I made a thing!

I wanted a break from painting today so I made a little piece of scenery for my orks. A scalpel, some lolly sticks and pva glue were all I used to make it. Cutting up lolly sticks with a scalpel is... interesting and no good for precise work, but for something an ork made it's perfect. I don't have my tiny hacksaw with me so I'll be making all ork stuff this week!

Lucky Butt Stitches Munition Boks!

It was pretty simple to make, but involved a degree of trial and error to start with. And loads of making shit up all the way through and constant fixing things. Making things for orks is actually a fun way to get into this for me - because I can end up with anything at the end and no matter how messy it is it will still look orky.

I'm going to try and make better crates/boxes/outhouses when I have my little saw and metal square. Here's how I made this one, in the meantime.

I started out by marking the sticks into sections. The box is roughly 3.5cm wide by who knows what! I cut them into sections using my scalpel on a cutting matt. If you use steady, careful strokes at an angle you could use the scalpel to create very neat pieces, but it's much easier to do with a saw and I was making this for orks so I started off each section with a few neat strokes to guide and then just hacked it apart.

Then I glued three of the pieces lengthways side by side, with a tiny gap between each, together using a matchstick type stick. I used PVA glue. When I had 2 I glued them together as close to a right angle as I could.

PVA glue is good for this kindof thing if you have a little patience or think ahead. It's ridiculously cheap and when it does set it sets nice and hard. It can take a little while to get to the point where it can hold itself in place though, so I spent a lot of time trying to prop this all up and hold it together without squishing things about.

I found putting a stick on the inside would help alot if I could bear to hold it in place for a bit. Additionally I started squirting glue everywhere I could on the inside.

I added the other side in the same way (badly)

From left to right here I have; added the 'front', then stuck sticks to it on the outside to act as support, then made the top panel with a broken strut going across. When all the PVA is fully cured this thing became as stable as a rock. I could put quite a bit of weight on it before it felt like it would move at all.

I primed it with my Citadel White Primer - because I need to use it up and I'm saving my Halfords primer for my models! It feels really runny and gives bad coverage compared to the halfords... oh well, it did a good enough job for my ork box.

Basecoat was khemri brown 1:2 paint to water. Only needed one coat - it was at this stage it started to look properly cratey. Until now I was feeling a bit wound up having spent so long trying to work something so simple out and holding bits together, breaking things, regluing etc and thinking it just looked... a bit crap, really.

Devlan mud wash went on, then when that was dry I drybrushed scorched brown on selectively to pick out details. I went heavy near supports and ends of planks and very light in the middle. I topped this up with a light application of badab black wash in the same way, but not going as far out.

Now orks really don't like having this stuff stolen - I thought I'd help them out by painting on some suitably orky faces so no one could possibly get confused about who it belonged too. Regal blue base with enchanted blue on top. 2:1 paint to water.

Very happy with how it turned out. I'm exhausted now so nighty night!

Cowboys vs Orkliens

I've nearly finished! I actually went for a couple of walks today, and Hobbycraft, and did painting and work. Hopefully I should be feeling much better tomorrow. Apart from a few details (Some glaringly obvious) this batch of 5 are almost finished. I just need to go over them tomorrow and touch everything up - add bits of shading and washing here and there.

Here they are in their current state, complete with mood lighting!



Yeah uhh.. I think I forgot something




Hmm... Didn't forget anything here



Or here! :D

This one looks fine too

Yup, didn't forget anything for these guys ¬_¬

I focused mainly on skin, leather and the red tops this time. I was stupid and kept painting past when I wanted to so I rushed all the bone and messed up quite a few of the blue bits. It's annoying but I have to learn to stop and move on to the next set!

Then I thought I'd whip out the lolly sticks and uhh... random bits of wood and make myself some fancy bases. Don't cut wood with pliers - you'll just shoot bits into your boyfriends eye. Bits pinging everywhere! Not sure what I am going to use to cut them tomorrow, unless I buy the world's tiniest saw...

I've given them a wash of devlan and bits of badab black and they actually look really good. I'm gonna pick up some ink from hobbycraft tomorrow to make my own washes with and use as is, because if I'm making scenery too the wash pots definitely do not hold enough.

Very sleepy, I shall hopefully get some more of the blog done tomorrow now that I'm feeling less like the undead.

You're an ork Harry!

Managed to do some more orky skin and red tops today. Tried out some shading with washes too, seeing which colours had what kindof effect on green. I can't remember what stage I left them at yesterday, and I'm too lazy to check.

This is roughly the stage I left them all at

With my space orks looking more shiney, as you'll see in this step as I applied a liberal amount of watered orange paint . I carried on by applying a broad highlight of snot green (1:3 Paint:10%F). I was careful to leave a very fine band of the dark green and let most of the colour build up on the bulging parts of the muscles. I can't get my photos off of the camera for this stage at the moment - annoyingly.

Next step I highlighted the uppermost and bulgiest parts with 1:1:2 Snot green : Scorpion Green : 10%F. I found this to be a bit vivid for my liking so I decided to give everything a wash to hopefully bring down the colour and unify it where I'd been a bit rushed dolloping paint on.

And some useless pictures after washing;

Thraka Green Wash

Asurmen Blue - I really liked this combo

Asurmen Blue, Thraka Green, and Bhaal Red

Thraka green or asurmen blue - I didn't write it down :S

I really like the blend of asurmen blue over the greens of the skin. It helps blend the colours together very well, and adds greater depth to the shadows than just a darker green. With a thraka green selectively on top I think I have a keeper for doing skins.

