LotR: Galadriel, Protectress of Lothlorien

Galadriel is a truly iconic character from the books and films. She is an elder even among Elves, having lived since before the First Age itself. She is counted among the most powerful, knowledgeable and beautiful of all elves, perhaps even the mightiest still living after the passing of Gil-Galad. She bears Nenya, the Ring of Water, one of the three Rings of Power granted to the Elves.

She is most often thought of as a powerful sorceress and indeed she is usually played as such in the Strategy Battle Game and War of the Ring game. In fact, that was the only way to play her in SBG until Games Workshop released the Fall of the Necromancer supplement and introduced this new version.

As the Protectress of Lothlorien, Galadriel gives up most of her magical powers in favor of significant combat skill and leadership.

I went with a different direction than GW and most on line examples I've seen when painting this version of Galadriel. Most of them have tried to duplicate the ghostly appearance she takes on in the film adaptation when she is talking to Frodo at her Mirror.

Instead, I painted her in "normal" garb and appearance but tried to highlight the combat orientation of this version. I did so by taking an Elf Blade from a plastic Wood Elf and placing it in her hand. I elected to do this in her left hand because her right hand is in position to show off her Ring of Power and the left is in a rather useless position otherwise.

You can see the basic start of the hand / sword modification in LotR WIP: Galadriel, Protectress of Lothlorien

I believe I'm going to try to redo this model in the near future though now that my skills have advanced somewhat. I would like to get a more elegant sword for her, perhaps the one wielded by the Arwen model and do some better work on her hand (maybe even sculpt a new hand). It would also give me a chance to enhance the paint job a bit. I'm not disappointed with the job I've done, but I could do a bit better now. When I first did this model was before I started working with blends and washes and she was completed with mostly basic shading and dry brushing.