Bad Moonz Ork Loota ... First of Five

From the two boxes of Ork Lootas/Burna Boyz in my collection, I plan to build two squads of five comprising an even number of Lootas and Burna Boys. While from the gaming perspective I have heard that the 6th edition has made things more 'shooty', thus making it more sensible to build single squad of ten Lootas, I am approaching it more from a painters angle. With two squads of both Lootas and Burna Boyz ... I would have 10 different models to paint. Thus far, I only completed one Loota. There were an insane amount of details on this little bad boy which slowed me down quite a bit.

Whatca lookin at guvnor?

This big shoota had so much details to paint

Side view of the big shoota

Red and blue wirings did make the model a bit gaudy but he is a Bad Moonz Ork after all

The huge back armour plate allowed for a bad moonz decal to be applied

Close up of the electrical thingamajig

Side view of the Bad Moonz Ork Loota

Big Shoota was angled slightly upwards

Even from the top, there were so much details to paint

This guy took me one week to finish painting so unless I ease-off on painitng in all the little details, it's going to take me too long to finish up the squad.

Currently, only three other Lootas have been assembled and basecoated

Assembling an Ork Loota
As noobish as this may sound, I found assembling this guy a liitle bit daunting. Just to share my experience, I found that doing it in the following order made things a bit easier.

Painted the parts separately

First, the big shoota was glued on ...

... followed by the head ...

... and ending with the left portion of the shoota

Other future projects
Thanks to exposure to board game miniatures by fellow bloggers out there like limp, khairul, MrChaos and others, I am starting to get into boardgames and may soon start doing some boardgame miniature projects. All this and there is still that new Chaos Space Marine stuff to consider. Phew!

Lelith Hesperax (Alternate Version)

Painting Lelith as a practise run - before I attempt the various Kingdom Death miniatures that I have - has thought me several valuable lessons which I will need to take heed of, or I will end up with the less than satisfactory results (an understatement I know) as shown below.

Lelith Hesperax, Alternate Version (Front View)

Lelith Hesperax, Alternate Version (Back View)

I made a number of mistakes which were compounded by further rookie FUBARs along the way.

Firstly, I am still very inexperienced working with Citadel Finecast. This being, by far, the smallest model I have worked with, caused me to be too careful when trying to clean the mould lines, rough surfaces, etc. As I will later know to my dismay, this set up a very weak foundation for the primer. 

Secondly, I decided to prime the model white. Based on my experience so far, white primer doesn't seem to apply as well as a black primer. While choosing white itself was not the issue, applying white primer on a miniature that had not been prepped properly was a recipe for disaster. As shown below, the white primer did not really take properly (not sure if the fact that I had a very old can of paint contributed to the problems) and presented a very rough surface for painting on.

Thirdly, with the primed surface already so rough and uneven, I made it even worse by deciding to cut out some pieces from Lelith's torso armour to make it less Dark Eldarish (noob faceplam). Also, priming white is more for expert painters so as you can see from the final results - there were still some white spots showing after I had finished.

Fourth and final nail in the coffin, I painted this model all through to the wee hours of the morning from about 10 pm to 6 am. Luck would have it, I painted the face at around 4am in the morning when I was dead tired and zombified. I messed up the face really bad and kinda scrapped off the paint and repainted it (I did this twice) before putting up my hands and admitting I had screwed up. So I just touched up stuff the best I could. 

One lesson I have learnt is that patience is paramount when painting miniatures ... when you are losing patience step away from your minis and come back to them later.

Dancing appointment gone wrong ... "Meet more people mom says ... when are you going to find a new husband she nags ... sheesh," grumbles Lilith while out on her date.

Having blonde hair was attracting all the wrong people ... soon Lelith was to dye her hair red.

So long story short ... I messed up. All part of the learning process I suppose.