This was going to be an 'in between' project, and I didn't follow my normal routine. Normally I get inspired by fantasy art, a movie or book for example, in this case I spent 10 minutes digging in my bitsbox and found an 'old' GW mini that came (free) with White Dwarf issue No. 238, Aenur, and was meant to be a part of a Mordheim warband. A mini with probably the most beautiful sculpted elven face I've seen. Furthermore, a plain big cloak to practice blending, and a lot of fine detail, perfectly to put my painting skills to the test!

The inspiration for the base came from the article in the above mentioned White Dwarf, I chose a dark street scene. I wanted a cobblestone/flagstone kind of base with 1 object next to the mini, something like a pile of garbage, a rat or something similar."Less is more" would be the thing to keep in mind, nothing fancy.

After further examination of my pile of plasticard/-tube/-rod/ etc. I came up with a piece of plasticard with a cobble- flagstone effect, and after a trip to a local hobby store I found a plastic antique looking streetlight, this would fit perfectly into my little street scene, and an even bigger test of my painting skills, because I had to do some really difficult shading!

I used the same type of wooden base I used With the Grave Guard, a wooden table leg end (these are used at the end of a steel pipe table leg!). I sawed the top off and using a file and sandpaper (grit 60-120) to get the shape I desired. After that I took my hobbyknife and cut out a piece of cobblestone effect plasicard following the different stones, to fit on top of my wooden base. I glued that onto the base using superglue, and filled the transition areas between wood and plastic with 2 part filler. I use this 2 part variant primarily because of it's fast drying ability! After 10 minutes of drying time (the filler was a little harder now, and didn't stick to my tools by anymore) I made some texture with a toothpick and a small steel brush into the semi hard filler. After that I drilled a little hole into the bottom of the base and screwed a large screw into the hole. That screw would be used to hold the base when staining it. Because the original wood color is quite light I like to stain it with a darker color, just using water based stain. Apply it in like 3 coats and make sure it dries thoroughly and use grit 400-800 sandpaper to sand between coats (no after coat 3 you DO NOT USE THE SANDPAPER Duh :)!!) When you do that you end up with something like you can see at the pictures at the left!

At this time I came up with the idea to add a drain hole. I cut out a square, a little bigger than Aenur's foot, following the line the stones were in. Using my scalpel and a file I made the edges curve inwards, towards the hole that I made, and after that sanded them (grit 800-1000). Using 4 little pieces of plastic rod (I believe 1 or 0,75 mm diameter) (later Craig stocks www.slappingpaint.net pointed out that those bars should be flat instead of round, but after using greenstuff trying to correct the mistake and trying like 4 times (and finding out the amount of greenstuff was to little to stick to the round bars) I decided that the only way to try to correct this mistake was by painting it flat using reflections correctly. Even looking closely, the flat/round issue wasn't that big a deal, it hardly shows, because the very tips of the rods are a little flattened to make sure the greenstuff around the edges would stay in place, and no plastic would stick through the greenstuff when sculpting.) Then when those 4 small bars were glued in place I prepared a small amount of greenstuff and sculpted the edges, again nothing fancy, 4 straight flat edges.

Ok surface ready, drain hole ready, time to figure out the positioning of the streetlight and the mini. Using the drain hole as a reference point I made a small triangle, drain on one angle, streetlight and mini on the other two.

I measured the diameter of the street light and took a electric drill and drilled a 4 mm deep hole at the point I marked. I did not glued the street light into it though, because it would stand in the way when painting Aenur. This I did after the mini and the light were painted!

The base was ready, streetlight was assembled, time for my focus point, the mini. The mini is quite finished and I decided that no big heavy converting was going to be needed.

First thing I did was removing mold lines, the cloak had a big edge in it, and it took a bit of filing and sanding (grit 400 800-1000) before it was gone. After that I did the usual 'sword sharpening' the blade was rather thick and heavy for the mini, so with a flat file I filed it thinner, and gave it a tanto style edge (this was, I have to admit, an accident, I filed a bit to rough and the sharp tip of the blade was damaged, so it wasn't until THEN that I decided to go for the tanto style :) !!) The mini needed no greenstuff really, I just gave him some hair extensions, hehe, I just lengthened his hair a little! (I just had to use greenstuff I suppose!)

All components were ready, the only thing to do was glue on the mini. The base was a good thing to hold the mini when painting, so I decided to glue the mini onto the base before painting (something I normally never do!) The position of one of the feet was already marked. So I drilled a 1 mm hole into Aenur's right leg and glued a piece of brass wire into that, after the glue was dry I clipped it leaving 5 mm sticking out of his right boot. That piece of wire was used to position Aenur even better, after that at the point I marked also a 1mm hole was drilled, I could place the mini onto the base and could turn him around only 1 point, the right boot! When the perfect position was found I glued the 5mm brass wire end into the hole and also put a little glue under his left boot to further fixate his position.

ALL IS DONE!! You see with almost no material and with minimal sculpting skills, a unique and beautiful base and mini. Took (without drying times of paint greenstuff and glue) maybe 3 hours of real work!