A friend of mine (DurinsBane) and I are having a friendly competition to see who could build the best model of Bag End. It started off as a bit of meaningless rivalry between two friends and a good pace was set with regular updates on the One Ring website (click here). Unfortunately, the updates have become fewer and fewer until we’ve effectively stopped. I have become embroiled in a number of other projects (as I usually do) and DurinsBane’s model suffered an unfortunate accident at the hands (or more accurately – feet) of his girlfriend, so we’ve both done very little on this project for the past few months.

But to bring any new readers up to date with my model (go to the above link to see DurinsBane’s) here are several shots of the various components as it has grown over the past 12 months:

The tree above Bag End started its life as 64 strands of copper wire.
Once the branches were in the right shape, I started covering it with ProCreate and sculpting in the details.

The foliage is by MiniNatur – very life-like, but a little pricey.
The well was very quick to make too.

The first panel I made was the front door. I have since thrown that window out and plan on doing a better version.
The second panel is the parlour window.

The kitchen window was a joy to make. Everything seemed to work exactly as I wanted to. I wish I’d painted all of the panels at the same time though because now I am having extreme difficulty matching the colours of the stonework on every other panel.

It’s interesting to look on these images all in one spot and see the progression from the front door to the back door. I think the competition with Durinsbane has pushed me to higher standards than I’ve ever achieved before.

I am certainly very pleased with what I have achieved so far with this, and looking over the whole collection of panels I feel the urge to continue on with it even if DurinsBane has given up. I have one more panel to finish modelling and then I can finish off painting them all. Then it’s time for assembling them into a suitable landscape.