It’s been a good couple of months now since I’ve gotten a Journeys in ME model painted, so in July I did that thing where you make yourself finish this model or that – I did it a few times actually, and the most recent one of those was this War Oliphaunt.
I originally started painting it for one of the Monster Month challenges, but as with most painting month challenges, I bit off a bit more than I could finish. This model had a bit of an issue in terms of “what the hell is *that*? for some of the details, and so it took just knuckling down and slapping paint on the thing to get it done. There’s a fair bit of drybrushing on the Oliphant skin, since I didn’t have any interest in trying to neatly blend something this size – and besides, Elephant (and presumably, Oliphant) skin is dry and rough looking, anyway!
I was at one point planning to paint an Eye of Sauron on the blanket underneath the Howdah, but as one side of the beast features that whole area compressed between the straps, I decided to leave it be. Similarly, I considered adding Peter Jackson-esque war paint on the skin, but left it off when I realised I could keep this piece pretty generic despite the fact that it’s supposed to be immense in scale – look at the logs supporting the howdah, and the size of the howdah – it’s almost like a person would be smaller than one of those tassels!
It’s not an amazing model, but it’s a very decent model for a boardgame, and given that context I’m happy with the paint job I gave it in the end. Very much a case of “good enough” and one I was satisfied to round out my July models with!
Here you can see the size of the thing when alongside our friend Berkeley. It’s actually a size that could pass for a regular Elephant with something weird happening to it’s ears – so while it’s not exactly War Mammoh sized for games like the Warhams of Kings of War, I could potentially use it for similar in Dragon Rampant or the like. And now that this model is finally painted, I can start on something else for Journeys. Hm… should I start on a rabble of Orcs or another pair of heroic Adventurers?
Next post – July’s Round-Up!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great painting again Az. Like the dry brushing. As you say will work well for Dragon Rampart.
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Thank you! Another in my stable of games that I haven’t yet played. Once we get the table finally cleared of junk (gaming junk, tubs of unbuilt and also completed terrain, etc) then it’ll totally be on the list of things to learn how to play!
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This looks brilliant! 🙂 And here was me thinking the Oliphant was a South African tank – I need to widen my horizons! 😉
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Haha, well we can blame Professor Tolkien for *this* one at least!
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Great work, I think the skin has come out really well, as you say the drybrushing gives the correct texture.
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Thanks mate. It was very much a case of not wanting to try and blend it and then add texture, so hoping that an extra-dry drybrush would do the job. 🙂
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Impressive! As others have said, the drybrushing works really well for the thick, rough elephant skin. I also really like the color modulation from gray to brown, makes the model look more alive.
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Thank you! Blending across colours vie drybrushing is something I’m trying to get better at (when working on something approriate). Going from dark grey to light grey, etc is easy enough, but going across colours in a way that doesn’t look a bit crap is something I need to keep improving on. 🙂
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Excellent work mate, your painting has elevated the whole piece, and agree working out what some pieces are meant to be, takes longer than painting it ! LOL
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Thanks Dave. Still quite a few more pieces for this particular board game, but I’m looking forward to playing it one day!
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This is really cool! Great work. 🙂
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Thank you, C&M 🙂
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Looks great mate. The eye of Sauron would’ve been cool but fair call
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Cheers mate – yeah if the model had more even sides I’d have done it, but it would have looked really odd with the squished side, and there’s nowhere else to really paint it.
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Ho hum, another excellently painted elephant! Haha! Well done, The colors all work really well together and the elephant skin looks pretty real.
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Thanks mate. I do have a few more Elephants to paint one day as it happens! 😉
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Nicely done mate, weird ears but looks ace!
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Yeop… I guess they wanted to distinguish it from both actual Elephants and Jackson/WETA’s version… 😉
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This came out nicely and while the sculpt is definitely hard to “read” like you pointed out, I think you took this one as far as it could go. I can’t help but wonder if FFG made the Oliphaunt a bit bigger, if the mini could have been even nicer. If you’re taking requests, let’s see another hero in the near future from this game 🙂
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Thanks mate! I guess the thing is that the purpose is “impressive board game model” rather than “miniature wargame model” so it’s probably as big as it can reasonably be to fit on the tiles. I’ve got some heroes ready to start on, but this week after work I’ve knocked out a quick and easy small set of villains. But the heroes’ll be coming still…
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That’s an impressive beasty! I thought it was a lot bigger till the final photo, would look really impressive in an old 25mm army!
Cheers Roger.
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Thanks Roger! You’re not wrong there. I can imagine it standing next to one of the old LotR-themed Minifigs and being pretty to scale with how the Oliphants read in the novels…
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