Friday 5 November 2010

LOOTAZ! Oi boyz, we're missing something 'ere!

Greetings, this time I bring you my latest commission: a squad of five Orc Lootaz. Before we go any further let me say two things;
1. I have just moved house and no longer have access to the amazing camera of awesomeness,
2. I have made a massive mistake on these models (as in really big). See if you can spot it; I'll tell you at the end either way.

Anyway, disclaimer out of the way, back to cool models and the painting of them.

When I was asked to do these I was over the moon. I love painting orcs; it's the skin.

So, here they are in all their orcy glory.


The first to note on these is that I've moved away from my usual clean and crisp style. I felt lootaz needed a more ramshackle look to them and so used a technique now universally known as Jeff Rust, as detailed in the Book of Jeff. http://piratevikingpainting.blogspot.com/p/book-of-jeff.html (seriously good blog, suggest you check it out.)

After this, I batch painted in the base colours for the skin (orc hide shade), the red (red gore), and the yellow (bubonic brown). With these base colours on, I then finished up the red, gradually adding blood red to the red gore and finishing with a 50-50 Baal red and badab black wash. The yellow was simply a case of building up through bubonic brown to sun yellow, followed by a wash of griffin sepia. With the yellow on some of the glyfs, I used the same stippling effect as in Jeff Rust as I didn't think orcs would really spend the time building up their layers correctly (far too busy with the whole WAAAGH! thing).


Next I concentrated on all the little details such as the mek's bionic eye and the lightbulbs on the top of his kustom megablaster and the other little trinkets orcs like to carry around with them (teeth etc). I decided that the Mek's bionic eye and lightbulb along with pipes and feeds on weaponry would look better in bright colours to stand out from the Jeff Rust effect. Plus, I figured Lootaz being bigger and stronger than a lot of boyz would nab all the spanky piping for themselves.


As you can see, the bright colours really contrast well with the dingy effect of the weapon itself.

Finally, I got to start on the bit that I'd been really looking forward to; the skin. For many people, orc skin is a simple case of knarloc green and a badab black wash. And if you want a realistic grubby-looking bugger, that's ideal. However, I prefer a far more high fantasy approach. When I paint orc skin, I paint what can only be described as the incredible hulk of orc skins.

The process outlined below is a long one, and one that I don't suggest anyone embarks upon unless they have a) a lot of spare time, and b) want to end their project utterly insane.

Base coat - orc hide shade
Step 1 - Knarloc green on raised muscle area
Step 2 - thrakka green wash
Step 3 - repeat knarloc green on all raised muscle areas
Step 4 - highlight raised muscle areas in knarloc green and goblin green mix 4:1
Step 5 - highlight raised muscle areas in knarloc green and goblin green mix 3:2
Step 6 - highlight raised muscle areas in knarloc green and goblin green mix 1:1
Step 7 - highlight raised muscle areas in knarloc green and goblin green mix 2:3
Step 8 - highlight raised muscle areas in knarloc green and goblin green mix 1:4
Step 9 - highlight raised muscle areas in pure goblin green
Step 10 - highlight raised muscle areas in goblin green and rotting flesh 4:1
Step 11 - highlight raised muscle areas in goblin green and rotting flesh  3:2
Step 12 - highlight raised muscle areas in goblin green and rotting flesh  1:1
Step 13 - highlight raised muscle areas in goblin green and rotting flesh  2:3
Step 14 - highlight raised muscle areas in goblin green and rotting flesh  1:4
Step 15 - highlight raised muscle areas in pure rotting flesh
Step 16 - Trakka green wash over all skin areas.

As you can see in the images, this gives a very bright and vibrant tone to the skin and while this suits the way in which I see orcs, as a somewhat comical race, other people would argue that their war-like barbarity inspires a darker palette.

Anyway, that's about it for this job. Have you guessed what it is yet?



THE TEETH.

Couldn't believe it when I was looking at the pictures and suddenly realised I'd completely neglected to paint the teeth.

Before I go, here are a few more images of the finished product.






That's about it for this post. As always, comments and criticisms are welcome.

The Longbeard

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