Christmas Ork

Click to see how big it can get

Here is my only completed figure for 2012, an Ork I painted to give to my wife for Christmas.  I had good intentions for painting this year, and started out pretty strongly when I was rushing to complete figures for the D&D game that I ran back January... but I barely put brush to figure in the past year, and did not end up finishing anything.

This ork, being a gift, had a deadline, and consequently I was forced to hurry it up a bit. I woke up early every day, and stayed up late every night for a week, realized that I was still behind, and started painting at lunch time at work as well.  The figure is a conversion of the nob that comes in the ork boys box, and consists of something like 36 parts, and a sculpted hat, so it was a bit fiddly to put together.  The peg leg in particular made it hard to balance.  My wife hates Eldar, so I got a spare helmet and made a ripped spinal cord for it, and now he stands on it.

I painted it with my usual mix of various vintage Citadel paints, and some Vallejo as well, using mostly a 00 liner brush I got for $1 at a craft store.  The long bristles were pretty useful in painting in all the freehand work, and allowed me to use thinner paint than I would usually use. The wash was a mix of Citadel black ink, craft paint matte sealer, and Future, and then I painted some of the highlights on top of that.

The overdone base was my wife's favorite part

 

Hopefully the results are worth it.  The base still needs a few bits of grass or flock, but it is otherwise complete.  Unfortunately I  managed to not get a clear shot of the bit I was most proud of... the flaked rust on his power claw.

You can sort of see the effect here

On another note, I really need to work on my figure photography, because now that I see these on the big screen, I notice that parts of the figure are out of focus, and that the figure is not lit as well as it could be.  I used my light box, but with natural sunlight, which seems to have been insufficient.  Look for an experimental photography series sometime in the future...