It really has been a while since I have posted any updates. I promise I actually did some painting in 2022 but for various reasons, I have still been experimenting and playing around with stuff to the point where I haven’t got anything finished. But, over Christmas, I had a bit of time on my hands and wanted to paint up Éomer as a gift for my flatmate. So within 2 days of 2023, I had already beaten my 2022 record.

As I said, this has actually been painted up as a gift for my flatmate. He is part of a Lord of the Rings Dungeons & Dragons game and his character is a Rohirim. Part of his character is that his plume has been cut off, hence the slight modification on the helmet. Honestly, this has been the most fun I have had painting in a long time. I think much of it is to do with the fact it is a one-off mini so I don’t need to think about full cohesion with an army, and there is so much detail on the new plastic LOTR characters.

The model was largely painted in line with the tutorial by Nick Bayton but I made a few changes just to tie some of the colours together a bit better. If you are using the helmeted version I would also suggest painting the face before adding the top half of the helmet… that was a pain…

Armour

The tutorial suggests that Doombull brown should be the colour of choice for the armour. It looks perfect in the tutorial but didn’t seem to quite be red enough for my liking in real life, so I actually used a 50:50 mix of Khorne red and Doombull brown. The rest of the highlights should be in line with what’s suggested

The Mighty Steed

The horse I diverged considerably more from. In particular, I didn’t want to have to spend ages trying to blend and highlight up the colours because I knew I would make a mess of it. I also preferred a more earthy grey for the horse since it is a living breathing thing.

To begin with, I airbrushed the basecoats on the horse, focusing more from directly above using:

• Abaddon black
• Corvus black
• Skavenblight Dinge

I then went back with Abaddon black to reinforce the shadows just glazing it into some of the more well-defined areas. Finally, I added a highlight of Stormvermin fur to the defined raised edges. If I was going to spend more time on this I might have considered trying to use the brush more to get more of a fur texture.

As for the head, this is largely in line with the tutorial except I shaded the face using:

• Karak Stone
• Stormvermin Fur
• Skavenblight Dinge

I think Apothecary white has too much of a blue tone for it to look natural with the rest of the horse and using the colours of the black fur helps to tie the head to the rest of the model a bit more.

Base

Call me old fashioned, but I’ve just never really gotten along with the texture paints and I much prefer using sand and painting that instead as it gives more control. After base coating the sand in Rhinox Hide, I then dry brushed the following:

• Steel Legion Drab
• Baneblade brown
• Karak Stone

The stones were also base coated in Rhinox Hide with the rest of the base, and following a thin wash of Abaddon black was dry brushed with Dawnstone and Adminstratum grey.

The rims are the classic Steel Legion Drab.

Summary

This piece was honestly the perfect way to spend my Christmas break (aside from the time I was with my family of course). Got plenty of motivation to paint again, which is pretty good given I have a Golden Demon entry to paint… but more on that another time. I also got to grips with some contrast paints a bit more, which admittedly I don’t use that much. That being said I think the effect of the bronze chainmail really speaks for itself.

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