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Here's an ork war party looking for a campsite. This ruined tower looks like a good place to stop. Doesn't take long to get a campfire going, plenty of wood around if you look. Anval Thricedamned (R) had a head transplant from the bits box and now sports orky horns. Irongrave knight (L) has a new axe. Cookware and roasting spit by STL Miniatures.

three with TMM one NMM needed a few more orcs for a newly started campaign.

Hi! I'm brand new to the hobby and stumbled across the forums, so I thought I'd share my first WIP photos. I started playing in my first DnD campaign in December and the other players painted their own player character minis, which made me want one of my own (and one for my husband, who also plays in the same campaign.) I snagged the two LTPKs then started watching all the videos I could find on mini painting. I have no background in art/painting so it has been refreshing to give it a shot! However I am also in the rabbit hole now of wanting all the colors, basing supplies, tools.... lol. The minis in this kit are: 77018 Skeleton Archer 77042 Orc Marauder 77148 Mangu Timur I pretty much followed the book for how to paint the skeleton archer. The main differences being that I ordered the kit of Citadel washes after seeing so much praise for them, and I used a few slightly different paint shades (like dragon bronze for the metal bits instead of blade steel.) I still need to base him (cover that mold line between his feet!) but otherwise I'm pretty happy with him for being my first mini - he could use some weathering and higher contrast, but I sealed him before learning about weathering and the benefits of exaggerated contrast. My current WIP is the orc. I still have to do some highlighting passes because I don't think I've got enough contrast in the skin yet. I need to highlight the metal as well (haven't done that yet.) I'd like to attempt some weathering on the leather to make it look more worn, and try my hand at rust on the metal bits. I'm pretty happy with how my attempt at making the shield look wooden turned out (thanks YouTube!) I also found an oval base I might try to base him on since it fits his wide pose, but he'll be pretty big for using on a standard tabletop grid. Haven't touched the Mangu Timur model yet! I also need to get a better setup for photos, I was having trouble getting decent shots of these guys. I appreciate your thoughts on my work so far, thank you! I'm excited to join in.

Howdy, Still working on models from the 1st KS... Please click, Kev!

Couldn't resist the silly-ish title - it was originally going to be "Novice Painter, versus LTPK:Core!" but I changed it a touch at the end.. Bonus points if you read that as the Innkeeper from Hearthstone. :P While I have painted miniatures in the past, I've first and foremost never shown such results to anyone, and secondly went in blindly with those ones, and while I was happy with them at the time, I wanted to improve. Other things in life took over for a while, and then finally I said that's it, I'm either going to FINALLY paint my primered army of doom that was at Doom In June 2005 or I'm going to sell the minis I've had sitting in boxes for over a decade. So glad I found out about the Learn to Paint Kits, because that pretty much solidified that decision right then and there :P Anyways! At some point we were all at this stage, and while looking over the pictures I can see a number of things I can improve on (*cough* like my up close photography skills *cough*), but for most things... I'm happy with them. Especially the chain mail on the Orc Marauder. I just might have to retake some of these photos, because I realize looking at them that, uhm, first and foremost f1.7 blurs half the model, and secondly, I didn't get a shot of the backside of the Marauder's Shield, which I was also happy about. Oops. But before I ramble on for three pages......! Drybrushing feels sooooo weird, but it was starting to click once I got to Magnu, even if I wound up overdoing it in a few areas and it so wasn't a dry effect anymore. But that's life, we learn from our actions!

Painted 2/17 with LTPK received at Xmas. Asked for it after tough experience painting minis with Folk Art craft paints. (See bugbear warrior post.) Soooo much easier! It was like a different art form altogether. I followed the directions verbatim with the skeleton. I like greyish orcs so changed the skin tone and some other colors. IIRC, Mangu is per the painting guide.

Was cataloging my Reaper paints the other day and noticed I had a bottle of Green Black. I couldn't remember using it for anything (or even when I got it) but I liked the look of the colour and thought it might work well for some Orcs, which is would also be a good excuse to get back into painting some fantasy stuff. So I grabbed a handful out of the big bin of Bones Orc goodness and away we go. I plan to put gaming bases on do the broccoli got lopped off. This actually slowed me down a couple of days as I snapped what turned out to be my last #11 cutting Kavorgh's base, and it took a couple of days to get over to the mall to get more. And with a coat of Grey Liner. The little guy was my test of Green Black over Black Primer to see how it looked.

Hello everyone, So I have had reaper minis since the first bones kickstarter, but it wasn't until recently that I actually decided to start painting. I wanted to show off what I've done so far, and hopefully post other pictures as I make progress. I realize that these are rough, and I appreciate any advice on the matter. I posted these pretty well in the order that I painted them, and had anywhere from a few days to a few weeks between each mini. I think I am finally getting the hang of dry brushing, as seen with the golem, and the more I learn, the more I think I need to go back and touch up my older paint jobs. But overall, I'm pretty happy with the way they look. I can't wait to use them at the game table! P.S. I probably need to find a better place and method for taking pictures. These are ok, but I like the more professional looking pictures I tend to see. Apologies if the quality on these pictures is not excellent.

