it's another Black Reach Warboss...

Yes, you've seen a billion AoBR warbosses by now and here's another one. He was one of my entries for the Golden Skull painting contest at the local GW last weekend, so I thought I'd share him with you, my lovely audience.  He didn't win anything, as the 40k single figure category had the best competition.  I hadn't painted up anything 40k related in awhile, so I decided to pull something out of the way-back-machine (aka the storage closet in my garage) to enter. This guy's actually not too way-back, I painted him in summer '09 during a stint of funemployment after I took the bar exam.

At the time, I had the warboss and some extra Imex Hexagon pieces lying around and decided to experiment with making *gasp* a scenic base. Simple construction, first hack apart and file down a Hexagon piece to fit a 40mm base and drill a hole in it for the foot peg on the Ork - this will give him some stability (unless you accidentally knock him off your desk when you spin around in your swivel chair to yell at your dogs for barking at the mailman, ugh).

Next step, accessorize! I used a piece of GW's barbed wire, one of those skulls with a cool looking bullet hole from Black Reach, a beat up marine helmet from some Chaos vehicle spikes (most of the marines bits on my orks are Blood Angels, its an Armageddon thing), shell casings made from cutting up a Skink javelin shaft and a rock found out in garden.  Ork models just look proper stomping through some dilapidated, ruined war-zone, and I think the base really captures that.

I painted the base before gluing down the Ork, to insure I got all the nooks and crannies. The hexagon piece was painted with a some combination of Shadow Grey and Adeptus Battlegrey, then dry brushed with that mix with some Rotting Flesh added and then just a light brushing of Rotting Flesh (I probably got this from a WD, the one for the 5th ed. launch, if I recall). Washes of Beastial Brown and Dark Angels Green were used in between the plating and around the rivets to make things look dingy and worn. The sand is Beastial Brown dry-brushed with Snake Bite Leather and then Bronzed Flesh. I was going for a California Mojave Desert, badlands look. The barbed wire was a simple bolt-gun, black wash, chain-mail job, plus a Beastial Brown wash to finish it off and give it a rusted, dirty look.  This little piece of wire is a bit fiddly and has fallen of about three times now.  If the trend continues it'll need some major touch-up work.

The ork himself was a blast to paint, with all the fun little details GW managed to pack in.  I really wanted to convert the shoota to a kombi-flamer (for torching guardsmen before stompin' their faces in) but I opted to make like the Beatles let it be,  I'm partial to the design of the stock shoota. I borrowed from this tutorial from a 2009 WD for the skin and black leather. The main thing I took away from the tutorial is that where a typical ork is high lighted using Bleached Bone and Goblin Green, by adding some yellow into your high-lighting mixes, you can make a character appear more distinct from the rest of the boyz.  Also, you can make black leather more distinct/realistic by using Kommando Khaki to mix your high-lights, rather than gray or white, giving the leather a more warm feel. If you look closely, I used a a brown/off-white mix around the skin where the bionik implants from the power klaw are "plugged in" as well as on the lower lip, for a manky, unhealthy appearance.  I also used some Asurmen Blue wash around the bulging veins on the klaw arm.

The one thing I don't like about him too much is his camo on his pants*, the design didn't translate well over from the test I made on my painting board. I didn't compensate for the folds in the trousers when I designed the pattern. The high-lighting on the red isn't that superb either.  I've been a bit timid as to this, worried I'd get it too pink or too orange.  After the Blood Angels dropped earlier this year, I've seen enough good info on the subject to boost my confidence so my future red painting endeavors should be better. See kids, there might be a good reason to buy the occasional WD after all.

In case you're wondering (which you're not, but you read this far) this is the second incarnation of Warlord Nar-Kil Iron-Skul. Super extra bonus points if you have any idea where the first part of his name comes from without using the googles (super lame points deduction if you guess "nar-whal").

Bonus: If you really like Orks, you need to check out IRONDOG Studios.  This guy has some fantastic conversions and scratch built vehicles, including the infamous Tater-Titan, and I love the style that he paints his Orks.

*When I started my Orks in 3rd edition, I came up with the genius idea that each of my units could be differentiated with their own unique camo pattern and then call them Blood Axes. This kinda helps when you have tons of them running around the board and several units get into assault in close proximity to one another.  I generally stuck to urban and desert camo patterns, as you can see above.