More Kustom Ork Vehicles! (FoPVP)

In the second half of the inaugural Friends of Pirate Viking Painting feature we will take a look at the rest of Charlie Brassley's Ork vehicles. His battlewagon was featured in the first part of this feature. This time it is the turn of the trucks and buggies:

The first offering is this lovely number, one careful owner, constructed from bits of Trukk, Battlewagon and plasticard.

I love the profile, so different to the usual Ork Trukk but still recognisably a Trukk. The big old dozer blade on the front gives it a very menacing aspect from the front as we can see below:

Also in the catagory of transport vehicle is Charlie's looted vehicle, in this case a Land Speeder Storm:

It has such a charming dune buggy feel and the addition of the mesh makes it feel properly Mad Max.

From the other side it is almost impossible to recognise the donor vehicle at all! The grot turret from the battlewagon has seen good service as the looted wagon's skorcha.

And who needs internal combustion when you can have triple turbofans eh? Finally for Charlie's contribution we shall check out one of his buggies:

What is remarkable about this model is that it shows just how good a buggy model could look with minor changes. Trukk parts (especially the driver) and a little turret make for a nice figure.

Like all of the vehicles of Charlie's army these fellows are Speed Freaks and as such there is only one colour to be seen in. Red.

I love the rusted metal finish on the radiator. Well that is it for Charlie's Orks for a bit but while we are talking kustom Ork vehicles I must show you just one more, this time from fellow House of Beard member Maisey:

We tend to refer to this one as the Bedford Trukk as it closely resembles the design of the ubiquitous 3 tonne truck of World War II fame. It is interesting to note how much changed the character of a vehicle can be by just altering the length and shape of the "nose".

The hinged ramps at the back look great and give a nice sense of functionality to the vehicle. This brings us the the end of our second Friends of Pirate Viking Painting spot. Hope you have enjoyed it!

TTFN

WW2 Tommy on Patrol

Greetings all, as a gentle warm up after a week off (I had been off LRPing and had damaged my wrist a little and didn't want to mess up a client model) I thought I would paint the first of a new venture for me. Large scale military models:

The model is one of five from the Tamiya "British Infantry on Parade" set. It is 1:35 scale (54mm in our wargaming parlance) and as such is somewhat larger than the usual I work on, enter Ms Funnymoney to demonstrate:

I've recently got the Vallejo military paint set so working on this fellow was a breeze. Starting with the jacket and trousers I basecoated the model in English Uniform, washed it in Devlan Mud for shading the uniform. Highlighting started with English Uniform and then continued with adding Bleached Bone to the English Uniform. The webbing was painted in the same way just swopping English Uniform for Khaki.

Picking out the other equipment helped to make the model more visually interesting, grey blanket, wooden entrenching tool and the ubiquitous enamel mug.

I enjoyed this model more than I expected! I thought the colour scheme would be a little monotonous but the simplicity of the paint job was half of its charm. 1:35 is large enough to do nice things like adding wood grain to the rifle furniture and for the sculptors to make the weapons etc realistically scaled. It is of interest to me that the muzzle of the lee enfield rifle on this model is smaller than a lasrifle on a guardsman. This guy is twice the size of the guardsman. Take a moment and think how ridiculous that would look scaled up...

Anyway, back to Harlequins, should have some finished and up on the web for you all soon.

TTFN

Kustom Ork Battlewagon (FoPVP)

Greetings all, I am back from my holiday and back in the saddle! Of course this means I have nothing finished to photograph but fear not dear readers. I have a new feature for you all: Friends of Pirate Viking Painting! As part of my holiday I dropped in on the House of Beard - a house full of wargaming friends of mine. There are some ace painters amongst their number and so I thought I would showcase some of their work here as well as mine. So to open up the account I present Charlie Brassley's kustom Ork Battlewagon:

The wagon is a double decker affair designed to accomodate Charlie's terrifying unit of Ork Nobz and his Warboss. Charlie's whole army is Speed Freaks so everything is mounted on bikes or vehicles.

From the back you can see how full that wagon is! Let's pull the models out so we can see the construction better:

The wagon is made from chunks of Trukk and plasticard added to an 'Ard cased Battlewagon.

Poking out of the back is another Nob, how did he get there? Glad you asked:

The roof comes off! This allows Charlie to field the Battlewagon as a slightly less tricked out version for smaller games.

Well, that is it for the first Friends of Pirate Viking Painting (FoPVP). I took hundreds of photos at the House of Beard so you can expect these as filler when times are a little slow! Hurray for constant hobby content!

Until next time folks

TTFN

Slow goings and an AFK warning

Heya folks, you might have noticed fewer than normal posts going up lately and I thought I would explain why!

Firstly, it is high summer and thus the busiest time for holidays, family gatherings, social events and the like. Even I have to venture gollum-like out of my painting cave for those! Secondly, a lot of the projects I am working on are not yet photogenic. Stripping the paint off Harlequins is not terribly noteworthy. Third, the Harlequins are taking a long time to paint and I don't really like to put up halfway house work in progress shots. Fourth a few rush commissions for my prop making side business has used up some working time. For example: Grenades!

I will be away from my painting table for the next week and a bit (going to a field in the woods to smack other like minded people with fake weaponry! Hurrah!) so don't expect any updates until the last week in August. Have fun folks and see you then.

TTFN

Steampunk Pistol

Another of my weirder commissions. A Steampunk pistol!