Howdy, Been working on these beginning at ReaperCon... Because fiendgip is mashic! Thanks for looking, Kev!

I have to admit I like these orcs quite a bit now that they are painted. They painted up quick and easy. They are more shiny here than in person, but maybe I will use this as an excuse to use some of the matte sealer I got in my last order. They will do nicely for D&D, at least until my Shield Wolf Orcs get here 77056: Orc Sniper x2 77042: Orc Marauder 77059: Orc Berserker 77051: Orc Stalker 77064: Kavorgh, Orc Warboss

So, I've been invited to the FLCS to play in an Age of Sigmar scenario. I've never played before, and I don't own many GW minis. I was told that this would not be a problem. Right o' then. Then next step was to figure out what run. Evidently for the scenario I needed to bring some sort of Hero and a pair of units with the minimum number of models to make up each. I downloaded the rules (all four pages of them, shocking coming from GW) and all of the Warscrolls (army lists basically). Reading through the Warscrolls, I finally hit upon something that I already had models for. Orcs. I went in on the Orcpocolypse in Bones 1, and all of those excellent Tre Manor orcs were just sitting there, asking for paint. I quickly decided on a list of two units of Black Orcs (5 models each) and a Hero, Grimgore Ironhide, to be played by 77064 Kavorgh Orc Warboss. For the units, I'm going with 77051 Orc Stalker and 77042 Orc Marauder. One model in each troop is a Black Ork Boss and hey will be represented by 77059 Orc Berserker. The game is on Saturday at 1300 (1pm). I figure that I have to leave by noonish to get there, so I have approx. 14 hours to get them done....and get some sleep. I plan on using some of the techniques that I learned at RCon during the Army Painting class I took from Aaron. I'll try and post pictures as I go along, but depending on how much of a roll I find myself on, they may be far and few between. As of right now, all figures have been boiled, scrubbed and given a coat of Blue Liner. I went with the Blue vice the Brown as I tink it will help out with the base colors. The Black Orks will all have dark skin, steel weapons and armor and leather accessories So I' keeping it basic. I plan of starting with the skin, moving onto the weapons and armor and finishing with the belts, boot and fur capes. We shall see how he plan survives contact with the enemy. Figures as they stand now, while waiting for the Liner to finish drying. And in taking the picture it appears that I made a made a mistake and prepped 5 Stalkers and only 3 Marauders. There was supposed to be 4 of each. Oh well, onward! Paint appears to be dry so next step is flesh. I'm going to try Dark Elf Skin first and if that doesn't work, I'll wing it.

Painted up some mooks for tabletop use. It's been awhile since I painted anything this size. I did Ebonwrath recently, but painting a dragon is a little different than smaller minis. Who knew? Anyway, these guys helped me get some practice and back into the swing of things.

I've been working on two of the minis that came with my Reaper Bones Learn to Paint kit. I've tried to follow the directions pretty much step-by-step, and I think they're coming along pretty well. Some observations I've made as a new painter: 1) Separated paints need be shaken very thoroughly, even sometimes to the point of popping off the dropper cap and stirring them with a toothpick or something similar before shaking them. Big thanks to Mad Jack and Inarah for pointing this out and suggesting getting some small glass beads to drop in the bottles and act as agitators. I never would have thought of that. 2) Some areas will require multiple coats of paint, and you must wait for the previous coat to dry before applying the next one. It doesn't take that long to dry, but if you try to paint over wet paint it will just mess up the first layer. This may be a duh kind of thing, but it's also one I learned by trial and error (mostly error). 3) Look at the mini you're painting from a bunch of different angles. This will help you find any spots you missed, and you will miss some. Also, taking pictures can help find areas that need to be touched up. I've found this very useful, so I've started taking pictures whenever I decide to take a break or get to a point where I have to wait for something to dry before moving on. Use the zoom, Luke! It may be that nobody finds any of that useful, but I thought I would share it just in case. It's the kind of things that weren't covered in the painting guide or that I've seen in videos or write-ups that I've watched/read online so far. If anybody has other tips or tricks they use, please let me know. I do learn from mistakes, but I'd rather avoid them if possible. Thanks! Illustration of what separated (read: not shaken enough) green paint looks like applied to a mini's base: Properly shaken green paint applied as a second coat (also note touched up steel toes on boots): Skeleton after base coat, wash, and first drybrush highlight: Skeleton after second drybush highlight and detail colors:

