Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey!
Or he will not slay thee in thy turn.
He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation,
beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured,
and thy shriveled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye
– The Witch-King of Angmar to Éowyn in The Return of the King
Welcome back to another Middle-earth-based post on The Art of Caesura!
We've a lot to discuss today, so I'll delve right in. After having a great old time with Gimli and the Uruk last week, I decided to do another Lord of the Rings mini that had emerged from the basement box.
The Witch-king of Angmar!
Well, the first thing I noticed, when I took this guy out of his crumpled blister-pack, was that the chain of his flail had snapped in half. I tried pinning it back together, but even using my narrowest drill bit I wasn't getting anywhere. So I decided to be a little creative and just cut the chain out all together, turning his flail into a mace. As it turns out, in the books he actually used a mace where as in the films it's a flail! So there you go. Canon.
It was only after all this that I noticed a bigger issue. His left arm was missing!
After a concerted search, I decided that, of all models, this was probably a good one to try my hand at a bit of sculpting; it was mostly robe with a bit of a gloved hand after all.
I looked at what his arm was supposed to look like (holding it out to his side) and figured for my first real sculpting project (I've done bits of fur, purity seals, hair etc. in the past) that it would be easier to sculpt his arm in by his side.
Using a bent paperclip I created a scaffolding to support the green stuff. I was a bit worried about it because I only had some of the rough structure done by the time I had to leave for work and didn't want it to dry in the 10 or so hours I'd be away. So I just put a few drops of water on the arm and that seemed to hold it from curing.
The rest of his robes provided a good reference for the robes I sculpted, I tried to follow the flow and took cues on making tears and tatters along the frayed edges.
With his arm done, I set about making a new base for him. As with all of the old minis I've made recently (The Emperor's Champion, Grotsnik, and Gimli) the original bases they came with were ridiculously small - 25mm for each of them! I built a new base for him out of cork. I was going for kind of an inverted He-man, standing on a cliff top with his weapon hand in the air. All that's missing is a lightening bolt! I revolutionized things further (and in an attempt to accentuate the overhang of the cliff) cut one of the sides off of the base
After all that, the painting was a sinch! His metal was weathered steel (with the exception of the golden handle of The Sword of Terror. I worked his robes up from black through greys instead of blues, and used some brown for weathering around the edges.
So tell me what you think of the Black Captain, The Ringleader of the Ringwraiths: The Witch-king of Angmar!
See you next Friday right here, on The Art of Caesura!
Watching: Stranger Things Season 2
Listening: We Should Be Growing - Ari Neufeld
Next Week:
A skeletal fop...
The Witch-king of Angmar!
It was only after all this that I noticed a bigger issue. His left arm was missing!
After a concerted search, I decided that, of all models, this was probably a good one to try my hand at a bit of sculpting; it was mostly robe with a bit of a gloved hand after all.
I looked at what his arm was supposed to look like (holding it out to his side) and figured for my first real sculpting project (I've done bits of fur, purity seals, hair etc. in the past) that it would be easier to sculpt his arm in by his side.
Using a bent paperclip I created a scaffolding to support the green stuff. I was a bit worried about it because I only had some of the rough structure done by the time I had to leave for work and didn't want it to dry in the 10 or so hours I'd be away. So I just put a few drops of water on the arm and that seemed to hold it from curing.
The rest of his robes provided a good reference for the robes I sculpted, I tried to follow the flow and took cues on making tears and tatters along the frayed edges.
With his arm done, I set about making a new base for him. As with all of the old minis I've made recently (The Emperor's Champion, Grotsnik, and Gimli) the original bases they came with were ridiculously small - 25mm for each of them! I built a new base for him out of cork. I was going for kind of an inverted He-man, standing on a cliff top with his weapon hand in the air. All that's missing is a lightening bolt! I revolutionized things further (and in an attempt to accentuate the overhang of the cliff) cut one of the sides off of the base
After all that, the painting was a sinch! His metal was weathered steel (with the exception of the golden handle of The Sword of Terror. I worked his robes up from black through greys instead of blues, and used some brown for weathering around the edges.
Above is a close-up of his finished "new" arm.
So tell me what you think of the Black Captain, The Ringleader of the Ringwraiths: The Witch-king of Angmar!
See you next Friday right here, on The Art of Caesura!
Watching: Stranger Things Season 2
Listening: We Should Be Growing - Ari Neufeld
Next Week:
A skeletal fop...
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