Finished - 'ard Boyz

I finished these Orks summer 2014 and never posted about them. Recently, I took out the old photo studio and tried to document them. I had some lighting issues in that I did it at night, in a poorly lit area wiht only two halogen lamps for lighting. I am still trying to get my photography skills to the point with it displays my painting skills. I have some programs that will allow me to edit photos (Apple has updated their camera software to include this recently too). Even though I can edit the photos, they still never turn out perfect. Seems that I am no better at editing photos than I am at taking them.

I knew that I was going to do a unit of 'ard Boyz (now called Boyz with 'eavy Armor) from the start and also knew that I was going to use WBF Black Orcs as proxies for them as soon as I saw a unit of the plastic minis. I fell in love with these models. What is more terrifying than a giant unstoppable green killing machine than a giant green killing machine wearing 100 pounds of armor. The kits also had very little Fantasy feel to them. Aside from little chainmail hanging out the cracks, they could easily be 40k Orks. 

Finished - Ork Wrecker Epic Post

I started this project almost a year ago. After a flurry of initial activity, I encountered difficulty in converting this 1:32 scale Army truck into a sufficiently Orky Speed Freak Wrecker. I started cutting up bits of plasticard into interesting shapes and gluing them on. I quickly found that this did not really make things look Orks and rather just kinda made it look like I had glued a bunch of crap onto the model. It was a mess. It like the more I did, the worse it looked. I initially tried to fix it by adding more armor plates, bits and gubbins but that really made it worse. Getting frustrated by converting it to an Orky Trukk, I set that project aside and tried to focus on other aspects of the conversion.

I wanted to magnetize the crap out of this vehicle to the point that as it became damaged, parts would come off of it. I wanted all the doors to work and the top of the cab to come off. I wanted the windshield to fold up and down. As the assembly went forward, I had to stop assembling the cab and paint the interior. The doors were held in by the top of the dashboard. To assemble it further, I would need to have the inside painted. Before I could finish painting the interior, I needed to get the driver and gunner assembled.

Army Feature - Trevy the Great's Space Marines

I saw Trevy's army up for grabs on Bartertown. While I was not in a place to drop what he was asking for a fully painted army, I was impressed with his cohesive color scheme, pervasive conversions, his composition, the detail painting and the extra work he did on his basing. It is clear that he put a lot of extra time and effort that he did not have to into this army. The end result looks good on the table.

Now if this were a BoLS Army Showcase, after that paragraph that took 7 min to write, there would be a giant copied and pasted section written by the person that painted the army followed my 5 or 6 pictures posted with no thought, insight or analysis. But that is not how we roll here at TMM. We use effort!

Finished - Ork Warboss

I have a couple of these AoBR Warbosses laying around so I decided to bang one out. I am unsure as to how I wanted to paint him in terms of what Ork Clan he belongs or does not belong in. I painted him in a very generic color scheme. All or most of the metal areas are in a silver or bronze color scheme. I used a little red and an accent color but tried to keep it to a minimum so that he could fit in with any Clan. 

I feel like this mini turned out. The metals are understated but well done. I could have put more detail into it but that would have made it take much longer to paint. Three things that turned out well are the skin, the conversion and the weathering. 

I think I have a pretty good system for painting Ork skin and it is unique as far as I know. It starts with a base of Hormagaunt Purple. I can hear the gasps now. Using purple as a the base for green skin gives kind of a contrast and makes the recesses look black without being black. After that you climb the typical green ladder. Snot Green to Goblin Green, wash Thraka Green and touch up with Goblin Green.

Weather or Not

I went to a train yard today and saw some awesome rust and weathering and wanted to post them here for future reference.