76 - Bonus Post! Officer of the Fleet and Nob with Waaagh! Banner

Well, a quick post showing 2 miniatures I worked on prior to embarking on this insane 365 miniatures in 365 days project I've got going here. To the left, you'll see my converted Officer of the Fleet for my Cadian Command Squad. He was put together using the torso, head, arms and shoulder pads of a Tank Commander (I believe the Baneblade one), a holstered pistol from the Tactical Space Marines kit, a sword from a Bretonnian kit, and the legs of a standard Cadian Guardsman. Getting the legs to fit with the torso was the toughest part of this conversion. I had to carefully estimate how much of the legs would be showing from underneath the great coat as well as cut the legs off in a such a way as to fit the underside of the torso without the miniature looking weird and wobbly. I personally think the end result was pretty good. The paintjob was decent, if a bit messy and rushed in some parts, but overall, I think the model is a pretty close stand-in for the actual Officer of the Fleet miniature which Games Workshop sells.

To the right, we've got the Nob with a Waaagh! Banner. The banner was obviously a total conversion seeing as how none of the available plastic Ork sprues sold by GW has anything resembling a Waaagh! Banner as described in the Ork Codex. For the banner, I basically just piled on bit after bit until I felt the banner was sufficiently grand and that the model would support its weight without toppling over. I had originally wanted the Nob to actually hold the banner in one of his hands, but it was impossible to keep the model upright even after gluing a metal washer to the bottom of the base. So, what's in the banner? I believe the base banner is from the Warhammer Fantasy Orc Warboss kit. I then added the bull skull from the Boyz kit (or was it the Nobz kit?) along the top of the banner; glued the metal mask from a Black Orc kit over the bull skull; decorated the rest of the banner with odds and ends from the Vampire Counts Zombie kit (the dangling severed heads), skulls (both Orkish and human) from various other kits, and a Lizardmen snake icon to represent the Snakebite Clan. I'm very happy with the results. Personally, I think any Ork Warboss would be proud to have one of his Nobz carry something like this into battle. This is only the first of two Waaagh! Banners I've converted for my Ork army. Believe it or not, but the 2nd banner is even more elaborate.

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74 - Ork Boyz Mob #1! Waaagh!

Well, here's my production for Day 1 of my 365 day project of painting 1 miniature a day for a year. Apologies for posting it so late, but I honestly had finished these guys before the end of Sunday but could only find the time to take pictures of them and then post them really late at night. The picture to the left shows 20 Ork Boyz led by a Nob along with a Big Shoota and a Rokkit Launcha. They are my first complete Mob of which I have 2 more to go. 7 of the miniatures had already been painted months back. The remaining 13 were in various stages of completion, although most required just an ink wash and some minor highlighting. Thus I will consider the 13 new members of this mob as 1 miniature for the purposes of my 365 miniatures in 365 days project.

As you can hopefully tell, these Boyz are from the Snakebite clan. They have been mostly painted in 3 uniform colors (two shades of Brown, Red, and the occassional Yellow). Their skin does not vary much in hue - mostly Hunter Green although some have starker Light Green highlights than others. Their weapons are also predominantly Dolphin Gray with smatterings of Red, Yellow, and Black mixed in. Their bases have all been decorated with various supplies I've picked up at Michael's over the past year. I highly recommend using standard craft supplies to base miniatures. The money you save by avoiding the hobby specific basing material is enormous and, in my opinion, the effect is practically the same. By the way, I used Games Workshop's ink washes for the shading, which I also highly recommend. Their line of ink washes are priced reasonably but the quality of those washes have never let me down.

To the right is a more detailed view of the Nob which leads this mob. The keen eyed among you will notice that he's a different Nob than the first one I painted up for this mob. The original Nob has been officially promoted to full Nob-hood and has joined one of my Elite Nob units. (In fact, I've made him the bearer of the Waaagh! banner!) This Nob is more humble. All of the bits above his waist are standard Nob bits (except for his close combat weapon arm, which comes from a Black Orc kit), but his legs are merely those of a lowly Ork Boy. I figured that Nobs tasked with leading the Boyz are probably the smaller Nobs. The truly monstrous Nobs would be more effective grouped together as shock troops. After taking the pictures, I noticed to my chagrin that I forgot to paint the skull I glued to his base.

