Happy Orktober!

 It's that time of year again--falling leaves, pumpkin spice beer, cloudy afternoons and, of course, MORE ORKS than you can swing a Thunderhammer at.  I finally finished up a Big Mek with his Kustom Force Field.  It had been sitting on the painting bench since early summer.  When I bought him, I realized much too late that it was a dreaded Finecast sculpt.   Upon opening the package, this model had more holes than Swiss cheese.  I spent a few days messing around with 'green stuff' (never ever again!), got frustrated, and set it back on the table to collect cobwebs for a few months.  I'm not sure what exactly came over me, but I decided to ork-up and just finish it.  I'm surprisingly quite pleased with how it turned out; however, it was the least fun and most tedious model I've tried painting to date--all the little wires, cables, chains, buttons, etc.  Not to mention that painting over primed Finecast--at least in my experience--gives a lot of friction against the brush.  I'm glad it's done, that's for dang sure.

I've also got some Lootas I finished up a while ago (I think I posted the first one back in May), but never got around to finishing.  Additionally, I was able to get my hands on some Meganobz--Ork Nobz covered in thick, cumbersome Mega armor--cheap on Ebay.  They were already painted, but I just cleaned them up a bit and added my own little orky flair to individualize each of the six models.   Lastly, I used some styrene sheet to cut up my own orky Aegis defense line that my squishy Lootas can fire at from behind, hopefully allowing their green butts to stay on the battlefield a turn or two longer before being blown into obscurity by lascannons, or Mork knows what else exists out there in the 40k universe.  That's about it for this post.

May your WAAAAGHs be a plenty this festive and bestive Orktober!

The Big Mek...He needs a name still.  Any suggestions?

And his Kustom Force Field

Lootas

The one with the cigar cracks me up every time I look at it

Meganobz

Orky Aegis Defense Line

Stay behind cover, boys

Tankbustas and Death Guard OSL

  I'm a pretty happy camper right now.  I entered my first 40k tournament over the weekend...and ended up getting 2nd place!  Not to shabby for playing Orks (an army whose codex is two editions behind...)  The dice were on my side and my list ended up working out pretty well.  At the last minute I painted up some Tankbustas, who basically shoot rokkits and throw bombs at vehicles.  Lot's of explosions--sometimes accidentally on the receiving end; such is Orks!  I finished painting them up today, and got back to my Plague Marines as well.  Trying to do OSL proved very challenging, and hopefully my skill will have improved the next time I attempt it

The Nob, Gas Guzzla, who leads the Tankbustas into the heat of the battlefield

Ready to blow something up

3/10 done

Death Guard Progress Report

Howdy, folks!  I'ts been a few weeks, but I've still been painting away.  My latest project is a unit of Death Guard Plague Marines.  I just gotta say these guys are so f@*%ing cool.  They're basically Chaos Space Marines who worship Nurgle, the god plague and disease.  In return Grandfather Nurgle has gifted his favored sons with putrid flesh and pestilence to spread across the galaxy...

Death Guard: Aaaaaand you're dead...

I'm almost done with the unit of six Plague Marines and one Plague Champion.  I won't go into too much detail about my painting method--I just kinda went with my instinct, and I don't remember exactly all the colors I used etc.  I attempted some new techniques on these guys, most notably, my first-ever attempt at OSL, which I'm fairly happy with, but I definitely need to study how light reflects off of objects more;  it's a work in progress... I've got two guys just about finished, so I'll leave them for you to check out.  I should have the rest done by next week.

Two Plague Marines.  Not the best lighting, and my feeble attempt at OSL on the right guy.  I'm still debating if I should have light reflecting off of his rusty plague knife.  

This over-exposed shot brings out the OSL much better I think...

All kinds of fleshy mutations...

...and, of course, rust pigments!

That's all, folks.

Hey, I'm still here!

