Da Green Horde

I recently finished three Ogor Leadbelchers, together with the one I painted last year I now have a full squad. I'm currently pursuing the goal of painting a whole Spearhead force (Tyrant's Bellow), and I'm only missing four more models now. Painting the Ogres was again a lot of fun and quite quick, I really enjoy the simplicity of their sculpts - mostly flesh and cloth, not a lot of annoying detail work. For the skin of two of the Ogres I used a recipe by Vincent Knotley , who recommended mixing Magos Purple into Darkoath Flesh (or other skin tone Contrast paints), and I must say I really like the result.  Next up is some terrain for Dave's Season of Scenery challenge.

It's may, which means it's Monster May(hem) , so of course I had to join in and paint a monstrous miniature. As teased in my last post and correctly guessed by Dave, I chose to paint another one of my Squiggoths. The model is a Gnawzilla from Kromlech, a large chunk of resin, that's beautifully sculpted and quite fun to paint.  The painting process was quite simple, the Gnawzilla is mostly skin and armour. The skin was done using Orruk Flesh base coat (over black, which worked quite well), followed by diluted Ghillie Dew Speedpaint and drybrushed Ogryn Camo for simple highlights. To make the armour more interesting, I painted some metal plates in red and added Dirty Down rust effects as well as some decals and checkers.  The howdah is magnetised, so it's detachable and the model already had holes for the magnets which is pretty neat. Since the mini is meant to be used in WH40K, I decided to make some adjustments by adding wooden planks and animal pelts to make it better...

I recently finished another conversion - a combination of the Orruk Megaboss and the Blood Bowl star player Varag Ghoul-Chewer. I had to chop off the iron jaw as well as the beast skull on the pauldron of the Megaboss, the rest of the conversion was quite straightforward. All I had to do was swapping the head and putting the ghoul trophy of Varag on one of the pauldrons. I quite like the result, the kits work really well together. Additionally, the head with the large tusks has the same style as the new Ardboyz (Black Orcs), making the boss a fitting leader for them. A fun detail is the impaled ghoul/zombie, who somehow seems to still be alive (undead?), I imagine he regularly tries to free himself. Varag Ghoul-Chewer must have his name for a reason, so I guess he not only sees the ghoul as a trophy to intimidate his foes, but also as a snack.   I've also started working on my entry for this year's Monster May(hem) , here's a little teaser on what's to come:  

When GW announced in spring that they would discontinue the Bonesplitterz (Savage Orcs) faction in AOS, I decided to get a box of Savage Orruks while they were still available. The box included two Big Stabbas , which is an overly large spear carried by two Orcs, and somehow I got the idea to combine them and kitbash a centrepiece model for my Bonesplitterz  - the Savage Orruk Palanquin.   Games Workshop never produced a centrepiece model for the faction, Orcs are either on foot or riding a boar. There are no giant beasts, which makes sense lore-wise, as the Bonesplitterz are monster-hunters that hunt the largest enemies in order to gain their might. I remember that Savage Orcs could use Boar Chariots in some editions of WHFB, but that never made sense to me, as a chariot seems too "high-tech" for them. They refuse to use metal or armour, so I assume that they also distrust the wheel. So this is more or less my interpretation of a Savage Orc Chariot. The build was quite...

Happy New Year everyone! I didn't have a lot of hobby time in the last few months, but now during the holidays I managed to get some painting done. Fellow blogger Keith announced the Year of the Dragon challenge, which was a great opportunity to paint a model which I've owned for probably nearly 20 years - the Orc Warboss on Wyvern.   The model has since been re-released in resin, but this is the original metal version, which means it weighs a lot and required some pinning and gap-filling during assembly. I didn't glue the Orc on top of the wyvern and used magnets instead. This makes it possible to use the wyvern without a rider and I may even create an alternate rider at some point (maybe a shaman?). Despite it being a large model, painting the wyvern didn't take a lot of time since I was smart enough to use a green spray primer (Vallejo Goblin Green). On top of the green basecoat I just put a few different washes and diluted Contrast paints. As this model was paint...

For this year's edition of Dave's Season of Scenery I managed to complete the rest of the Scotia Grendel goblin encampment that I started painting last year . I used a similar approach, relying mostly on Contrast paints, which again worked pretty well and didn't take an awful lot of time. In contrast to last year, I decided to vary the colours of the patches which gives the tents a more ramshackle look, fitting for goblin dwellings. Below is a shot of the complete kit, featuring a grot and a snotling chilling at their camp.

For Keith's annual Monster May(hem) challenge , I decided to paint a Mountain Brutgoth from Shieldwolf Miniatures. I got the model a few years ago from a Kickstarter and thought that now would be a good opportunity to finally get it painted. The Brutgoth can be seen as an alternative model for the GW Squiggoth, albeit for a fantasy instead of a sci-fi setting (Shieldwolf also produced a sci-fi version, the Steelgoth). The model is a big chunk of resin and a great cast with lots of detail, although some gap-filling was necessary. The painting took a lot of time mainly because of the size of the model and my choice of primer - I opted for black, but should have gone for white in hindsight since painting yellow on black took ages. It was also one of those moments when I wished I had an airbrush, it would have saved so much time. The howdah was a lot quicker to paint, since I primed it in white and used Contrast paints. The same goes for the crew, which are two Mountain Orcs also from ...