Ork Painboy [WIP - Skin, eyes and pants] & An Ode to the Gods of Chaos

Neglected and gathering dust, the Warhammer 40K miniatures in my collection remind me of the toys in Toy Story, only worse .... much worse. Some lie primed and abandoned, others half assembled without even a primer coat and yet more lie NIB (new in the box). Sick of the situation, I've decided I had better start doing something about it. So as a new beginning, the Ork Painboy is now back on the painting table while I'm gathering ideas on colour schemes to use for my ode to the gods of Chaos.   

Ork Painboy work-in-progress on its head: skin and eyes

Skin colour limited to Citadel Orkhide Shade, Knorloc Green, Gretchin Green ...

... and a wash of Citadel Athonian Camoshade to tie them all together

For the Ork Painboy, I will be painting it from the inside out. Essentially what this means is painting will start from the deeper niches of the miniature to the outer layers and from the central axis (torso and legs) towards the outer limbs (both arms and their respective implements). And to keep from being overwhelmed by the Painboy's many small details, they will be painted one section at a time.  

Colours inspired by a certain great noble house of Westeros

Bright orange PVC pants, the kind only an Ork can pull off

To prevent the Warhammer 40K projects from getting stale, a slightly different approach had to be taken especially towards colour schemes. Previously, I would assiduously research the White Dwarf magazines and respective army codices to get the colours exactly right. Well, no more. Priority would lie in creating (hopefully) pleasant colour combinations. Some leeway will be given to at least getting the clan or chapter emblems correct. But in the end it will be as it should be, all about the colours. Why else would the Ork Painboy suddenly sport a garish and supremely bright orange PVC pants.

An Ode to the Gods of Chaos   

Chaos Space Marines soon to be dedicated to (from left) Nurgle, Slaanesh,Tzeentch and Khorne

All the miniatures are from the Dark Vengeance starter set

If colours are the whole point then the Chaos Gods have a whole kaleidoscope of them. From the sickly greens of Nurgle to angry reds of Khorne and mysterious blues of Tzeentch as well as sadistic purples of Slaanesh. That's going to be difficult but fun. There is that. To make this possible, four Chaos Space Marines from the Dark Vengeance set will be used. Only time will tell if attempts to kick start my Warhammer 40K project will take hold. Four chaos marines and an ork will be the first step.

Bling-bling for my Word Bearers

In what will most likely be my first and only (seeing how relatively expensive they are) ostentatious accessory for my Chaos Space Marines squad, I finally glued on the Word Bearers shoulder pads on the miniatures. I had gotten these babies quite a while back but only gotten to utilisng them recently.

Shiny and proud

All for the sake of authenticity in my Word Bearers army

Even after a couple of years in the hobby, I still found assembling the Chaos Space Marines a challenge. While the many separate pieces that goes into the assembly of one marine allows for very dynamic poses, it can get a little difficult (for me at least) to get the pieces fitting perfectly without any gaps or wrongly angled position of the arms. This was especially so for marines holding a bolter. All parts have been glued on except for the heads which were dry-fitted with blu-tack.

While I liked the icon-bearer's pose, in hindsight, the aspiring champion (2nd from right) looks like a disco pose (sigh)

Can you spot the Chaos Space Marine who is grasping air rather than the bolter grip?

Despite my "inner-noobness" getting the better of me at times (if you look at the photos above closely, you can easily spot some mistakes I made), I still enjoyed putting the miniatures together. Assembling sometimes can be just as fun as painting ... well almost as fun. I undoubtedly made things worse by using Super Glue instead of Plastic Glue, but it's a hard personal habit to break. I am so used to Super Glue than I rarely use Plastic Glue, if at all. Until next time, thanks for reading!  

Squad anhrefn du lleng un

After some frustrating moments with the highlights and decals, the first five-man team in a future 10- to 15-marines chaos black legion squad is finally done.

I decided to go with Games Workshop's Chaos Wastelands base and added a mixture of Citadel Green Grass and GaleForce9's static grass. Was looking for a combination of green grasslands under initial corruption by chaos. Highlights not really noticeable from afar because the mixture of codex grey and chaos black had too much of the latter. 

Decals gave me a tough time ... tried using Mr.Mark Softer ... something I got for building my "One Piece Ship Model" (Its a Japanese Anime model), but the decals did not smooth down well. It kinda creased a little bit which was a real bummer. I also toned it down a little with some gryphonne sepia wash. The Alpha Legion shoulder decal markings look a bit muted but I suppose it would be preferable to it being to bright and yellow.

 

Well, its a start ... barely. I am currently assembling another five-man team, this time including the aspiring champion, icon bearer and two marines carrying speacial weapons. I have never played a game of W40K table top gaming before so am not sure which weapons would be good. For now I will likely go for a plasma gun and melta gun. They seem like safe bets ... at least I hope they are.

First pair of Chaos Space Marines

Managed to get some work done on my Black Legion Army. Below is the first pair of space marines that are still work-in-progress but about 80% done. Have yet to place the Black Legion decal on the shoulder pads, put in the final highlights of the black armour, and base it.

Gold parts are a tad bright because I was too enthusiastic when highlighting with burnished gold. Plan to go easier on the bright highlights on later marines. But after some trail and error I kinda liked a mid-tone layer of 1:1:1 ratio of tin bitz:dwarf bronze:burnished gold, which I discovered from a tutorial on you tube - Black Legion Tutorial by GirlPainting

Painting cloth

I tried my hand at painting cloth today. Started off with a basecoat of 50:50 scorched brown:blood red ... gradually increased the blood red portion before a final highlight of blazing orange. Highlights didn't turn out too well as I found blazing orange difficult to work with.

Will need to work on finding out how to make the orange paint more consistent ie not too thick nor watery.

Traitors ... all of 'em

Finally got started on my Black Legion Chaos Space Marines. Have been busy with work so I have just managed to prime 5 minaitures, and do most of the basecoats for one of them. Gold parts look a bit dull cause its a 50:50 mix of scorched brown and dwarf bronze.