I go. I realized as I was clear coating them that I forgot to apply the wash... Oh well, I still think they turned out pretty well.

Goblin Scouts.jpg

They look great!

My most favorite picture to come out painting my JIME figures (following Sorastro's fantastic guides :) ) was this shot I got of Bilbo after finishing up his skin.

I called him Tiny Michael Myers 🤣

20200221_203229.jpg?width=762&height=135

I’ve startet painting the heroes from the core set. Here is Gimli

WaNrsR0.jpg

vFLkrU1.jpg

32P7M58.jpg

Hi all,

I got really inspired by your craftmanship and decided to start painting my miniatures.

The thing is that I don't really now how to start with. Is there some kind of pretty basic starter kit to get going? A believe a couple of fine brushes and 5 to 6 colours will do for the time being until I get experienced with it.

Thanks in advance.

Look Sorastos first, second and third painting quide. They Are very simple and use only paint starter set, so It easy to get started. After those it get more complicated, but I desided to remain mostly in those for the rest of my own set.

Edited by Hannibal_pjv
Added a link

I finally finished painting all of the base game minis!

Heroes.jpg

Enemies.jpg

Heroes+Enemies.jpg