Clansman of Lamedon

Although my new, ultra-bright painting set-up has really made a difference to my vision, it unfortunately hasn't created any time to actually pick up a paint brush. Still, sometime in the past few weeks I managed to finish one figure, this 'Clansman of Lamedon' from Games Workshop's The Lord of the Rings line. It's a bit of a curious figure. While I love the sculpting and the pose, it doesn't fit that well into my personal vision of Middle-Earth. Although Lamedon is one of the provinces of Gondor mentioned by Tolkien, he doesn't say that much about it. I don't think there is any reason beyond simple geography to assume they fight and dress like Scottish Highlanders. Still, designers have to design something, and when they have little-to-nothing to go on, they must draw upon other sources.

Before I started painting this figure, I spent a couple of days agonising over what tartan to paint his kilt, as every other version I had seen painted had some form of tartan. Then, I said, 'heck with it', and decided to forgo the whole idea of a tartan, or highlanders. I'd just paint it in colours I liked.

Well, I think the result is pretty striking. The heavy armour, the skirt, and the grieves, combined with my paint job makes the figure look more like an ancient Greek than a Scot; which is fine by me. The only aspect of the figure I wasn't happy with was the face. It just wasn't working for me, so I painted a beard on it. Now the figure reminds me a bit of Armand Assante in his roles as Odysseus and Alan Breck Stewart (in perhaps the best television version of Kidnapped!).

The figure came in a pack of three, so now I have to decide whether to paint them all in this colour scheme, or to give each one a unique dress.