Happhyia Siddence, lord of wyrms

 

Here's my November submission for the odds and sods painting challenge, a high elf now wood elf lord on a forest wyrm.

The rider is probably the most-painted model in my collection since to my reckoning he has been stripped twice and now painted three times. He's one of the few figures I kept in my collection from when I bought him new from Games Workshop in probably the late 90s. I have fond memories of going with my grandmother to buy him from the Basingstoke store having seen him in White Dwarf. On the way back I got to watch my grandad pilot his beloved RC boat around the duck pond, a rare outing indeed- as an engineer he spent much more time working on it than actually driving it. In his time this model has been a high elf general and a vampire count (painted in gold armour with fangs) and has now found middle ground as the army standard for my wood elf force. I still have his horse although it was chopped about a bit for use with my undead, it's getting a rebuild for a future odds and sods month. 

The mighty dragon will be instantly recognisable I'm sure as Kargos the Despoiler. I picked him up cheap as his wings and a back leg were missing whilst the right front leg was broken. No great problem as I don't necessarily rate wings for a forest-dwelling dragon. The rear leg was replaced by one of the dragon ogre alternative limbs I sculpted a few years back, this just took a bit of chopping and the addition of some scales. I raised the right limb to make it look like he's about to cuff some enemy and bent the left to bear his weight. I puttied scales over where the wings would have been and moved the rider to sit on his back rather than his neck, a much more suitable place to ride a beast that walks on all fours.

There's a significance to the dragon choice as well here. I remember seeing a photo of a 'firedrake' with an elf rider in a friend's 'old' (in the nineties) copy of White Dwarf. This image was imprinted on my mind, but looking through my own collection now I can't find it and have come to the conclusion from pose and subject matter that it must have been this dragon and his rider. The official paint job doesn't match the image from my mind, in my head what I saw was an earthy, brown-scaled dragon and I don't remember it having wings. A dragon without wings was somewhat novel in my young mind and lodged there because of it, in fact my love of wyrms may well stem from that image. I'm not a fan of the Marauder elf lord, really sorry, it looks lumpy and chunky. That could just be the obscenely bright colour scheme the original is painted in. Once again the picture in my mind was of a refined, slender elf perched atop his steed. Ah well, there you go, memories play you false. If anyone does know of the picture I am trying to describe let me know, it would be great to know I didn't make it up! Perhaps it was a Golden Demon entry using Kargos? I have tried to strike a balance with my painting and make him definitely a red dragon (to complement the green of the army) but mute the colours to make him look a bit more natural than the 'official' scheme.

Originally the model was going to be my wood elf general, however the theme of the odds and sods challenge this month is 'Grandeur' and so I decided it would be even more grand to make him the army banner. I didn't realise just how massive his sword was until I cut it off and slung it by his waist! Good job he isn't lugging it around on foot. I mapped out an intricate celtic knot design on photoshop but when I printed it out realised there was no way it was going to be possible for me to paint it at scale. Instead I had another brainwave. You'll probably know I am a bit of a massive Bob Ross fan. There's one episode ( a 1-hour special no less, on YouTube so check it out) called 'The Grandeur of Summer' so I thought that it would be entertaining to try that in miniature. A bit of extra Grandeur! That's the mountain side by the way, I tried a different, foresty image on the reverse. Pretty happy with how it turned out, especially against the Ted Nasmith mountain backdrop (see above).

The view of the dragon you'd want to see, versus the view you definitely wouldn't! The banner pole has proved to be a complete pain in the backside. It's a cast lead banner pole and is really bend. Although I drilled the hand out to receive it and added the leafy hand guard (some little jewellery pieces I had kicking around) it still isn't sitting straight. I have also just noticed in the photographs that the bottom part of the pole seems to be missing, not sure when that fell out! It should be below where the sword pommel would be to avoid the banner looking overbalanced at the top. I will have to hunt around on the floor to find where it has fallen...

Happhyia Siddence, lord of wyrms

Fantasy Miniatures diorama part 3

It's been a while since the last post and I was hoping to have a somewhat finished base board to show you... but I don't. However I do have pictures of the miniatures I will be mounting on it mostly painted.

Here's the trio of foolish knights fresh from their foray through the dungeon and looking to climax by slaying a dragon... a little one. The arrogant fop on the left is their leader, Sir Nilles Guel Fromage. A Bretonnian noble cast out from his country for being a prat and now associating with commoners from the Empire. His followers are suitably sunburnt Gammoners of the George Cross.

The two young dragons, a male with wings and a girl without. Between them the object of the hunting party, a waterleaper the juvenile male is learning to force from its lair by boiling the water around it. The female dragon is a rescue piece I was sent many years ago when the Oldhammer Forum was doing a round-robin "send a broken miniature to someone, they have to fix it and paint it" challenge. I finally fixed it and painted it in 2020 and now it needs a home. The male will have his nostrils drilled for flame once I start assembly.

