Tutorial: How to paint Great Eagles from the Hobbit

I’m really pleased to bring you guys another Hobbit based tutorial. I had such an overwhelming response from creating a whooping 17 tutorials for the Hobbit boxed game, I really wanted to continue and paint some more Hobbit models. I absolutely love the dynamic posing of the plastic Eagles so they made a great first purchase after the boxed game. Read on for the full tutorial. 

I’ve designed this tutorial so established painters find it interesting but also so new comers to the hobby can learn some basic and advanced techniques. I will use terms such as glazing and dry brushing, don’t worry if you don’t know what these mean because I will elaborate and explain during that step.

Paints you will need for this tutorial:

Black Undercoat spray (I use Vallejo Surface Primer)

Rhinox Hide (base)

Mournfang Brown (base)

XV-88 (base)

Baneblade Brown (layer)

Steel Legion Drab (base)

Eshi Grey (layer)

Stormvermin Fur (layer)

Rakarth Flesh (base)

Abaddon Black (base)

Balor Brown (layer)

Zamesi Desert (layer)

Screaming Skull (layer)

Averland Sunset (base)

Skrag Brown (layer)

Jokaero Orange (base)

Ratskin Flesh (base)

Administratum Grey (layer)

Lahmian Medium (technical)

Stirland Mud (texture)

In case you need to expand your paint collection, head over to Wayland Games or Slave to Painting, which both stock a huge selection of paints at competitive prices.

1. Basecoat all the feathered areas with Rhinox Hide, this is a base paint and goes on in a single coat, so I found it easier to use a brush then my airbrush in this instance.

2. We’re going to use Mournfang Brown in two different ways. First drybrush the main body, neck and the middle row of feathers on the wings (both sides) Drybrushing is a technique painters use to quickly paint raised details. To drybrush, dip your brush into some paint and then repeatedly wipe it off on a tissue until only a small amount paint is left on the bristles, then drag the brush back and forth over the raised area. you’ll see the paint only applies itself to the very raised edges. It’s a quick way to highlight. Then paint the front row of feathers (both sides) and the feathers on the back (see step 4 for the shape I mean) completely with Mournfang Brown. 

3. Use XV-88 to drybrush the the front row of feathers and the shape on the back.

4. Carefully highlight the front row of feathers and the shape on the back with Baneblade Brown. To ensure a crisp effect you’re best off painting the highlights on and taking your time. use a small brush like 000 or a GW fine detail brush. 

5. Highlight the body, neck and middle row of feathers with Steel Legion Drab. Once again it’s best to carefully paint these edge highlights on rather then drybrush. It just looks neater. 

6. Drybrush the lower row of feathers and the end tail feathers with Eshin Grey.

7. Drybrush these feathers further using Stormvermin Fur.

8. Paint on Rakarth Flesh edge highlights onto the grey feathers. 

9. I’ve added 3 parts Lahmian Medium to 1 part Abaddon Black and mixed it together on a palette (shiny white wall tiles are the best) to create a glaze. The idea with a glaze is to gradually build up translucent layers. Being able to see the layer beneath the glaze really aids the blending effect. The more glaze layers you add, the more opaque the colour becomes. So to put this theory into practice take your mix and apply it to where you want dark shading to appear. In this instance it’s to make the wing tips darker. As you can see we can still make out the highlighting and shading from the previous stages, wheres if it was Abaddon Black straight from the pot we wouldn’t.

10. Paint the head, the top of the neck and some of the beak (leave the tip black).

11. Highlight the head with Balor Brown.

12. Further highlight the head with Zamesi Desert.

13. Add some small lines of Screaming Skull to represent feathers on the head.

14. Paint the back half of the beak with Averland Sunset.

15. Add some streaks of Screaming Skull to the beak. 

16. Create another glaze of Abaddon Black and apply it to the front of the beak.

17. Paint the talons with Skrag Brown.

18. Highlight the talons with Jokaero Orange. 

19. Further highlight the talons with Ratskin Flesh

20. Add some small edge highlight lines of Administratum Grey to the claws. 

Finally base the model in a way which fits in with your collection. I used Stirland Mud texture paint highlighted with Karak Stone and the base edge was painted with XV-88. Static grass and scrub were glued on in small clumps.

For more Hobbit tutorials check out my Bilbo, Gandalf, Thorin, Gloin, Bombur, Ori, Dwalin, Balin, Kili, Dori, Fili, Nori, Bofur, Radaghast, Bifur, Oin and Goblin tutorials. If you found this tutorial useful, let me know in the comments.

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