It Was 1990 When I last Painted an Ork!
Pushing the Envelope!
The unexpected Christmas gift from my wife of a set of Games Workshop 'Orruk Ardboys' put me under a bit of pressure - I needed to make a good job of these! 😄
Don't get me wrong, I always try my best, but as I found out recently - with my Trench Crusade Lieutenant figure - I am really pushing the limit of what I am capable of with these 28mm scale miniatures...
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| Above: My first attempt at painting 28mm fantasy miniatures. A 'Trench Crusade' New Antioch Lieutenant. |
Luckily Games Workshops heroic fantasy aesthetic means that their Orruks are a little larger than 'historic' 28mm figures and a bit more chunkier too. So, I bought myself a cheap proxy figure from Lancer Games in Bridlington to try out a test run before I cracked open the Orruk set.
As it turned out this opened up another can of worms as this 'Bones' brand figure as my choice of practise model turned out to have it's own challenges when it cam to painting it. Despite very clearly stating that the model did not require priming before painting my experience quickly showed that it very clearly did and that applying my Vallejo paints to the plastic figure reminded me of when I tried painting those soft plastic Airfix soldiers when I was a kid!
The paint would not adhere and in the end I had to resort to applying a Vallejo grey primer anyway (I was later informed by someone on a local gaming shop forum that these Bones model only work unprimed IF you use their own brand of paints). 😐
Back to Square One...
Initial problems aside, I soon started to remember some of my fantasy painting techniques from back in the day. But, a lot has changed since the 1990s, and this included some advances in paint technology. I succumbed to the 'buzz' of new exciting technique which infest YouTube and bought myself some of Vallejo's ne 'Xpress Color' contrast paints.
Luckily, these turned out to be quite simple to use and I got on with them quite well. Though the upshot of this was that I ended up mixing several different painting techniques rather than devising a clear strategy and sticking to one painting plan. Still, experimenting is fun, and it was better that I did it with this test model than trying new and untested stuff out on my Christmas present.
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| Above: Wrong turn! Unfortunately, I tried out a suggestion from one particular YouTube tutorial and gave my model a bright yellow skin base... Erm, bad decision! |
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| Above: The upshot of my misguided first attempt was a vomit coloured Ork skin. Not what I wanted... So I had to repaint with a more forest green scheme. |
In the end I muddled through, with just one skin repaint, a few small bloopers and two incidents of my wobbly hand problem...
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| Above: Happier with my Ork skin this time, I began to lay down all the other basic colours prior to shading them. |
Conclusion
I felt vindicated in trying out a test model before undertaking a 'live project', I think that I have now devised a rudimentary roadmap of 'how to paint an Ork', though this is not to say that it's 'how to paint an Ork well'! 😂 Only time and a lot of practise will get me to that stage.
I've taken the precaution of searching out a few tutorial videos by people that have actually painted the Orruk Ardboy set specifically and made some notes combining my experiences with my test model and their suggestions...
So, next up over the coming weeks will be my go at painting the Orruks for real... 😬
Fingers crossed, eh?
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