Here's the bad boy himself, ol' spiny. I've tried to preserve the colour scheme he was painted in when I received him (he did get stripped and rebuilt from scratch) but to mute them a little. The joy of the sculpt is how natural it looks and I wanted to complement this with an earthy feel. His head has been repositioned a little so he is looking down at his offspring and the wings have been angled as to keep his balance on top of the skull. The weight of the bottom wing caused it to snap at the elbow joint so I drilled and inserted a long steel pin to fix it securely. The join was then masked with some putty and hopefully doesn't show too badly.  It has held a month so far, fingers crossed it continues to!

The wings themselves are fine muslin scrim with layers of PVA glue applied, thinly at first until the wings could be dampened and shaped, then with much thicker layers to give a leathery texture. I mixed some paint into the glue layers and have painted further washes with inks over the top trying to preserve a translucency that looks like membrane. 

The Aedwyrm has been painted for the longest amount of time so the plan was to try and match the colouring in with the others but to give each a different kind of accent colour. This was originally determined by the four elements, so the Aedwyrm is earthy hues, the Spined Dragon has an airy blue and the young winged dragon has a fiery red as he spouts flame at his prey. When I decided to add the fourth dragon I wanted it to be closer to the Aedwyrm in colouration as in form so I gave her an orange accent rather than going along with the theme and doing something watery.

Fantasy Miniatures diorama part 3

Fantasy Miniatures diorama part 1.

When we think of fantasy miniatures from the 80s I imagine many of us will have images from the Fantasy Miniatures series of books in mind.

These three volumes (1988, 1989 and 1990) are packed full of photos of Golden Demon miniatures and staff offerings from those years and exhibit the very best in that era of modelling. There are extensive conversions, vivid and chaotic paint schemes, texture galore and that sense of humour that seems to have been so absent from the hobby since. Anyone who looks through the books will spot a common thread running through them... Nick Bibby's Great Spined Dragon! 

This model (born the same year as me) is the perfect example of an anatomically-plausible creature sculpted by someone who really knew their wildlife anatomy. It will surprise nobody that Nick is an incredible animal sculptor. It's by a long stretch my favourite dragon model and judging by the number of them that appear in Fantasy Miniatures that love seems to have been widespread.

Greg Sparks' amazing diorama

Of course being a large model with rather fragile wings the best function for this dragon is as the focal point of a diorama rather than fielding in an army. Dioramas are something I love making but they just take up so much space that I feel if I am going to make one it's going to have to be special, and they don't get much more special than working on a Spiny. 

David Chauvel's ragged monstrosity

Now a Great Spined Dragon is something of a holy grail miniature these days. They regularly command £100+ on eBay and with the rise in all vintage miniature prices over the last couple of years I wouldn't be surprised to see people paying £200 for one in good condition. I had resigned to not having one in my collection and instead opted to sculpt a tribute model to fill the hole in my own (any anyone else's) collection.

The Aedwyrm from Oakbound Studio

As has proven to be the way sculpting a tribute calls to the original miniature and shortly after receiving the first castings I was contacted by a friend in the Oldhammer Community who had 'brokered' a deal with another contact of his to get me a genuine Spiny for a very reasonable sum. I immediately set about cleaning it up (I actually quite liked the paint scheme, but this was a model I needed to work on from the lead up, so in the dip it went!), made fabric wings and got it primed ready for painting... and then we moved house and it sat in a cabinet for three years during which time lead fatigue claimed one of the wings. But no more! Definitely time to get it the love it deserves!

Aghast's incredible Heroes of the Known World taking on a Great Spined.

(source: Oldhammer Forum)

I've had in mind for a few years what I want to do with the diorama. In addition to the actual Spiny and my tribute I want to have the "Horned Young Dragon" (which looks far more like a young spined dragon to me, perhaps they got the labels the wrong way around) as a baby, making a family outing. The parents will be teaching the youngster to hunt, boiling a pool of water and forcing out a Waterleaper (from Oakbound) for its dinner. The title will be "A Family Picnic". Inspired by Aghast's diorama I also want to have some human adventurers creeping up inadvisably... I'd love to use the Heroes of the Known World for this but they seem to be a rather elusive and expensive set at the moment so I will be using three other Citadel adventurers that I already have and don't have another use for. I think they'll represent a gung-ho but not terribly bright band pretty well. Ideally they'll be positioned creeping up on baby, thinking that the little dragon is all they will have to worry about!

Horned Young Dragon looks much more like a young Spined Dragon 

than the Spined Young Dragon if you ask me...

So that's my plan for Easter this year, make some good progress on this diorama and take a break from armies. Of course I will have my RoC army to finish, but that's just a couple of units of beastmen so should be able to get them done alongside. Stay tuned for groundwork...

Fantasy Miniatures diorama part 1.