Citadel Advanced Dungeons and Dragons C34 Water Elemental

What’s this? A DOUBLE posting?!?! Well, seeing as the weather is good, I’ve taken the opportunity to varnish up as many figures as I can.

This was the next figure to be extracted from the Lead Mountain. I think this is a fantastic figure – fabulous sculpting, lots of detail, with a great pose. It really makes you realise how good some of the early Citadel stuff was. The hardest thing was building up the base so that it seemed like the figure was emerging from a pool of water – this was just white Milliput built up into waves.

The paint job was really easy – light blue base colour, then blue ink, then lots and lots of dry brushing in varying shades of blue, eventually ending up with white for the foam on top of  the elemental’s head and back. Simples! I usually give my figures a final spray of Dullcote, but I kept a satin varnish finish on this one, and I really think it helps give an impression of water.

Again, very pleased with the way this one turned out, and I can see it getting a bit of table top action – more than the Naga Spirit any how!

Grenadier Advanced Dungeons and Dragons large boxed sets 5002 Monsters Naga Spirit

Nagas spirits are the most powerful type of naga. They have a human head on a snake body and are akin to witches, among the naga races. They are even more mysterious and enigmatic than the others of their kind, seeking lost magic to a fanatical extent. They delight in causing suffering and death with the powers they possess.  

It’s been a while since I posted, not because I haven’t been painting – it’s just that the vile English weather has meant nothing but rain and high humidity for the last couple of weeks, which means no varnishing. However, I’ve had a couple of days of blue skies, so I’ve had opportunity to apply a couple of coats to the latest batch of figures.

Next out of the Lead Mountain was this early nugget from Grenadier. I was NOT enthused – as I’ve said before, a lot of the early Grenadier figures were very poorly sculpted, with little or no detail, and my initial reaction was that this one fell into that category. Still, out with the brushes.

It’s a simple figure, so I made a deliberate decision to keep the paint job simple – just two colours, red and yellow. I was going to go for black and red, but black isn't the easiest colour to paint, and I thought this figure needed all the help it could get. I also decided that I would have it rising out of sorcerous flames – after all, it’s a magic using spirit naga, so why not? – and the base was just white Milliput moulded into the form of flames.

The paint job was nice and easy – base reds and yellows, then a couple of Games Workshop washes, then lots of dry brushing, to bring up the yellow and also to try and brush in the gradual change from red to orange to yellow.  I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of detail that came up – obviously not as much as modern figures, but still pretty good for early Grenadier. The face of the naga didn’t give much joy, so I kept it simple and just painted glaring blood red eyes. Christopher Lee, eat your heart out!

I was quite pleased with the way this one turned out – I had very low expectations of the figure, and it came out quite well. Can’t see it getting much table top time though.