To the left is a picture of two of the Boyz from this mob. The Ork to the left is a standard Boy from the Ork Boyz kit but I armed him with a chain from the Warbikers kit. The Boy on the right, however, was given bits from the Warhammer Fantasy Orc Boyz kit - a shield strapped to his back and the head and torso of a fantasy Orc. Seeing as the Snakebite Orks are a bit more old-fashioned, I reasoned that they'd look more like their forebearers from millenia past. I think the kit bash was pretty effective as it gives what could have been a pretty monotonous parade of similar looking Ork Boyz a bit of character and uniqueness.

Well, that's Day 1! Yes, I haven't yet painted up a miniature from gray plastic to highlighting and basing, but that day will come (very likely by Tuesday at the earliest). Tomorrow, I'm going to finish off 4 Blood Ravens Space Marines that I also had laying around my painting station and treat them as a single miniature for Day 2.

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55 - Snakebite Clan Orks 2,505 Points Army List

My submission for the TOEMP Challenge #2 is coming along nicely. I've decided to paint up a 5 man squad of Blood Ravens Terminators (the shooty kind that came in the Black Reach set). I would've liked to continue building on my Ork army, but it turns out I don't have any Ork Elite or Heavy choices in my current collection! (I've decided to use the 5 Nobz - at least 2 of them - which came with the Black Reach set as leaders for my Ork Boyz mobs, plus 5 Nobz doesn't quite reach the 125 pts. minimum for challenge #2.) Since I've also committed myself to building up a Blood Ravens army, painting up the Terminators works just as well. As an aside - the intended purpose of the TOEMP to get the participating bloggers up and working on their backlogs has been a splendid success, at least for me. I don't think I've ever painted this many models in such a short time before. Before I know it, I'll be able to buy new models again! (Don't think I've forgotten about my committment to the Painting Points system either!)

Since posting will be a bit sporadic due to my focusing on meeting the deadline for Challenge #2 (August 27), I'm going to put up a few army lists over the next week or so just to keep the blog active. So, without further ado, in honor of the 8 Orks I painted up for Challenge #1, here's my Ork army list.

Snakebite Clan Army List - 2,505 Points

Legend:
Completed
Work In Progress
Assembled
On Sprue
Not Owned

HQ - 200 pts.
Warboss attached to Nobz (Elite choice) mounted in a Battlewagon
- power klaw, shoota/ skorcha, boss pole, 'eavy armor

Big Mek
- kustom force field, cybork body, boss pole

Elites - 745 pts.
Nobz (10)
- stikk bombz, 4 big choppas, power klaw, 'eavy armor, Waaagh! banner, Painboy

Lootas (10)

Kommandos (10)
- 2 burnas, Boss Snikrot

Troops - 990 pts.
Ork Boyz (20) x 3
- big shoota, rokkit launcha, Nob w/ big choppa, 'eavy armor, bosspole

Nobz (10)
- stikkbombz, 4 big choppas, power klaw, 'eavy armor, Waaagh! banner, Painboy
- Trukk w/ red paint job, reinforced ram

Deff Dread
- close combat weapon, kustom mega-blasta, armor plates

Fast Attack - 365 pts.
Warbikers (3) x 2
- Nob w/ power klaw, boss pole

Deff Koptas (3)
- 3 twin-linked rokkit launchas

Heavy Support - 200 pts.
Battlewagon
- killkannon, 'ard case, grot riggers, armor plates, wreckin'ball, 2 big shootas

To get to 2,000 pts., minus:
- Deff Koptas
- Deff Dread
- 1 Warbikers Mob
- 5 Kommandos
- wreckin' ball, grot riggers from Battlewagon

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54 - TOEMP Challenge #1 Completed!

Well, I really tried to get this challenge in under the deadline. I had the final 4 Ork models fully basecoated and sitting on my painting table, waiting for me to get home from work. All I had left to do was shading, highlighting, and basing. After dinner and spending some time watching the teevee with the missus, I headed on over to my painting table and got started on finishing the first TOEMP challenge. I thought I'd be able to get these last 3 stages done on each of the remaining 4 models that night because in my experience, the basecoating was the most time/ labor intensive part of the whole process. The shading, highlighting, basing stages were more just polishing up techniques. What I totally forgot to factor in was the time I had to spend waiting for the ink wash or the glue to dry! Because of that, I missed the first deadline by 1 day. I had all of the models washed and based last night, but finished up the highlighting and the photography this morning.

