'L'amour' from Milsy - 'The Luncheon in the Swamp'

Le Déjeuner dans le marais (English: The Luncheon in the Swamp) - originally titled Le snack (The Snack) - is a large slime on tree bark painting by the infamous Orcish Impressionist Orcward Maneater, executed some time before now. The painting depicts a female marsh troll (left), thought to be the leggy blonde fashion bogger (sic) Gretchin Toadbreath. She is ardently pursued by Halitosis Stinkbad (center) and Billious Bogtrotter (right), a pair of male marsh troll suitors. In the right foreground we see an unnamed Skaven lackey attempting to secure garnish for lunch in the form of dragon flies. Rejected by the Orcish Grand Council of da Artz, Maneater seized the opportunity to exhibit this and two other paintings in the Salon des Refuse where the painting sparked public notoriety and controversy because it lacked axes. The piece is now in the Musée d'Orky in da Badlands. A smaller, earlier version can be seen on a rotten stump, or perhaps it's just moss.

Artist: Orcward Maneater
Year: Some time before now
Type: Slime on tree bark
Dimensions: Some skullz x some skullz
Location: Musée d'Orky, da Badlands

What's it all about then?
This may well be my most left-field (Left Bank?) submission to the Challenge ever. The artistically inclined amongst you may recognise a subtle similarity or twenty to a work by a French artist working in the mid 1800's. Or not.

The miniatures included are a proper rag-tag collection. "Gretchin" is an old RAFM scuplt which was unfortunately missing the human "meal" clutched in her left hand and held at head height. This did however give me the opportunity to cut off her arm at the elbow and reposition on her hip in a somewhat more provocative pose. "Halitosis" is a Reaper Bones plastic mini and the first of these I've managed to paint successfully without any issues of paint rubbing off. I'm quite pleased by that as it means I can now paint some others I have without fear of wasting time. "Billious" is a real Oldhammer classic and I'm absolutely in awe of this sculpt. The eyebrows alone are a reason to love him. He's a further addition to my Chaos Warband. Finally, the Skaven is a cheapo plastic one from my bits box.

The scene is composed from the mish-mash of card, foam and plastic craziness. Most of it is fairly self-explanatory but I know people will ask about the lilies (pads are card bent over a dowel, flowers are beads), the dragon flies (cheap ear rings), the picnic set-up (tartan fabric and doll's house fittings) and the large tree (a tree root cut into three pieces and re-assembled as a dead oak - thanks Ev, some quality Wombling there mate!). Oh, and the glossy "water effects" are nail varnish, the working man's (a.k.a. tight-ass) answer to expensive professional [ahem!] mediums.

Regards the composition/theme, I've turned the original subject matter on it's head. Previously the female subject was being ignored by the males in the scene which I never understood. You're sitting about with a hot naked chick and you'd rather talk about politics or the weather? Bollocks to that, let's have a little ROMANCE lads and treat the lady with some love (OK, lust) and respect!

I suppose having executed my own personal homage I can now count myself amongst other greats of the art world including Monet, Cézanne, Picasso, Gaugin and Davo the Signwriter from round the corner. None of them had my breadth of vision obviously but there you go. You can't turn it off after all...

So there you have it... L'amour. Or something. :-)

Cheers,
Millsy

'L'amour' from ScottB - 'Arwen'

Lets be honest, Tolkien was never a romantic writer, it was only the screenplay form PJ et al that we got any kind of on screen romance going on, but it was clearly an underlying theme in the written stories.

It was as close as I can manage for an entry for L'amour!

Regards
Scott

'L'amour' from PhilH - 'A bit of Swash and Buckle'

When I was a lad, a staple of Saturday event telly were adaptions of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series. Napoleonic swashbuckling fun for all the family. And of course each episode had the same key elements: a dastardly villain (usually French), an incompetent or nefarious British officer, the cameraderie of the 95th, Sean Bean being heroic... and a love interest. By heck Sharpie went through women swiftly, or so if seemed. 

So when I saw this theme round, I knew I had the right mini for it: picked up from Brigade Games many years ago. The spitting image of Teresa Moreno from the Sharpe TV adaptions. A Spanish partizan working to force the (dastardly) French from her homeland, she meets  Richard Sharpe out on an unlikely errand for Wellesey with his 'chosen men'. They do some fighting, beat the Frenchies, romance and marry - all par for the course for Sharpe.

She untimely meets an unpleasant end at the hand of Sharpe'e nemesis, Sgt Obadiah Hakeswill. Which of course frees up our main man to woo a series of other pretty ladies...

She joins my band of Spanish partisans for games of TFL's Sharp Practice. I had to revert to old paint recipes as best I could so she matched the first that I painted years ago. 

I did have two other partisans half-finished to accompany her, but my ambitious 1:1 scale terrain project drags on, and a monster 8 hour wall painting session today means I'm too whacked to finish them off this evening. So they'll be submitted next week. 

'L'amour' from ScottS - 'Dorian and Mina'

Ok, this one requires a bit of a mental stretch....

On the left is Mr D Gray and on the right we have Miss Mina Murray.

Of course it's Dorian Gray (of Oscar Wilde fame) and Mina Harker (Dracula, Van helsing etc,) both sometime members of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that fans of great comic books or average films might recognise.

