Completed Mountain King

  I've had him almost a year, and he's been sitting there with the normal trollblood color's base on him that whole time until last week.  Last week, for some reason, I got the itch to paint him.  I don't know why, but it's been a task I've been afraid to tackle for a long time.  Mainly because of the base.  I had a grandoise plan to build a circle temple around him that he's recklessly destroying.  However, sometime last week at the plant I work at, I stumbled across a concrete core that had been drilled out to allow for electrical conduits.  At first I didn't know what to do with it, but I went ahead and pocketed it because it'd be invaluable somewhere as a hobby item.

  Once I got home and did the pocket dump routine to my hobby box, I saw Bruce, and held the concrete core up to him.  Suddenly the concrete core was a pillar, and I saw the opportunity to do something unique with the Mountain King.
 

  That's right.  My King has 4'' reach because he's swinging a huge pillar that's bigger than most warjacks.  Not kidding.  That thing is bigger around than a Khador jack without arms.  So back to the beginning.  I wrapped this pillar up in some leftover jewelry chains of my wife's, and glue it to his arm.  I removed all the whelps I could, and didn't add any of the others.  I let the ones coming out of his torso, but I felt like everything else was too much.  In fact, two of the others, I've based them on their own small bases and will use them as regular whelps.

  Then I glued this whole thing to a base covered in rocks.  This thing weighs a ton.  I finally took all of my Cygnar out of their bag, and set them to the side sadly, even while they cried out that Dynamo would make them playable.  Negative.  So off to the side, and I built a foam box for the King.  He takes up a third of the Cygnar bag by himself.  I'm trying to stuff most of Runes and Elementary Evolutionism into the bag (Basically models that I'm not bringing to every game), but the King is huge.

  I messed around with painting runes on the pillar, and I may go back and do it at some point, but I doubt it.  I wasn't planning on using most of the chains, but that pillar really got me going.  I went from imagining a temple-wrecking Mountain King to a Bruce that's hell bent on revenge and he's bringing parts of prison with him to beat the daylights out of eveyrone else.

  Then I fell in love with my wife again.  See, all this shading and stuff was done in 15 minutes with an airbrush.  It doesn't get any easier.  I would not want to do a King without an airbrush.  I sealed him at this state, glued him to the base and took him to the FLGS. I actually have a batrep enroute with the King in a Grim2 list.  

  Now we're going places.  I was driving north through Missouri and I saw this tan rock lining the side of the road, but you could see where it had been weathered to a grey.  Even the water runoff areas were a cloudy grey, and I really liked that effect.  So I based the King's rocks in a british tan kind of color, and after this picture, shaded and drybrushed them.  After that, I did the same thing with grey, but catching only the high points and edges.  Really, anything that looks like it'd take a lot of rain as the King trods along in the middle of a thunderstorm.  

  

  I finally got to finish him today.  I'm very pleased with how he turned out and I'm excited to see him on the table.  The kilt was my wife's idea.  I wanted to incorporate the kilt the rest of my army has, but wanted to take advantage of the patchwork the King has going on.  What you see is my wife's idea.

  If you look closer at the rocks, you'll notice he's got a lot of blood runoff.  I really wanted to emphasize what the King is really going through.  He's an aged, ragged dire troll that's literally growing rocks through his back.  It can't be completely harmless, and in the rage and anger, his heart is racing and it's pumping blood through everything, leaking through the damaged veins in his back and arms.  After I'd painted the rocks, I went through and did purple and red on the torn edges of his skin, like he's trying to heal and regenerate, but there's blood straight up flowing between the rocks and his skin.  The blood was easy.  Two red washes that I just let flow into the cracks.  I like what it did for the model.

  And that, folks, is my Mountain King.  Stay tuned for his batrep against Sorscha2.