The Raft Elves

'Not far from the mouth of the Forest River was the strange town he heard the elves speak of in the king's cellars. It was not built on the shore, though there were a few huts and buildings there, but right out on the surface of the lake, protected from the swirl of the entering river by a promontory of rock which formed a calm bay. A great . bridge made of wood ran out to where on huge piles made of forest trees was built a busy wooden town, not a town of elves but of Men, who still dared to dwell here under the shadow of the distant dragon-mountain. They still throve on the trade that came up the great river from the South and was carted past the falls to their town; but in the great days of old, when Dale in the North was rich and prosperous, they had been wealthy and powerful, and there had been fleets of boats on the waters, and some were filled with gold and some with warriors in armour, and there had been wars and deeds which were now only a legend.'

J.R.R.T, The Hobbit: Chapter 10, 'A Warm Welcome'

This scene was created as a display base for M130 'Lake-town long boat & crew', a very neat early multipart miniature. It iso ne of the long rowing boats of which, as you can tell from the quote from the Hobbit above, Lake-town was famous. A boat like this, but probably a larger variant, carried Thorin Oakenshield & Co up along the last stretch of their journey towards Erebor.

The miniature looks good straight out of the box I did a few enhancements to it. The oars were a bit thin and they tended to bend when handled so I replaced them with new ones made out of brass sheet, brass rod and green stuff. The original rudder had a funny fit to the boat so I made a new one out of birch wood and the captains arm was resculpted to grasp it more firmly.

It is sometimes tricky to find colors which makes your miniatures look natural and also make them look like they belong together without looking uniform. For this oar gang I picked blue, leather brown, off-white and tan. The captain has most color, the oarmen more natural colors and their blues are slightly dulled with grey. Stripes is effective to make them look a bit more interesting

[Click for a larger image]

If you look at the illustration Tolkien himself made of Lake-town (left) you can see that the miniature has been sculpted to very closely resemble the boat and its crew, down to the pointed hats of the crew and the swan head of the bow. In one of the leaflets that came with the 'Lake-town' releases , the creator Chris Tubb made the pointed hat an endemic trait among the Northmen. Chris has been very good as creating cultural and ethnic specifics for his miniatures of peoples in Middle -Earth and he has been very consistent in applying them. This ties in very well, I think, to make them sit well with the very 'real feel' of Tolkien's creation.

I wanted the boat to be the centerpiece of the scene so I resisted the temptation of putting any other miniatures on the dock. I still wanted to make it look like Lake-town was a town full of bustle and enterprise so I crammed as much goods and debris on it as possible. Barrels, lots of barrels, is of course a must (see Tolkien's illustration again). The barrels come from various sources but mostly from a model railroad equipment plastic sprue; so do the boxes and the white sacks. Other items; large barrel and sack, chest and tarp bundle are metal equipment from various producers which I have collected quite a few over the years. You can't have to many items like that, they always come in handy. The fishing net, part of it seen in the lover right corner, is cotton gauze. Once I had the net I thought I must have the catch to so I created the rack with fish out of plastic rod and cardboard.

I wanted a natural looking color scheme so I went with browns and tans for the boxes and barrels. To add a little splash of color I painted a few cloth items with stripes in muted red or blue. Bright green seaweed and a bit of metallic in the paint used for the fish made the scene look more alive. Some items were marked with the rune which is 'E' for Esgaroth, the Sindarin name of Lake-town. I thought it would be a suitable trade mark for goods heading out of the place. There is a stack of fire wood on he deck to, a commodity I am sure was trade from the Mirkwood for goods from the south.

To the right is a bird eye picture of the whole set. It has been constructed to fit in a slot in a 'The Hobbit' themed cabinet. It shows the boat laying out from the dock side of Lake-town on some unspecific errand on the Long Lake. Just as the boat is sculpted to resemble the boat in Tolkien's drawing I constructed this section of the dock based on how the beams and deck were drawn in the same picture. The beams are evenly spaced and two lines of bars connect them horizontally. The beams are made of 10 mm dovels carved and scratched to look naturally uneven, cracked and aged. I imagined that a town like this see a lot of repair because of the effect of winter ice and the occasional fire so I put a few rotted stumps of discarded beams in there to break the symmetry.

I painted the wood with a dark brown since with the Mirkwood nearby, tar would probably have been available as a mean to protect wood from rot

The seaweed clinging to beams, ladders and rope is fake fur and model railway tall grass formed into sweeping shapes by painting it with stiff lacquers. When dry it was painted with emerald greens with yellowish highlights and then given a gloss, wet looking coat. The waves, which I am pretty happy with, are sculpted with a teaspoon on acrylic plaster. When this was dry I scored ripples and foaming on them. The were then given several coats of black, blue and grey with highlight of blue and washed with blue-black ink. The foaming crests were highlighted with light blue-grey and white.

Below are some other miniatures associated with Lake-town which I painted for themed cabinet. I painted them some years ago so it is not my best work, I am afraid. Shading and highlights could be a bit more subtle. One day when I have oodles of time on my hands I might repaint them.


M131 'Master of Laketown'	M133 'Laketown Guardsman'	M235 Bard of Laketown and M132 Bard of Esgaroth
	Both guards have their spears swapped for halberds, the guard to the left has been converted to a new pose.

And below is the start to what I wanted to become a Laketown merchant bodyguard warband.

M110 Female warrior	M135 Laketown adventurer	M283 Boromir parrying	M112 Northman bard	M325 Northm. female ranger
Shield added		Shield and Northman hat added.	Shield added.	Shield added

Back to the top
Back to Scenes from Middle Earth