Dorian isn't in the original League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but he was added, and ably portrayed by Stuart Townsend, in the 2003 film, hence why he's here.  Towards the end of the film, both face each other in a fight to the death (hey, we've all had rough relationships from time to time,) but they were involved together at some point, so that qualifies as l'amour to me...

Dorian is from West Wind's 28mm Empire of the Dead range, but I can't for the life of me remember who made Mina, but I do remember that they also had a Victorian/Fictional range.  Both were fun to paint up, although, the Dorian figure was a much crisper sculpt to paint.  

So there they are, hopefully some other members of the League will show up before the end of the challenge.  Onto something naval in the meantime...

Scott

'L'amour' from StephenS - 'The Last of the Mohicans'

The Last of the Mohicans, is I know, probably the first choice of film for most of the romantics out there. But sometimes the classics are the best... =)

Actually, I re-watched this movie recently for the first time since I saw it at the cinema as a kid, to get myself suitably fired up to start a war-band for a 'Muskets and Tomahawks' campaign which will hopefully be kicking off this year. I'm not sure how much it helped me to research the period, but it did provide inspiration for this challenge.

I present to you Nathaniel 'Hawkeye' Poe played by Daniel Day-Lewis and Cora Munro played by Madeleine Stowe. These young love-birds find true romance amid the carnage of the French-Indian war and the deaths of everyone they hold dear. Proving love conquers all... though a being a good shot with a musket was probably helpful as well.

The figures are from Warlords Games, but are by Conquest Miniatures and come in a pack with all the main characters. The sculpts for the males are excellent and really capture the flavour of the characters. Unfortunately, the sculpts for the female characters weren't quite as good I felt. I don't think they look anything like the characters from the film, and my painting certainly wasn't going to help matters...

The young couple just before another romantic, desperate last stand...

The figures will find a place in my British force as Indian allies and townsfolk, I just hope they will be able to stay focussed on the battle and not each other!

'L'amour' from MilesR - 'Boney's Love of Campaigning'

 The topic for the L'amour challenge had me stumped for awhile.  How does one deal with the finer emotions of life in a scale miniature without, well, coming across as totally creepy.

I then realized that perhaps I could go another way and present there was likely no greater love than Napoleon being on campaign.

Plus I always wanted a Napoleon army command stand!

 The miniatures are 28mm scale metals from the Perry line (as is the table).  It's a great little vignette and was a lot of fun to paint up.  The map is, of course, a scale representation of the Battle of Wagram at exactly 7:15 pm July 5th, 1809.

Ok it's not really, it's really just some made up lines and blotches of color.

I'm really running low on Perry's and need to restock!

I've also been putting a lot of work into my submission for the Nautical challenge but may have bitten off more than I can chew on that one.

'L'amour' from TeemuL - Tom Bombadil & Goldberry

"I had an errand there: gathering water lilies,

green leaves and lilies white to please my pretty lady,

the last ere the year's end to keep them from the winter,

to flower by her pretty feet till the snows are melted.

Each year at summer's end I go to find them for her,

in a wide pool, deep and clear, far down Withywindle;

there they open first in spring and there they linger latest.

By that pool long ago I found the River-daughter,

fair young Goldberry sitting in the rushes.

Sweet was her singing then, and her heart was beating!"

- J.R.R. Tolkien

'Defensive Terrain' from BillA - 'There's Gold in That There Monster!'

I was originally going to skip this bonus round, as I was feeling pretty stumped and didn't want to do a foxhole, a series of pavises (pavisi?) or a trench section.  I mentioned this to my better half, and she commented, "Well, what about like a stone golem? Would that count?" And then the hamster started running on his little wheel in my head.  What if the terrain itself was on the defensive? We looked at miniatures together, and I went gaga over this Earth Elemental from Reaper's Bones line.  I started looking a little bit at a group of crossbowmen or maybe some dwarves with hammers to be attacking the Elemental.

While I was at work, Gina bought the Earth Elemental, and since she didn't really like the dwarves she was seeing, went looking for other options, stumbling across a three-pack of Zombie Miners in Reaper's Chronoscope line.  Perfect! When I got home, she told me what she'd ordered and I, deciding the Miners needed a directing force, went looking for a western witch to command them, settling on the "Wichita Witch" from Reaper's Savage Worlds (Deadlands) line.  I don't know much about Deadlands, so I don't know if she actually is a spellcaster or not by canon, but to me she is.

The Elemental I painted with layers of beige drybrushing to give him a sandstone look, then picked out the crystalline-looking bits as quartz (they have a little bit of a shimmer in person from drybrushing grays and white over silver) and painted a few of the little rock nuggets as gold.

insert your own joke about his Butte.

The zombies got chalky gray skin and a fairly limited palette for clothing to keep them looking kind of unified.  I like how the guy with the shovel looks like a slimmed down Tor Johnson from PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.  The witch got a very simple paint job based on what you could expect from a "black hat" villain in an old western movie - though the Elemental is a far cry from Roy Rogers!

Forgive the lack of a detailed diorama base with everyone on it - Conception to completion on this project was less than a week! With that kind of pressure maybe I should have put some diamonds on the Elemental...