This started out as a NERF Maverick pistol:

Which I then ground the markings from, primed and painted:

So what is this doing here? Well, it illustrates how painting techniques can easily be used on different objects! The greasy sections are my usual mixture of Brown Ink and gloss varnish. The mahogany handle was an experiment, I hadn't painted much rich woodwork before. The method I came down on was a Dark Flesh and Scorched Brown mix base coat, wood grain was added first by adding black to the base coat and then adding Kommando Khaki. The whole thing was then glazed with Devlan Mud and then satin varnished once dry.

There are some more detail shots over on Pirate Viking Props (our sister site dealing with LRP props) if you are curious. Normal service resumes next time, until then...

TTFN

Workbench: Converting Ork Kommandos

Greetings all, it dawned on me recently that I haven't done a conversion article for a fair while. This combined with my rekindled desire to finish my Blood Axe Ork army to a nice round 2000 points, led to this article! I am making a unit of Ork Kommandos to join Boss Snikrot and to form the two pronged early game assaults that my Kommandos are rightly feared for.

It is no secret that I am not a big fan of the official Kommando models (although the Nob model is amazing) and knew that I had the skill to do my own so set about thinking how to improve on my first unit. The first thing you will notice in the picture above is the unusual tan plastic componants. These are 54mm (1:35) scale Tamiya modern US Army backpacks. 1:35 Is flaming big but the smaller packs work well on the oversized Orks. I had to shave some of them to get them to fit snugly but on the whole they worked well. The second thing to note is that a fair few Orks seem to be sinking into their bases. This is because the unit is being modelled to be traversing a swamp so are partially submerged. If you want to do this yourself then for god's sake buy a razor saw as no other tool will give you a clean cut that is consistant across the model.

The next stage was to green stuff in any gaps and voids left by the backpacks. These are hollow packs designed to be hung on tanks as stowage and as such will leave gaps. A quick gap filling exercise did the job nicely.

Now for the fun bit! Arming them all. Since nothing says "Commando" to me like a knife, I arm all of my Ork Kommandos with the spare knives you find in the Boyz box set. Simply chop off the axes close to the hands, remove the handles and glue them on. Download the image and zoom in on a few of them to see what I mean. Now they look great here, but something is missing... Commando-style woolly hats:

My method for sculpting these hats (actually rolled up balaclavas) starts with getting a ball of green stuff roughly the size of the Ork's brain and squashing it onto the head:

Next, square off the edges and add a furrow running around the crown to indicate the folded fabric:

(sorry for the bad photo)

Once you get to this stage you need to let the green stuff cure for a bit so do all the members of the squad:

At this stage they are looking ok, but we can go one step further:

Once the green stuff has cured for a quarter hour or so, get a scalpel and lightly press it around the rim. You want to create hundreds of thin, light, cuts to simulate the ribbed fabric. Make sure to do the same at the top of the roll. Next stab the crown of the hat until it takes on a woolly texture. This is an advantage of sculpting this on yourself as trying to cast this would be a nightmare. Proceed and do this to the whole squad.

And there they are, done! Obviously they now need a loving coat of paint and some serious work on their bases. This will happen next time I get an Ork urge, for now, it is back to commission work and Blood Angels (yeah, I've still not finished those two). Until next time:

TTFN

First adventuring Party finished!

So here it is: the first adventuring party all finished! Adding a halfling rogue and a bard to the cleric and barbarian finishes the group.

The Bard is the Marco Columbo miniature that Games Workshop released when the Lustria campaign was at its height. I thought he would make a marvelous bard, clutching inkpen and sheaves of scrolls to record stories and tales. I decided that the colour pallete would be a very warm orange-red. The clothing was pretty much Blood Angels red technique and the orange was Blazing Orange over a Macharius Solar Orange basecoat. A Gryphonne Sepia wash warmed the colour and gave it some shade and Kommando Khaki mixed with the Blazing Orange highlighted it. I used turquiose as a contrast colour on the gems and the feathers are painted as peacock. Weirdly the camera has not picked that up at all!

I am really happy with the bottle. Started from Orkhide Shade, added black for the shade and white for the highlights. The initial shading done I mixed Blood Red with Orkhide shade and painted in the potion making sure that the level followed gravity! I left a thin line of green/black underneath to indicate a thick walled vessel. I then added a long curved catchlight of Orkhide Shade and white to bind the two colours together. A skin of gloss varnish sealed the deal and the effect was complete.

I used more severe contast in the skin than I would have usually to indicate a weather-beaten complexion. The sculpting on the face was lovely, he even has sculted crows feet! Made painting him really enjoyable.

The rogue, by contrast, was a necessarily simple job! The model is only about 15mm tall after all. I used a Peregrin Took from the Lord of the Rings range. I was keen to make him look very different from the Pippin paintjob, this started with the colour pallete. Rather than the greens and browns associated with the Shire I used blues and greys to make him seem more stealthy and "urban".

His face is oh-dear-god tiny so there is only so much you can do! The eyes were the best I could do with a 5/O brush as they are probably half a millimeter across. To give him a rogueish look and to further distance him from happy-go-lucky Pippin I added heavy stubble using the method discussed in the Barbarian entry.

Well, that wraps it up for team one. There are another 2 regular fantasy adventuring parties in the works and an oriental adventures group featuring a Dwarven Samurai and Ninja. Ah, good times. Till next we meet folks...

TTFN