My Attempt at Painting a GW Balrog

[Keith Robinson]

Well, I purchased a Games Workshop balrog for my D&D game. It's a great figure and scales nicely as huge sized for D&D and I'm planning on dropping it into my game as the finale to my present campaign, which has been running for about three years now and will take around another 18 months or so.

I'm not the most experienced painter in the world, but have been getting into it recently and have started to enjoy it more than I ever have previously - so I've been buying paints and tools, etc, and finding myself doing it more in the last couple of months.

Given my lack of experience and skill, it was a daunting idea to construct and paint a balrog, but I certainly wanted something that would be a cool climax for my game, so I decided to go for it anyway and see how it all worked out! I figured if nothing else, it would be a good way to help improve my painting skills.

I decided to take a few pics along the way and thought I'd share them here. As this is quite a long post with a lot of pictures, I'll break it up into several posts rather than one long one. Any feedback/criticism/advice/tips/etc welcome

 

[Keith Robinson]

The balrog is plastic and comes unassembled on a sprue, so, the first thing was to put everything together, then fill all the gaps with some green stuff and do a little sculpting to make sure it all looked fine. Some of the gaps were quite extensive, so I took quite a long time making sure that I got this bit right - any major faults now would show up clearly later on, so it was better to spend the time making sure I got it right from the start.

It took me roughly a week to construct the model, fill it and removing the mould lines.

After a white primer, the really scary thing was now painting the entire model orange. A bright, fiery orange, from head to toe!

Now, at this point it was very intimidating. This thing hadn't been cheap and I'm not the best painter in the world, and I've got a bright orange figure. I don't mind admitting that the thought of painting this thing was quite intimidating now - much more so than I thought it would be.

But hey, the only way to remedy that feeling was to start getting some paint on and reduce the orange. I ran a yellow wash along the body, which sat well on the orange base, giving it quite a molten look. I then painted the top skin area black, to kinda give the impression of cooled lava. Overall, I wanted to give the impression of a creature made entirely from molten lava, which had cooled at the surface.

The actual paiting of the black area was slow and required a lot of patience, as I had to use a fine brush and pretty much paint the majority of it on one step at a time. This was particularly true of the legs, which were painstaking.

Nonetheless, it was worth it and, on the whole, I was pretty pleased with the outcome...

Well, at least I wasn't being blinded by so much orange! And my confidence in tackling the figure had improved, since I was quite happy with the way things were turning out.

 

[Keith Robinson]

I also now painted the fiery mane and sword with a couple of coats of white, to remove even more of the orange. Anything that kept taking away the orange was a good thing IMO!

At this point I realized that I was going to have to complete the base before I tackled the flames, since in certain areas they were impossibly close together. Any blemishes on the flames were going to be much harder to fix than blemishes to stone, so I tackled that next. After a base coat of dark gray, I added several layers of dry brushing, plus finalized a few details.

With that done, it was on to the flames. I'd never done any fire before, so this was going to be tricky. The mane in particular was such an integral part of the figure that any errors or sloppy painting would really detract from the overall impact of the figure. I started with a yellow wash and then built up over several layers to orange and then red at the top and finished with a very light wash of brown at the top, then added some highlights. It came out much better than I had hoped and was very happy with the outcome.

At this stage I also dry brushed the horns a couple of layers of gray on a black base.

I built up the sword using exactly the same technique as for the flames...

Once again, I was reasonably happy with the look.

I must admit that at this point I was very happy with the way it had come out. Except for the wings, the orange was gone and the balrog was looking pretty much as I wanted it to - very hot and very menacing!

 

[Keith Robinson]

So, onto the wings. At this point, the fear came back. Doing the wings was going to be hard, as any mistakes would be there for everyone to see. The wingspan is big! I wanted the wings to be black, on the whole, with a hint of fire poking through, with progressively less from the body-side to the tips.

As with the body, a yellow wash was used and then each section I wanted to remain visible was carefully picked out with a base black border. The remainder was then filled in with black.

 

[Keith Robinson]

With the wings done, the balrog was pretty much done! I wanted to make sure the black looked dull, as if it absorbed light, so added very dark highlights, just to draw out some definition on the wings on particular, face and the cooled molten areas. I also finished off a couple of small details.

Overall, I was pretty pleased. It was a daunting task, especially as it meant tackling a whole bunch of stuff that I'd never done before, but I certainly learnt a lot and it was as good as I could have hoped when I started - in fact, if I'm honest, better.

I've still got a couple of bits left to do and then seal it, but here's (pretty much) the final version...

 

[Kris]

Looks great!

I have to admit that I don't think I'd ever have the courage to try and paint something that large (hell ...I've only recently been brave enough to try my hand at a couple of mounted figures), so I kinda understand how daunting it must have been.

You gotta be happy about the way it turned out though

 

[Mallachaz_Nightbane]

Great job mate. Hope it gives them a scare on the gaming table

Lol, I just noticed Kris is from Walsall, lol... so am I, well used to be more Aldridge... small world. Sorry didn't mean to hijack the post

 

[pogre]

Awesome work!

 

[Kris]

...I just noticed Kris is from Walsall, lol... so am I...

...well it is the centre of the universe after all

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

What the hell are you talking about you not being the best of painters?! It looks absolutely amazing and I'm molten lava colored with envy.

I don't even know how to repaint or even just highlight/improve my D&D minis.....