So, here they are - 8 Snakebite Clan Orkz in about 4 days time (for a total of roughly 8-10 hours of actual painting). We have a Nob with a big choppa and 'eavy armor (I didn't have time to put the bosspole on his back), a Big Shoota Boy, and 6 rank and file Boyz all armed with sluggas and choppas. The stage I really skimped on doing was the highlighting stage. At most, I gave each Ork a drybrush across the upraised textures of their skin with Christmas Green lightened with a mix of White. Had I not been under the pressure of a deadline, I probably would have taken the time to highlight more bits and bobs (like their weapons and pants and buckles). Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with them. Putting the last touches on the 4 Orks this morning felt really good. Taking photos of the 8 of them together felt even better. I now officially have a 10 Ork mob at my disposal (counting the first 2 Ork Boyz I painted months ago)!

The challenge was really fun, despite coming during my busiest work week in the summer. By Monday, I had just finished 10 straight days of teaching summer entrance test preparation workshops at a local community college. Still, the painting challenge allowed me to unwind every night in between grading practice tests. So, bring on the next challenge! Keep me motivated!

BTW, this is just a quick post to get my results up. I'll edit this post with a link to my Picasa gallery later in the day after I snap more individual pictures of the Orks.

EDIT: Here's the link to the Ork gallery with more pictures of the Ork Boyz from the TOEMP Challenge #1.

Leia Mais…

53 - 4 Ork Boyz Done! 4 More to Go! 2 Days Left! (TOEMP Update)

Just a quick update on the status of my TOEMP challenge #1. The 4 Ork Boyz I posted about yesterday have officially been completed - shaded with washes, highlighted (although not as much as I've recently been doing, solely due to time constraints), and based.

I believe I will take Kuffeh's suggestion in my previous TOEMP Update post and try to extend the choppa on my Black Reach Nob. With that minor conversion, I'll be able to reach the 75+ point threshhold for challenge #1 while shaving 2 models off my to-paint requirement. Now, this little strategery honestly has nothing to do with trying to "win" the challenge or anything quite so unseemly. The Ork army lists I've drawn up have always had the Nobs who lead my Ork Boyz mobs wielding big choppas - due to being a noob, however, I had assumed the Black Reach Nob models were already equipped with big choppas because their close combat weapons looked different (more elaborate) than your typical Ork Boy choppa, but after reading the Ork Codex more closely and searching the web a bit, it turns out big choppas are universally two-handed weapons.

Of course, at this point in the challenge - with 2 days left on the clock - I'm not going to complain too loudly about not having to paint an extra 2 Ork Boyz models hehe.

So, I've got the Nob, the Big Shoota Boy, and 2 remaining rank and file Ork Boyz left. They are primed and I will attempt to put down some basecoats tonight (at the very least, get the skin done). I'm wondering - is there a deadline on Monday for TOEMP submissions, 73rd (of Unforgiven Angels)?

Leia Mais…

51 - Unforgiven Angels "Tale of Even More Painters"

I've decided to participate in Unforgiven Angels "Tale of Even More Painters" (TOEMP) painting challenge. In a nutshell, it's a group of bloggers coming together to support and motivate each other to accomplish various painting goals within established deadlines. The deadlines are about 10 days apart (with the first one coming on August 17), and the challenges, I expect, will get progressively more difficult as things go along. While there are nominally "prizes" (e.g. digital trophies to be displayed on your blog for best all-around job done for a given challenge), I'm mostly interested in participating in TOEMP as a motivational tool. I've got quite a hefty backlog of miniatures sitting forlornly on their sprues, and I've promised myself, my wife, and my wallet that I'd forge my way through that backlog before purchasing any more miniatures. So, for all of you out there who have blogs and are looking for a motivational way to help you work through Miniature Backlog Syndrome, then I heartily suggest you join us in TOEMP! Together, we will conquer this mountain of textured and shaped plastic!

Now, let me give you a quick peek at what Challenge #1 entails for TOEMP:

Due August 17th, the bloggers committed to TOEMP must paint up at least 75 points worth of Warhammer 40k or Warhammer FB miniatures. (Epic 40k miniature painters must paint up at least 150 points worth.) The points are determined by the point cost of the models in their respective army books (i.e., not based on painting points). Thus, I've decided to make a dent in the Ork army I've been planning by painting up 85 points worth of Ork Boyz. In the most general language possible, this means 9 rank and file Ork Boyz with 1 big shoota between them and 1 Nob with 'eavy armor and a bosspole. (Hopefully that's vague enough to not get me into trouble.) For a more in-depth look at the rules and guidelines for Unforgiven Angels' TOEMP challenge, just click the link all the way at the beginning of this post and follow the instructions on that page.