       Well, my (crappy) camera has been out of commission the past few months--hence no recent posts.  However, I've still been slapping paint on unfortunate little figures.  I recently got a great deal on Foundry Miniatures Painting and Modelling Guide by Kevin Dallimore.  As of this writing the going rate for either a new or used copy is over $100!  I was lucky to find a used copy for $25.  Sir Dallimore presents some great guides and tips on his unique way of painting, most notably his one-, two-, and three-color methods--I would describe his style as very bright and cartoon-y.  I've tried to emulate as best as I could, and I'm pretty happy with the results.  My painting will never be exactly like his, Marike Reimer's, nor any other respected painter, and that's fine with me.  I have no desire to win a Golden Daemon, or even enter any contests for that matter;  I just enjoy this niche hobby for what it is, and learning something from each miniature I sit down to paint.  I can see that I'm now just starting to develop my own style, but I will still eagerly gobble up anything that will help me improve.  A friend was nice enough to let me use their camera on a whim to take a few photos of things I've recently been working on.  The shots are a bit crude--a culmination of less than spectacular lighting, and a low-quality camera--but it's been so long since I've posted here, that I just wanted to put something up.  Hopefully, I'll have some better shots next time around.

Here's an American War of Independence Continental Infantry model.  I've got several more on the table waiting to be finished up.  Once they're done, I have some Redcoats to paint and set them up against.

I actually based the figure onto a nickel.  It gives the figure a nice weight.  I know I could've used a washer or something, but using the nickel just screams 'Murica!'

Here's Mordoon the Red.  The camera doesn't capture all the different shades of his cloak, unfortunately. 

Blurry, but I hope you get the idea...

I just finished up this orc archer tonight.  I had a lot of fun painting him, and tried a bunch of techniques from Kevin Dallimore's book.  One of the more interesting ones has to do with the chainmail armor under the fur pelt: paint a black undercoat followed by bronze, then drybrush silver over that (with highlights on the raised areas), giving it a heavy, weighted look.  

I doubt his aim is any good, but with all those arrows he's bound to fell a few low-level would-be heroes!

Ork Loota

 That greenskin itch has returned!  I decided to add a unit of Lootas to my (slowly) increasing 40k Ork army.  Lootas seem pretty fun to play on the table;  just keep them back so they can fire D6 Strength 7 shots at a whopping 48"!  I started batch painting five of them this weekend.  I decided to complete one as a test model today, though.  I keep wanting to post pictures of my progress as I work on a model, but as I paint, I can't pull myself away from the table long enough to take pictures.  It'll happen one day--probably not. Not much to say, really.  I had fun messing around with colors and highlights.  I was searching around on Google for some inspiration.  I really like the idea of the guns painted red with orange-ish highlights.  The extra fine detail brushes work really well for this.  Oh, btw, painting red on black is a huuuuge pain.  I finally realized--about halfway through painting the gun-- that I should have painted a layer of grey first where I would later paint red.  I need to remember to do that while I finish up the other four models...  Here's the first finished one (but not based yet):

This checker pattern probably took half a dozen times to do.  Still not totally content, but it does look orky.

Dakka dakka dakka dakka....

Hundogaar, the Mighty Barbarian of the White Lynx Tribe of the Northern Wastes

 He's finally done!  I tested out some of these Reaper Master Series Paints--from now on referred to as MSP-- that I picked up a few weeks back.  Unfortunately, I missed some of the mold lines before priming him;  I wasn't really up to filing the newly-found ones and re-priming him, so I promised myself to look more carefully next time.  I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with the skin highlights.  Sometimes when I look at this figure I really like it, and other times I'm overcome with an urge to just throw it in the trash...  I guess  there's always new figures to paint and improve with, though; I'll just chalk this one up to gaining XP in the miniature painting skill.  I have no idea how I came up with his  name, but as I was painting him I couldn't help but think of Conan (obviously), Wulfgar, and Fafhrd--now I want to re-read Swords and Deviltry.  If this painting was a complete disaster, at least I have a new area of my ever-expanding D&D world to draw upon.

I imagine him rising at dawn to practice his sword skills atop a snowy mountain top, his blade cutting through the icy wind, a silhouette amidst the crimson morningtide...

Da Boyz

  Just a little update.  I decided to see how quickly I could paint sixteen Ork Shoota Boyz.  All in all, it took about two and a half hours to finish them off.  I've got a few other things I'm working on--and taking my time with--, so I'll post those when they're done.

                               "Okay, Boyz.  On the count of three:  One, two, Space Mariiiiiiiiine!"