On the Workbench: Harlequin Giant Forest Troll

Giant Forest Troll

I have been out of the miniature painting game for many years but as I've always found it to be quite stress relieving I recently decided to give it a another go, so invested in some new brushes and paints.  I hope that I can begin to put a dent in the large stock of unpainted miniatures which I have collected over the years.  My first project is a Harlequin Miniatures Giant Forest Troll.

I was given this miniature many moons ago as a birthday gift and I had one abortive attempt at painting it soon after moving into my new home 9 years ago.  The miniature is a multipart casting comprising of torso, legs and a huge log club which the troll wields with both hands.  So the first order of the day was to de-flash the parts and then pin and glue them together with superglue.  The gaps (and there are plenty) were then filled with milliput and textured.  I then mounted the miniature to a Foundations of War 60mm Round - Battlefield Debris Base and sprayed it with black primer.

I never liked the painted image on the box lid as it was far too troll-like, so I decided to make mine a bit more generic so it could serve equally well as a giant or a giant ogre.  I use Miniature Paints (the ones in the little glass bottles), they're cheap and have a reasonable consistency and don't seperate too much unlike other paints I've tried in the past.  My painting style is to build up layers of colour from a black base getting gradually lighter and lighter and I find that this gives a good balance of detail at a stand-off scale, particularly when you are painting a bad casting.

Progress: face and skin all painted

I usually paint the face first to give me a guide to the rest of the figure and then block out the large areas of skin and clothing in darkest shades.  With this miniature it was almost 30% painted to begin with but I wasn't happy with the skin tones so I decided to paint all the skin first.

The giant troll is wearing a sort of animal skin toga which barely covers its bum but the painted example on the box shows no trousers.  Clearly this creature is fashion concious ( and enough of a seamstress to sew an animal hide toga) so I decided that it wasn't going to be comfortable without trousers.  These I'll paint as a patchwork of different smaller pieces of cloth which it has clearly picked up off the battlefield (including a rather fetching red gingham tablecloth).