Thanks for the feedback. As you'll see below, I ultimately settled on using the Iyanden Darksun color.
Update on some of my painting now.
Here's the basically finished Dwalin. I went back and changed his belt to be brown with a silver buckle. I also finished up the cloak on this model and added a bit of shading in the beard.
Next up is Bofur. Bofur (and Bifur) are described in the book as having yellow hoods (i.e. cloaks). Not wanting to use a very bright yellow I opted for a design using the Iyanden Darksun as a base. I also used some Marigold Yellow (from the Reaper line of paints) and bleached bone to highlight. I'm pleased with the effect.
In addition, I pained up this model who was destined to be Bifur. However, during the painting of this model, I realized that hated pretty much everything about it. I've been bothered with my efforts on the conversion of him for some time and I was hoping I could paint my way around some of the rough stretchs of the conversion. However, nothing I tried worked. I almost scrapped the whole project out of the frustration! For what its worth, I painted him first before moving to Bofur where my confidence was restored. However, I still don't have any good feelings about this miniature. I'm already looking at new options to convert another ranger and scrape this one all together!!
Lastly for today, I started painting Gloin. I'm really pleased with how the face on this model turned out (given that its basically covered in a hood). I even managed to pull the eyes off! However, he's an impossible model to get a good picture of! I tried to do some different things with the painting of the leather armor on this one. He actually looks much better in person than these crappy pictures. I'm a bit nervious about his cloak. It needs to be white so I've started with a basecoat of Astrominicon Gray and Skull White. I'm worried that imperfections in the conversions might really show up in this cloak. We'll see when I start tackling the shading and highlighting.
Finally, someone asked for a Group Shot of the whole crew. So here you go:
{ PORTAL }
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Can't wait to see them painted! 
