The Waaagh! begins (slowly)

My painting progress more or less ground to a halt in November (due to a novel-writing sojourn, and a few other minor distractions), but having set the date for WoffBoot VII, I am determined to have my Savage Orcs painted and ready to play (lose humiliatingly).

This equates to around 50 miniatures, with a couple of special models thrown in. An easy feat for three months, you might think, although it doesn't take into account my glacial speed of painting. I'm breaking up progress into stages, just to push myself along.

So here is the first batch: one-third of my Big 'Uns regiment:

Their furs and skins are fifty shades of grey - one of them even has the Punishment Stick.

Unlike the 'Eavy Metal-inspired circus of colour that characterised my original Savage Orcs, I am going for earthy tones to represent the dry and dusty Badlands. So most of the ornaments (and by Gork, there are a lot of them) will be bone, with just a scattering of gold. Furs will be mostly muted, warpaint plain and the bases will be dirt-brown.

I haven't flocked the bases yet, but I'm liking how this worked out. The green of their flesh becomes the accent colour - as it should be with greenskins - without having to compete with any reds or blues. I think it will also help with the 'savage' feel of the army (suspicious of anything as new-fangled as polychromatic effects).

The facepaint is intended to be uneven and blochy - everything else is my fault.

The flesh was my usual greenskin technique: Goblin Green base, Green Ink wash, Goblin Green drybrush Although the ink seems to have separated since all those years ago, and didn't go on as thick - so this lot are much lighter than the originals (I'm going to pretend that was intentional).

The bone ornaments, teeth and eyes had a base of thinned-down Rhinox Hide to give them some edge, with Bleached Bone over the top and a wash of Devlan Mud to bring it back down. Painting these took longer than anticipated (at least the way I do it) - there are lots of bone ornaments on every single model (damn those orcs and their bling).

Weapons were a base of Vermin Fur, wash of Brown Ink and Blazing Orange highlights. The stone parts were just Chaos Black with Skull White highlights. I wanted the furs of this unit to be all grey (to give some almost-uniformity), and used a combination of Shadow Grey, Dawnstone, or just Skull White with Black Ink washes and various highlights.

I was a bit torn with the warpaint: I quite liked the way their faces had turned out (especially after all the work I had put in with the eyes and teeth). But warpaint is integral to the Savage Orcs, so I gave them all skulls using Bleached Bone (watered-down, so it looks sloppily-applied by an orc). As their right arms looked a bit bare (they should be holding shields), I put a bone glyph on there too. Uniform tattoos may not seem very savage, but it will work if I vary them per unit (although I think I'll remove the jawbone - too distracting).

8 down, 42 left to go!