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This entry has three pages:
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"Durin's Bane"
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[Click for a larger image]
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 omething was coming up behind them. What it was
could not be seen: it was like a great shadow, in the
middle of which was a dark form of man shape maybe,
yet greater; and power and terror seemed to be in it
and go before it.
It came to the edge of the fire and the light faded
as if a cloud had bent over it. Then with a rush it
lept over the fissure. The flames roared up to greet
it, and wreathed about it; and a black smoke swirled
in the air. Its streaming mane kindled, and blazed
behind it. In it's right hand was a blade like a
stabbing tongue of fire; in its left it held a whip
of many tongues."
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J.R.R.T, The Lord of the Rings;
The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II,
"The Bridge of Khazad-Dum"
Here it is, the Valarauko, the Balrog, the Demon of Might...
In Valaquenta in the Silmarillion we learn that these were once
lesser ainur, or maiar; powerful and fiery spirits that were
once corrupted by Melkor, the Vala who was later know as
Morgoth Bauglir. It is said in the Silmarillion that these
Valaraukar, which he gathered around himself in Utumno and
Thangorodrim, "became most like him in their corruption: their
hearts were of fire but they were cloaked in darkness, and
terror went before them; they had whips of flame." This particular
balrog fled the fall of Thangorodrim at the end of the First Age
and hid deep under the roots of the mountains where it was released
two ages later by deep delving dwarves. Within a years the balrog
slay both King Durin VI and his son Nain I along with many other
dwarves before they fled out of Moria. Since then it was know to
them as 'Durin's Bane' and its name instilled them with great fear.
As anyone who has read the chapter the 'Bridge of Khazad-Dum'
in the 'LotR' can understand, scaling down, sculpting and in
any way physically represent a mysterious, horrific and ethereal creature like a balrog is quite problematic. It will no matter
how well you do it look puny and crass. Part from that and because
of the evocative images it creates in the LotR, the issues of
whether it hand wings or no wings, horns or no horns etc. etc.
have probably been discussed by fans since the books were first
read. As John Treadaway, the editor of Tengwar, the newsletter for
Mithril Miniatures collectors, writes in their number one issue:
"The problem with designing and sculpting figures in an environment such as Middle-Earth is that virtually all collectors will have read (and perhaps re-read many times) the more important works and will have formed their own opinions as to what characters and creatures looked like."
Chris Tubb, Mithril's chief designer, writes eloquently in the same issue:
" So every Tolkien reader has a more or less common landscape but peopled
with dramatis personae of their own creation. All this is bad news to
the miniatures designer. It would obviously be a case of 'The film is
never as good as the book' for the external images can never look as
pleasing as those in your mind's eye, which in cases where magic or
horror is involved, as with Elves and Sauron, can be kept sufficiently
unfocused and mysterious. This is precisely the reasons I would never
do characters like Sauron, or the Valar, and would balk at such as Luthien."
But despite these cautious words they decided to do the balrog, and
that's a decision I think collectors are at the end of the day happy for.
Chris Tubb and John Treadaway invited to a discussion on the readers letters
pages in Tengwar, and from that discussion the balrog miniature eventually
took its shape. Chris Tubb cunningly enough made a multi part kit, which
meant horns and wings could easily be left out.
Myself, I guess I could find several quotes in the books supporting one look
or the other but I don't bother. I know I had one very strong impression of
the balrog when I first read the book at the age of ten. But since then I
have re-read it so many times and seen so many 'artist's impressions' that
they have created a whole row of images of this illusive creature in my mind,
which I all hold for valid. The balrog in the above scene is one of them, the
next time I will probably do something different.
The miniature comes equipped with a whip, but it
has only one tongue. As you can see from the quote above,
the balrog carried a whip of many tongues, a scourge,
so this was something I wanted to correct. I cut the
rather thin and flimsy single tongue from the balrog's
hand, and drilled a hole through its closed fist. For
the new whip I took seven equal lengths of 1mm brass wire
and twisted them to a bundle in one end. The tongues were
then bent into flowing shape, as they would appear when the balrog's swings the whip over its head. Since there are recounts
of how the valaraukar's' scourges could ignite, I decided to
set this one ablaze too. I achieved this by cutting small
jagged and pointed pieces of sheet brass, which I soldered
onto the tongues. Then came the tricky part; the tongues
should be tapering towards the tips so I rolled out thin
strands of epoxy putty which I clad them with, a few at a
time. I sculpted them the best I could knowing I would have
to back and shape them further as they had hardened. This
proved to be more difficult than I thought. The rather flimsy
brass flames got in the way for the grinding tools and because
of the fine granularity of the putty it dusted something wicked
and rapidly clogged my tools. With all the cleaning of tools and
touching of the tongues it took a long time and I am still not very
happy with the result. The tongue are very brittle and has cracked on
me several times, the whip is sprawling to much and it looks all
together a little to heavy. I probably should have worked with thicker
brass wire only, and grind that down to the right shape. The color
scheme looks good though; black with dark red highlights, and the flames
turned out better than I hoped for. Fire is rather hard to sculpt and paint
in a convincing way.
I just such a challenge with the balrog's sword to, which was
described as a 'stabbing tongue of fire'. Here I decided to go with
an impression of a blade not in full flame but that of floating iron
cooling down from great heat. I first painted the blade in yellow and
gave it a couple of glazes of orange to give it a nice depth. On to
this I then painted patches of black in a pattern that only left thin
cracks of fiery yellow visible, very much the way floating magma can
appear. I have done this before with reasonable success but I think
I made the areas of black a little to small this time.
I normally paint my miniatures using acrylic colors
and I could go on at length explaining why, but let
us just say it has to do with the size of the areas
on which you have to blend colors on a 32mm miniature.
On a miniature this big and with such nicely sculpted
muscles it would be a waste not to paint it in oils.
The reason is that acrylics set as it dries, which is
very fast, but oils dry slow and sets even slower, which
means you have much time to add on and blend in additional
lighter and darker tones at the appropriate areas.
Therefore you can achieve a much subtler blend between
the colors when using oils and this will look particularly
great when painting skin. I first gave the balrog a base
coat of acrylic satin black which I let dry thoroughly. I
then added a thin coat of lamp black oil paint, which I left
to dry but not set. From there I started to add on progressively
lighter tones as I defined the highlights of muscles and other
raised areas, ending up with a final color of grey white. A
note on black paints: they are never really black. It is true;
look for yourself the next time. They are instead very dark
shades of blue or brown. The blue tinted one is often called
'cold black ' and the brown 'warm black'. I think the brown
variant often turns out looking a bit dirty so I used a blue
tinted one for this particular miniature. When the oil colors
had set I used acrylics to paint teeth, eyes and other details.
The hair of the mane and crotch was painted in the colors of
glowing embers (Ouch! Tough creatures, them balrogs...)
Go to:
["Moria: Architecture"]
["Moria: The Orcs"]
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Peder Hammarskiold ph@shapingmiddleearth.com
Copyright Peder Hammarskiold 1999 All rights reserved.
