Revisiting my hobby starting place

After the finishing, I think the final result is ok, but I really don’t think it’s my best work. I am still not happy with my freehand tree on the shield.

However it certainly is a marked difference from where I was 32 years ago.

It certainly has been a fun little project

Anyway I will leave some final comparison pictures and let you see the difference.

Back in the day I didn’t really know much about basing so just painted the bases green

In order to get a comparison I decided to follow the same colour scheme I used back in 1989.

The key colours are:

Silver – Armour and weapon blades

Green – tunic and flesh ( when younger I was obviously under the impression elves had green skin, who am I to argue)

Red – Cloak and shield trim

Gold – Trim

Yellow – hair and Shield

The first stage was a zenith using chaos black spray, grey primer and then wraithbone.

This gives a good starting point something I never even knew about way back in 1989.

As always the first stage is always preparation to remove some of the mould lines and flash. These models were not too bad there was s bit of flash on the Unicorn and some minor mould lines on the Elf figures.

Using a combination of a knife and standard nail file. I removed the flash and the mould lines. One thing to note, these models are lead based, I had forgotten what a joy they are to work with compared the modern white metal. It is so much easier to remove flash and mould lines. Let’s go back to using lead and stuff health and safety.

The final stage of the preparation phase is an overnight soaking in some household limescale remover, this is very much an experiment so I shall see in the morning if it works.

The other day I was rooting around, and came across the first ever mini’s I painted back in around 1989. At the time I was an avid Dungeons and Dragons player ( something I have recently got back into playing). I got given these mini’s as a gift for Christmas (at least I think it was Christmas). I was about 14 years old. I had never painted any mini’s before, however as the time I had built and painted a lot of Airfix kits. I had started to use humbrol acrylics having moved away from enamels.  So that’s where I started.

Finding these mini’s, made me think how far I have come in my painting over the last three decades. This got me thinking, what would it be like if I painted the same mini’s again. There was no way I was going to strip my original mini’s and try again, as I have fond memories of painting these at the kitchen table of my late grand parents house.

So I decided to see if I could get hold of another set of these mini’s, but I had no idea where they originated from, fortunately after posting a few pictures on FB I was able to find out what they were. I then took to eBay to try and track down a copy…and managed to find the blister pack for the princely sum of £13 including postage and packaging… result!!

1. Comparison

So first of all let’s compare the mini’s.

The Unicorn

The Mounted Elf

The Discounted Elf