Approaching Silence: Rabbi's Circle

"The woods were still in the late autumn weather, most of the leaves having been strewn about over the last month. It was cool despite the lack of wind, and the first winter storm brewing to the west promised to bring cooler days. Hunting to round off our winter stores, my son and I stalked a caribou, too attached to the stream to move south with the rest of her herd.

Motioning for my eldest to move North, in the path the doe was likely to flee, I reached back in the quiver to draw an arrow. A red tip, our best. This first shot will be true. Closing my eyes, I center myself, relaxing my body as I tense my arm back. Lining up the shot I take one cursory glance to see... A large javelin pinning my poor boy to the tree, blood oozing through the fine carved lines. Letting my arrow drop, I turn to run, go home, straight into the hulking mass of a giant brute, armored only in the blanched bones of his previous prey. Suddenly my vision turns upside down as I fly to the ground, and in the fading light I see a black cloak in the distance cover a patch of orange lacquered armor as the druid raises his wooden stave..."

Welcome to Approaching Silence, my force from the Circle of Orboros. Here you will find pictures of models, terrain, and diorama I built for my Hordes army. I went with a late autumn theme to the colors, and my wolves fur has not been determined yet. While this will serve as my gallery, comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

:reserved for ongoing group photo:

I like the orange glow and what I did with it, though the yellow glow is hard to pick out. With small runes on another piece, I might reverse the color as the darker should stand out more. Or on the second set of stones.

My pictures won't upload to Picasa right, so I'll take care of this tonight.

A thanks to Frank (I think I got your name right) at AoW for helping my with my armor border colors. Still needs some work on the Wilder, but I've painted over it so much I was loosing detail. I'm happy with how it turned out still, but will see if it becomes something different as I move on.

I really like how the Volge, their staff, turned out. The fluff is that it's wood magically hardened and carved to be an effective weapon. Maybe why it's P+S 10, but still a neat idea, so I extended my brown and gray layering to the 'blade' as well, highlighting in a bright gray to make it sharp on the edges.




Next up to paint: Druids of Orboros

I've since darkened her corset and fixed the few spots that chipped under on the way to the first clear coat, but these are the picture's I'll use. Need a new background/photobox too.

Nice so far, MasterRabbi! What all are you going to have in your force?

I was using the term loosely to say my models as opposed to other Circle players. But right now I'm trying to get an army together for the painting component of the Ironman.

So to paint next, in priority:
Shifting Stones - painted
Lanyssa Ryssyll - painted
Druid Wilder - painted
Druids of Obrobos - painted
Kaya the Moonhunter - painted
Laris - painted
Warpwolf Stalker - painted
Gorax - painted
Druid UA - painted
Pureblood Warpwolf
Stone Keeper
Krueger the Stormwrath
Woldwarden
Feral Warpwolf
Warwolf
Lord of the Feast

I might have to move the Woldwarden up, or paint the Wryd, as I'm itching to paint more constructs.

Cool! I like seeing how others are painting their Circle stuff up, so it's nice that you are taking pictures as you go along. Eventually I'll have some time to go in and get pics of my stuff, as I've got almost 55 of the 63 points I have painted (my avatar is my Gnarlhorn Satyr that I painted up)

Here are the Druids. I was concerned again about the orange when I didn't have any of the other colors down, but think it turned out really well.

I did use 4 coats of seal and a dullcoat, and just found a chip the other day though, so I'm still not sure why I can't get my paint sealed. I'm going to try to use better primer and see if that helps I guess, maybe it's not sticking to the metal right. C&C welcome of course.

Also made a photobox after the class I had at Origins, think the pictures are much better. Updated my Druid Wilder photo earlier.

Looking good Jacob.

I think you might be onto something with the primer. Never had a model chip after applying a nice sealer coat.

eKaya survived nuclear winter (varnish ghosted on me), brought back from being underwater and finally another layer of varnish cured under a lightbulb heater. Started trying for a brown undercoat for Laris, but wasn't completely sold by my work and ditched it for the Warpwolf Stalker (next).

Went for a dark tone since he has Prowl. Sneaky sneaky.




Didn't know how to treat the stone with my color palette though. Gray hides in the fur, and sandstone would look like the leather without superior texture ability. Any thoughts welcome.

Very nice indeed!

It's been way too long since I finished a model, between finishing my model pirate ship and then general slowness but...

Gorax is done!



I think he came out really well. Picking up on how to blend, and the black/blue fur (similar to the book art) came out well.

C&C welcome, still huge room for improvements. Next up is the Druid UA. Still need to venture into basing... (a little intimidated, I'll admit...)

Gorax looks good!

