This week was a nice return to detail painting for me. I'm still working on some Goblins on my breaks in work, but as a side project in the evenings I've been painting up Theoden and Helm Hammerhand for my Lord of the Rings army of Rohan.
I gotta say, for the longest time I never paid much mind to the Theoden sculpt. It's pretty old and the new plastic version has a lot of well extra little details. That was until I started painting it. This old sculpt has SO much more to it than I thought and the fact it was hand sculpted just makes it more impressive. What's more the detail is generally much crisper on metal models so that was a big winner for me too.
Painting the two kings side by side was a great comparison between painting old and new style production methods and how the details come out in the end. Whilst the more modern sculpt of Helm is a suitably dynamic piece and goes together much neater than the mounted Theoden, it just feels a bit too... smooth in places? It just misses something for me. The old metals have sharper features and just hold more character, Theoden has these tiny human imperfections that make it more alive and a joy to paint. (We are talking minuscule stuff, the sort of symmetry and clean edges that CG sculpting gets perfect) And that for me is a personal preference. I've always favored traditional mediums over digital. Digital sculpting is no different, it is a tool that artists use, but it is one more step removed from the creator and the final creation, losing a little more of the human touch as a result.
Wow, haven't had that kind of musing since my uni days. Anyway, Theoden and Helm done, looking to grab some Royal Guard next. Thoughts, C&C always welcome. Also, here's a little play around I did on photoshop. Nothing too intense, but I haven't done proper photo manipulation before and I've been trying to re-learn some stuff.
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