Night Gobbo' Command

I am nearly done with the first unit of the Orcs and Goblins army project- only some touch ups and basing to complete. The part I like the least on these guys is the purple. However, there is going to be a WarStore order in my future. I'm pretty happy with the rough highlights and then using lots of inks and washes to complete the model. The effect looks nice and it doesn't take forever to complete.

WiP Night Goblins

Question to the group- favorite snow effect products on the market that you like?

Next on the order is starting on a large unit of orc boys!

Working on Night Goblins

After pushing the oversized orc boys off a cliff, I moved to the Night Goblins. These models are more like it!  Only a couple of pieces of beautifully carved plastic that fit well within their bases. Nice work Games Workshop.

The paint scheme/method was going to be a bit different than your typical paint job. One of the things that I need to be able to do is to produce a good (or better) table-top quality army without spending most of my life doing it. 

So the model gets base coats all around then highlighted pretty aggressively. More aggressively than you might think. The first pass looks pretty weird- no shadows, lots of messy highlights. But then you start throwing inks, washes, and other shadows on top of the model and viola! You get some pretty nice looking models without spending tons of hours on the models. 

This is my variation on the methods taught on the Miniature Mentor Website and the Wapple's class this year at Adepticon. A couple of things to note. The main thing is that you need to highlight more than you think. A whole lot more. In fact it should look like "peptobismol"  according to Jim Wapple. This is something I'll do more as I start working on the front ranks. The other thing is that you'll loose some of the highlight along the way and you'll have to go back and redo some of the areas. It will help bring out the pop more. Lastly, black sucks. No easy way to do it and I'm glad the main units of orcs don't wear black robes. I should have chosen purple or something!

Its Fantasy Time!

No, not that kind of fantasy. Thats for another blog.
Now that your mind is back in the gutter.... a few months ago an old friend (he's old and we've known each other for a long time!), prolific blogger, and long-time reader of this blog (can you believe its the same person!) asked me to paint an army for him.  How could I refuse PapaJJ?  I eagerly accepted the 'job' and waited for the details. Well that was a mistake, as I should have asked for the details and then accepted the job!  A few days later a huge box of Orcs and Goblins showed up on my doorstep... and my follies were only just beginning.

All kidding aside, this is going to be a fun army build. The only bad part is that this is probably going to take awhile to complete. That is the nature of WFB armies, particularly large ones like the O&G's.  So sit back for the next few months as I struggle to build these monsters (as fun loving as they might be).

Background:
JJ also has a Dark Elf army that he built for Adepticon this year that he plans to grow. According to the fluff in the army book, the DE's at one time held O&G slaves. The idea quickly sprung from there that these orcs were going to be escaped/freed slaves of the Dark Elves. With that, the color scheme and basing were settle on: Snow capped mountains for the terrain and the complementary color set of yellow-green (skin tones) with purple and orange highlights.
The hope is to create a visually unique army that will tie in with his Dark Elves. The purple-orange is different from the red-yellow-white of most O&G armies out there.

The Start:
The first thing I wanted to start was the huge unit of orc boys with choppa and shield.

Proof that they all will rank together...  just barely!

However, those damn orcs are a pain to assemble on a base. The feet and bodies are way to big, even for the larger square bases. After cussing at Games Workshop for a few days assembling these bad boys, I moved to something more sane for the first coat of paint- goblins. And I'l