Brown Lands Ranger

This was a fast last-weekend entry for Palikkatakomo's Monochrome (actually not monochrome) contest. We had two contests running side-by-side, and I had already completed my entry for the other one (I'll post it here later for weird reasons). I felt an obligation to make something for the other contest as well as I usually like to pay some attention on the colours of my MOCs; limiting to one gradient was an interesting challenge, as such. I had already done a model of that sort for Summer Joust in 2022, though. My small efforts were rewarded this time as I got the second place and the Plum Blossom set (I had reviewed it for New Elementary last year, but another one doesn't hurt).

I had some brief ideas of using green to make some sort of earth/plant creature, probably as a somewhat two-dimensional painting type. I have lot of green plant pieces as I havent built many green landscapes lately, and they're difficult to utilise in character builds in large masses. I abandoned the idea, though. Instead, I ended up using the vast palette of different browns - one of them is the skin colour here, included free of charge - with the actually plausible idea of camouflage. The jump to Tolkien-themed ranger associated to the notion of Brown Lands west of Morannon was a short one. Rangers are cool, and I find myself liking Aragorn more and more as years pass (though this is not him). 

The hood is an old tablescrap originally intended for the Death (of Discworld) years ago, in black. I thought it was best not to preserve that any longer. The dark brown beard is associated with Numenorean complexion - naturally I could not make this one bearded - and a simple serious expression felt fitting for this figure. I used more dark brown to add a simple leather armour detailing to the dark tan tunic, while the mudguard shoulderpads help to make the silhouette more heroic. The joints are made completely with brown pieces, evincing the pleasantly vast selection of pieces in these earthy colours. 

Themetically, this has more than few similarities with one of my Palikkatakomo contest entries of last year - Vainolaista vastaan built for the medieval diorama contest.  Both feature a down-to-earth warrior with a bow and arrow; though here I added a sword instead of a spear, as that felt more natural for a ranger fighting orcs of Mordor that Finnish iron-age hunter. The bow, while having some similarities, is a tad more "civilised" with S-curve near the tips. The quiver uses the same tech with the arrows.

The final tweak here was changing the trouser colour to dark brown. They were medium nougat at first, but that felt too 1970s-1980s, reminding me of the weird underparts Aragorn of Ralph Barkshi's animated Lord of the Rings and even He-Man. The dark brown legs were more clearly trousers and balanced the colour better - that was the point of the contest, after all. Finally, a patch of land with wretched plants demonstrated the camouflage attire's function.  

-Eero.