Wish me luck! I've got 8 days to paint up 10 models - a faster pace than I've ever managed. I obviously still want to maintain some level of quality but I really do want to try my best at meeting this deadline. I already have 4 Ork Boyz lined up at my workstation, and tonight, I will start basecoating their skin and maybe more.

Leia Mais…

28 - Orks! Waaagh!!!

The painting's coming fast and furious! I guess that's what happens when a) you're a teacher who's work schedule lightens up dramatically during the summer months, and b) you're in the process of quitting smoking (day 6 of going cold turkey is in the books!) and need something to keep your mind from giving in to the hourly cravings.

When I attempted my first ork miniature, I didn't find it at all interesting to paint. The palette seemed very limited (green everywhere and dark, earthy tones). The fact that the ork miniature I painted was from the Black Reach set, and thus was very limited in its customization possibilities, might have also made it harder for me to become invested in the model. I seem to have more fun painting a miniature when I feel I've been able to inject some individual personality into it - the less customizable a model, the less interested I am with it.

Well, my second attempt at a Black Reach ork was a totally different experience. I had a lot of fun painting this beastly fellow. I wanted to maintain the Snakebite Clan theme I began with the first ork, but after studying the unpainted miniature for a little bit, I realized I could add a bit more color to it without totally turning it into something jarring and clownish. To keep the paint schemes coherent between the two orks, I selected a few colors that overlapped between them - for example, both models have Fawn colored pants and Brown Velvet leather straps; their sluggas are also painted in the exact same color schemes. Where I added more distinguishing and vibrant colors were in this model's topknot (Opaque Red) and his armor plates (Antique Gold with a Gryphonnia Sepia wash). I also went to town highlighting his skin - an initial layer of Green Isle then a careful highlighting with a 0 sized detail brush using Apple Green and finishing it off with a heavy wash of Thrakka Green. Overall, I'm very happy with the highlighting on the ork's skin. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, these next few months will be my highlighting months. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, highlighting (very likely through the layering of gradually lighter colors up from the base color) will be a natural part of my painting process.

Alright, my next miniature will most definitely be a Chaos Space Marine done up in Black Legion colors. It seems like 95% of my predictions of what I'm going to paint next turn up wrong (to paraphrase a famous military aphorism - "No painting plan survives contact with my capricious moods." But since I've already begun painting said Chaos Space Marine, I'm pretty sure this particular prediction will come to pass.

For more pics of the ork, click here.

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14 - Orks! Waaagh!

Well, a couple of weeks after painting my first Ultramarine, I present to you my first Warhammer 40k Ork! All in all, he was fairly easy to paint. He would've been even easier had I stuck to the black Clan Goff paint pattern that the Assault on Black Reach painting guide demonstrated, but I'm not too confident in my ability to use black as a primary color. Black as an undercoat is fine, but attempting to bring black to life through highlighting and layering and such still confounds me. I've read on various on-line and print miniature painting guides that black and white are two of the hardest primary colors to work with, and I can believe it. So, I changed the color scheme of my first ork, making him more rugged and outdoorsy rather than Mad Max/ Hell's Angels leathery as the Goff Clan is apparently supposed to be emulating. In hindsight, it looks like I subconsciously painted my ork as a member of the Snakebite Clan.

This ork is also my first attempt at integrating highlighting into my regular painting routine. Not too impressive at all, the highlighting, but it's going to be a slow process. As I mentioned in my previous post, it's taken me almost 6 months to become comfortable with my brush control and my shading (via washes) so I'm not going to rush myself in regards to gaining proficiency over the more advanced techniques up ahead. By the way, he's not quite done. I'll probably add some more bits to his base, then touch up the paint job a bit before matte varnishing him.

Personally, the ork wasn't all that interesting to paint. I dunno. I can't imagine having to paint up the numberless hordes of them necessary to field an army in 40k, but I guess to each his or her own. For all the monotony that the Imperial Guard seems to present, I've had far more fun painting the 7 (and counting) Guardsmen I've assembled than I had painting this one ork. But since the Black Reach starter set comes with, oh, almost 30 ork figures, I better find something to like about them soon.

As usual, click here for more pics.

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