Then I did a final highlight of 1:1:1 goblin green : scorpion green : sunburst yellow with an equal amount of 10%F in there. I dotted it on the most raised and highest areas of the muscles. Then I finished with a light shading of the lowermost parts with very delicately dotted asuremen blue.

I am very happy with the result

On top of all this I tried shading a couple of the orks pants with snakebit leather and then scorched brown but it just looked awful. In the pots I thought the snakebite would work nicely with the iyanden sun but it went on much more orangey than I expected and I couldnt salvage it at all with the scorched brown. So I got angry and washed it loads with devlan mud >: |

I have lost one of my orks, on which I tried out my new iridescent medium. The update was very close to being called Dude, Where's My Ork?



Ork of the Rings: Orkship of the Ork

I managed to eek out a little painting and work today. Unfortunately I still have my silly ear infections so I'm too tired to sit and paint for long periods of time. I just managed the second layer of colour over the orks skin. Yet again I only managed to start taking photos when the sun had gone away!

I used 1:2 Snot green:10%F on all the fantasy orks

But boredom hit right about this point and I decided to see what happens when you add gloss medium to a matt paint. The result is quite cool - I've thought of quite a few uses for it already like the dirt and grease on mechanical parts and shine where sun hits.

I'm not sold on the different colour - using snot green is surprisingly different. Should be able to make good use of it though and highlight the skin up nicely. Gloss has also been quite nice for putting the models together, snapping a photo, then referencing that for exactly where the light hits in different positions.

I have lost the ork I used the iridescent medium on... hopefully nothing to do with the 'medium'.

I used my winsor and newton brushes today! Galleria brush set rather than series 7 - I'm still too scared to open those.Good for normally thinned paints (great, actually) but not after I had added the gloss medium.

Too tired to keep writing...sleepy byes!

Orky Progress

I started the day by cycling across the city and back to get some iridescent medium from hobbycraft. And some PhD chocolate chookie protein powder. I've been feeling very drained and exhausted the past week, hopefully starting exercising again and topping up what I eat and drink with some shakes will get me back into things! Been having so much trouble actually sitting down and painting, and doing my uni work.

But! Being exhausted to the point of crying can't stop me completely - I managed to bang out a couple more steps on my orks and get photos for my stripping tutorial done. (Hehe). Dad is going to pootle about with me tomorrow and get some nice high quality photos done for the prepping and priming tutorials as well - he does fancy photography with a massive set of lenses so hopefully they'll be decent!

Oh and uh... my problem with the camera yesterday was that I had actually put it onto manual focus mode, when I thought the M meant macro. Woops! Just don't tell anyone and it won't matter.

Onto orkies!

I did all six leather boots with a layer of 1:1 VMC flat brown, taking care to only paint on the raised layers. This gives the boots a really nice shaded look in the creases thanks to the underlayer of scorched brown. I much prefer this look to washes the shading in on leather boots. VMC flat brown has a slight reddy hue to it giving a nice depth to the leather look too.



The metal and the soles of the boots will be done last



The colour shows up really nicely on the black primed orks to, but I forgot to take a photo. Vallejo model colour seems much more highly pigmented than citadel paints, and also a much creamier consistency. Very nice to work with.

I then went over the black ork's trousers with more 1:1 iyanden sun. When that was dry the models were all give a devlan mud wash - quite a thick one. Devlan mud is a really handy wash colour but I find it most useful in larger amounts. When I've run out I'm going to make my own out of inks and post about it because it's really too expensive to buy and then use like I am. The ingredients to make it whenever I want would work out much cheaper overtime than rebuying devlan mud.

Anyho - I left this to dry for a while. Devlan mud is really important for defining the orks skin and muscles. The wash and knarloc green paints work perfectly together. I started washing and the sun was up, by the time it came to taking photos the sun had set.



All the skins washed up and left to dry




It has really brought out the definition of the muscles



Added a great deal of depth to the face - brought out features that were flat before



Depth to the colour of the trousers, and dirt. Shades the red fantastically as well.

Once I had gone back over the trousers with iyanden sun, I dabbed my brush in devlan mud again and pushed it gently into the creases, adding to the shading. I was careful not to get it elsewhere lest I have to touch up again!

That was it for painting. Earlier in the afternoon I helped boyfriend clean up with dettol stripped miniatures. I worked out one of the paints that the guy had used as a base - car spray paint! An iridescenty-non matte black car paint. Wasn't even primer. Been a nightmare to get any of it off. We've left them as they are because it seems after hours of arduous scrubbing and soaking and spraying chemicals on, this is the best we're going to get. A couple of them are clean, a few haven't had even the tiniest bit of paint removed, loads have this horrible car spray on, and a bunch have smidgens of paint left on them.

Fear the smudgy forces of Chaos!

Sprayed a few and have left them to dry overnight in the tiny painting greenhouse. Boyfriend used my priming guide :D

Finally the dog got bored of us not playing with her and decided to intervene in the painting activities

Hopefully I'll be feeling more awake and active tomorrow and I'll get a chunk of painting done! Sleep well my friendly neighbourhood ghost :)

Oh I forgot to show off my new iridescent medium! I shall do so tomorrow!