Aragorn

This was another one of my entries for our GD06!

The lord of the rings is one of my favourite books, and I really love the films as well. I painted heaps of LOTR minis a few years ago - they got me back into painting after I stopped for years during school. All my old LOTR minis aren't painted to a good standard, going by these days haha - but they were fun and taught me heaps about painting.

I hadn't painted any lord of the rings minis since those days though, and I have learnt a lot since then, so I decided that I would have a good go at one for the GD this year, for fun! I had actually painted this mini once before - and I don't mean a different copy of this cast, I mean THIS EXACT mini - I was very proud of it at the time, but when I decided to enter for GD the can of paint stripper came out of the shed and all my hard work from a few years ago disappeared hahaha.

Aragorn is probably my favourite LOTR character, and especially during his 'strider' phase in the fellowship of the ring, which is how he is portrayed in this miniature, with the sleeping bags and stuff on his back, ah I love it hehe. So I wanted to paint him as faithfully as I could to the way he looks in the movies, as a tribute! I had the fellowship of the ring DVD playing on my computer next to me while I was painting him, pausing scenes at the appropriate moments so that I could study aragorn's costume and match the colours!

Because of all this, I tried to use a more realistic and natural painting style, with less exaggerated highlights, and 'natural' rather than 'fantasy' colours. As a result, the mini is actually quite drab and dark - but that's ok, because that is how strider is in the movies I think!! :) I also experimented with trying to paint some textures onto the clothes, to reflect the materials - on his dark green coat, belts and straps, and especially on his brown tunic, where it is most noticeable in the pics. This was done by painting some very thin lines onto the surfaces, with darker and lighter colours - some cross hatched, some like subtle trompe l'oeil cracks. Glazes of various colours were then passed over the top to integrate the texture into the surface, and make them less obvious and more a part of the material.

Guild Artisan,
Sebastian.