Elemental Goodness!

So, once again we skip a whole month. So much for trying to keep up... But this time I think I have a pretty good foundation for a blog entry, which, as the header says, is Elementals.

I like elementals. They are sort of the force of nature personified, although for most RPG purposes, they are just conjured by some lame spellcaster, which makes them a lot less interesting. I like them as a manifestation of nature, that rises to fight back against some unnatural enemy...

I've kind of made this blog as a simple "how to build your own elemental".

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This is going to be an ice or snow elemental. The skeleton is made from some barbecue spears, glued together with PVA. I was careful not to make the pieces excactly the same length, as I wanted it to have weird, disproportionate look, as if it might be changing shape, as it went along.

I covered it in to layers a small gravel, to get a good, thick layer of sharp and pointy edges, to simulate ice shards. Now you can really see the shape of the creature.

 

At the same time, I found to old Grey Stuff bodies, I made. I think I was trying to make some golems, but gave up, which is good, since they came in so handy this time. I gave them a treatment of both small gravel, fine gravel and sand, starting by gluing on the biggest pieces first, then the medium ones and finishing of with the finist powder:

As you can see, I gave them a very rocky head, and this concen-tration of the larger gravel pieces goes down the back as well, and also on the hands. I did this to give them some kind of character, and to make them look not completely random; as if there is some kind of intelligence or at least meaning in their body structure.

 

 

Three types of gravel, all from a tennis court.

After attaching them to some bases, the painting began. The paint is mixed with both water and PVA glue, to make the gravel sit better on the skeleton.

 I actually started with just the regular paint, but a lot of the gravel fell off, and I had to re-attach it with superglue. But after a layer of PVA/water/paint, everything was solidly fixed and they can take quite a beating, without loosing anything. The Ice elemental was primed in white and the earth ones are painted with VMC Burnt Umber, which is always my go-to colour for earth.

The Ice Elemental was painted with a thick layer of The Army Painter Blue Tone Quickshade Ink, followed by overbrushing VMC Andrea Blue and then drybrushing on the Sky Blue and White. I didn't care about splashing paint onto the base, since most of that was going to be covered in snow anyway. as this was set to the side to dry completely, I turned my attention on the earthenware elementals.


Following the same method as the Ice Fellow, they were overbrushed with VMC Flat Earth, followed by drybrushing on Cork Bark and Buff. I concentrated on a zenital lighting effect, painting the lighter two tones only on the upwards facing areas on the figures.

After this, individual rocks were picked out with greyish colours, to give some variety and contrast to the browns, but still keeping them close to earthen colours. All of these were then highlighted again with Buff.

In the deepest recesses, right next to the feet, in the armpits and directly under the "chin" they were both given a wash of The Army Painter Military Shader, although that is kind of hard to see in the pictures.

Painting being done, I gave them a rest for about half an hour, to make sure the paint was completely dry, before commencing with the last, but perhaps most important step; flocking.

I have a large jar of home mixed flock, which is actually just a mix of three types of Static Grass, two types of sawdust flock and three types of regular flock. That was applied to various areas of the earth elementals and The Army Painter Snow was applied to the ice elemental.

Which brings us here:

I hope you enjoyed this simple walk-through and that you all will start making you own elementals, like these ones. I'm thinking about making a larger one, with tombstones and bone debris sticking out, but we will see, if I ever get there...
Be sure to comment and critique me in the comments!

Thanks for reading my ramblings and have a nice sunday!