If you want a quick and (literally) dirty way to do your bases, you can do what I do on some of mine: paver basing sand. I accidentally bought a bag of it years ago, and it ripped on a spot of brick pavers in my back yard and I never cleaned it up. When I was trying to think of easy basing, I tried it out as my material, and it works really well! If you look at my avatar (the Gnarlhorn), it has that sand as the base. I can try to find a better pic of it if you want to see more of it. Anyhow, it's VERY easy to reproduce those results. Use some wood glue, as white Elmer's glue shrinks when it dries, wood glue does not, and put a thin coating of it onto the base. Just make sure that you coat the entirety of the area that's on the bottom, as, of course, if there's no glue there, the sand won't stick. Then, pour the sand directly onto it, liberally coating it, then when it dries, you tilt the mini over, pouring off the excess. then gently tap the bottom of the base, which dislodges anything that's loose, but caught on other sand. That's it!

Looking good Jacob, I think you've done a nice job defining/shading this muscles and hair.

I wouldn't worry too much about the basing. You can get a thing of Woodland Scenics flock for ~$8-9 and it should last you a lifetime. Apply woodland scenics glue/watered down elmers to base, spread around with old paint brush, apply flock.

If you want to get fancy, you can get some interesting rocks and whatnot from your backyard.

Personally I don't like a lot of basing, the focus should be the mini, not what it's on. All these scenic bases that elevate the model several inches in the air distract from the main focus.

Druid UA came out great. The cloak highlighting is even better than the druids (improving slowly!) and I just love the feel of the model and the scheme.

I wasn't very proud of the bone staff. The skull is sweet and has a nice contrast, but the blending for the bone was challenging. I ended up using gray and yellow combination to get it warm with shading. Dark brown is too close to Tin Bitz, so that was out of the question.

C&C welcome and encouraged.

Oddly enough I like the staff the best, but I feel like I can't make out the cloak very well with the lighting in the picture.

Every thing here looks really cool. Forgive my ignorance what game is this for? If you use sunlight to light your photos with it will make them pop a bit more. I like to wait until the sun is coming in my windows just right before I shoot, or I take them outside.

It's the army Circle of Orboros, from the game system Hordes (which is also compatible with the game system Warmachine) http://www.privateerpress.com

I also have a large collection of this army as well as one called Khador. It's a pretty cool skirmish game!

Yeah, I like Circle because I'm a ranger at heart, and they have a main character that's a tree with a human thrall (the tipping point). Also will make great D&D mini's if/when I have another game group.

I guess cloth would be a better word than cloak, with my light source there isn't much blue on the cloak in the front, because of how much it billows back. But there is a bit of the blue highlights on the tabbard.

And it's true, this isn't the best picture I've taken It was hard to get an angle that shows it off well. Hopefully you can see it in person at some point.

Overall happy with him, first time trying to paint a gem. Thought it could be better, but that was my 3rd attempt and figured improvement will come on another model.

Used a white wash to base the yellow runs, and they stick out much more. That's probably why I'm happy with it, and that it's a great model cast and game-wise.

Pureblood Warpwolf from Privateer Press done. Ran into some second guessing on the skin tone, but after adding the highlight to the fur he looks like a pureblood that's 'gone white' from old age. He is now affectionately called "Grandpa Pureblood".

Tried basing too, I wanted him to be smashing through a log and spraying. Thought it would look neat since his hand is down like that. Maybe that's why he's RAT 5. Overall not too bad, though I should not try to add it on in the end like I did there.

C&C welcome and appreciated, especially my work on the base. Going to paint a little terrain to cleanse the palette, though I'll probably end up painting whatever Lost Hemisphere tells me to for Paint the Target. I'm a sucker for a challenge.

I finished the Feral recently. Decided to use bone for the spikes so that there was enough variation to draw the eyes around. With the black spikes I typically do, the whole left-hand side fo the model just blurred together. I love his eyes, I'm getting much better at the face.

Next on the table - Gallows Grove Droopy (branches down). Also need to get cracking, want my 50 point eKaya done before Adepticon...

Gallows Grove - Droopy


Just a few touch ups from the last painting night and the Gallows Grove affectionately called Droopy is done. His branches in general point down, as opposed to Spikey who's reach for the sky. Tried to get and old, swampy green into the wood (found a good reference picture), and though it doesn't jump out at you the fact that it's there makes the runes pop. The ropes draped on the model look good, but the thick ones look awkward much like my previous work. Next time I encounter ropes on a model I'm just going to paint them first and get something good before moving on.

C&C welcome, always looking to improve. Also please find my blue gradient background

I picked the fastest model I could finish before Adepticon and finished it with 7 hours of sleep to spare. Has my arch-nemesis, rope, so tried something different going for a burgundy color. I don't think it worked quite how I wanted it too, but the technique is a little better than previously. I think the warmth trying to contrast with the warm wood color causes it to be lost. Wasn't inspired for a base and with the time limit, I just added some grass to bring some green in. I like the limited orange use, with the gems and then the 'power packs' on his spine. Think it grabs attention nicely.

C&C welcome, always looking to improve. Also accepting suggestions on rope color.