Grim Angus

This model rocks. Plain and simple. I loved painting it. It's a great pose with a good level of detail. Everything was easy to get to on the model as well, which made it pleasant to spend an excessive amount of time on it. In fact, this guy got a much higher level of quality treatment than anything else for the last couple months. It was nice to slow down and spend extra time on this. It was also nice to paint a troll again, given that I hadn't painted one for quite a long time now.
I spent a fair amount of time working the metals on this model, as I've been prone to do lately. I really have found that the extra work really pays off. It gives the metals more "forced" contrast and helps create a better sense of surface. It also helps in the end product after I've sealed it so that the dullcoat effect doesn't flatten the entire thing.
I'm still not feeling very good about my zenithal highlighting skills, but it's coming along. It's just hard to think that way still. The face could have used a bit more work too, as the highlights seem to be much less dramatic than everything else. I won't even comment on the shirt/pants except to say that for some reason the color rubs me the wrong way, but I can't pin down why.
Something I did very different this time, best exampled in this third picture, is use a lot more color hue variation in several areas. The jacket is a good example. I used primarily brown-based colors, but varied between green tones and red tones as I went. I focused more on choosing hues carefully than blending. In the end, the blending turned out to be less important as the variations in hue created a sort of unique blending effect of its own. This was a real branch out for me, and required much more attention to color choice for me. I'm very happy with the result though, and looking forward to experimenting more with this.