Da Green Horde

My final entry for Swordmaster's Monster March painting challenge is the Orc Stone Golem, sculpted by Ismael Prieto. The model can be seen as an alternative to the ForgeWorld Rogue Idol of Gork (or Mork). I had a lot of fun painting this miniature, it felt more like a piece of scenery than a character and I could do most of the work just by drybrushing and washing. It was also a great opportunity to try out the much hyped Dirty Down effect paints for moss and rust. I also used a bit of the lichen effect paint by Vallejo and really like how the paint matches the yellow of the real lichen on the sticks from my garden. Since the base is quite large it was also a great opportunity to place a few Laser Plants by GamersGrass on it.

It's March again, which means it's time for Swordmaster's annual Monster March painting challenge. As regular readers of this blog may know, I quite enjoy using toy animals to create large warbeasts for my miniatures. I already created a Squiggoth from a toy hippo and a war tortoise for my swamp goblins. Now I present to you the Mega-Rhinox, an enormous beast for my ogors of the Red Maw Tribe. The model is an Elasmotherium, a prehistoric rhino from the fantastic CollectA range. Although the standard paint job was quite good, I decided to repaint it since I wanted a darker look. I wanted the beast to be able to carry a few ogors into battle, so I built a howdah from chopsticks and wooden coffee stirrers. The design of the howdah was inspired by the GW LotR Great Beast of Gorgoroth . I added a lot of ogre bits from various kits including two crow's nest with gnoblars, one of which was scratch-built. The howdah is not glued on, so the model can be used as a wild...