This is my very first WIP topic here, and my very first time painting minis at home. My prior experience is painting about 15 minis in one-hour paint-and-take sessions at Reaper's booths at various PAX conventions over the last year. That's done with brushes that have been pretty beat up by other convention-goers, no palette suitable for thinning paints, and of course a rather short period of time. It was a lot of fun, it got me hooked, and I had a few results I'm actually pretty happy with, but I feel like a complete beginner about to paint his very first mini. I have never really done one before properly, at least as I see it, and very few of those 15 minis reached a "finished" state in my mind. Consequently, this WIP is going to be pretty exciting for me, and a huge learning experience. What will it be like to have no time crunch? What will happen when I start mixing and thinning paints like I've seen a lot of you do? What level of detail will I be able to achieve with properly-tipped brushes and binoculars on my head? Well, I want to learn a lot, and for that, I figure the more practice I have, the more systematically I go about it, the better off I'll be. To that end, I have amassed a veritable horde of orcs. 77042 Orc Marauder (Sword and Shield) x3 77045 Orc Hunter (Spear) x3 77051 Orc Stalker (Two Weapons) x2 77056 Orc Sniper (Archer) x3 77059 Orc Berserker (Two Handed Sword) x2 77064 Kavorgh, Orc Warboss x1 Yes indeed, 14 orcs in total, which will mean I'll basically be doubling the number of minis I've painted with my very first real project. It's ambitious, but I am an ambitious sort of guy, and I figure painting 14 figures that are all pretty similar will give me a lot of practice for new techniques I want to learn. Also, and I feel like this matters, the orcs are relatively large, so I'll be able to paint just a little less precisely and not ruin things, and also have a larger "canvas" to get experience on. One small problem. I don't actually have my paints yet! So why did I make this topic now? Well, the paints will come on Tuesday, and I want the weekend to really look these figures over and think about colors and how I'm going to do them. I'm posting the WIP now to sort of think about that process "out loud" and maybe get a little advice before starting. Plus, well, I'm really enthusiastic. One thing I'm gonna do is paint every individual orc of each type with some different skin tones. I figure orcs, like humans, have some pigment variations in their skin across the population. Over the long history of whatever fantasy world these guys are from, there would have been migrations of different orc populations, and random mutations (or magical mutations), and so a clan or orcs would be genetically diverse enough so not every orc looks the same. Since these orcs are all bald, I can't experiment too much with hair, so instead I'll experiment with skin. The other thing I'll do is mix up the leather or fur they're wearing under their armor. Using just a bit of different color will help me diversify the horde, and make it easier to differentiate them all in a tabletop setting. Where possible, I'll try to contrast these leather or fur colors with their skin colors, for a nicer effect. The armor, eyes, and teeth will probably all be the same for each of them. I'll paint the plate armor with dark metallics, and the mail with light metallics washed with black. My intention is to make their armor look well-used and not shiny-new. I'll probably give the war boss some nicer, shinier armor. Maybe some gold. I may try to do some freehand on his plate mail to give it a little tribal significance or an intimidation factor. I'll try to vary things a little with details like bloodstains for the melee orcs. I may also attempt some war paint. We'll see. For reference, I'll be looking at the examples in the inspiration gallery. Of particular interest to me is the skin color Citrine got on a couple of these minis, the skin on this one by Jeremie Bonamant Teboul and the furs by Slashhamster. My rough plan for dealing with these orcs is as follows, though of course no plan survives first contact with the enemy. 1. Clean the minis. I got a new toothbrush for just this occasion. 2. Quick coat with brown liner. 3. Eyes. I've been reading and re-reading the various tutorials and topics on them. 4. Base coat the skin. 5. Base coat leather, furs, and armor 6. Finish skin 7. Finish chainmail 8. Finish furs and leathers 9. Plate armor 10. Weapons and shields 11. Detail work 12. Sealer I'll try to do all 13 orc mooks at the same time, step by step, and then do the warboss at the very end after I've learned as much as I can about orcs from the earlier painting. I'll be taking detailed notes as I go, writing down recipes and each step I take, especially with skin. I'll also be photographing a lot. My mini photo booth is ready and waiting (well, backdrops come tomorrow). Right now I'm thinking about five different skin colors I'd like to try with my orcs. I'll try to do at least two orcs of each color, avoid duplicating colors for the same orc minis, and I'll paint the warboss with my favorite result. Brownish-Green I'll start with a green base coat and then layer on some brown. I don't really care for the Warcraft-style bright green orcs, but I think green is a decent color to work with for them. I'll aim for a fairly dark green with enough red in there that you figure he still bleeds red. Brownish-Yellow I'm going to try to match Citrine's orc skin as close as I can, because it's awesome. It looks like khaki and muddy brown or brown sand. Citrine, if you're reading this and remember what you did, I'd love some tips. Greenish- Orange In other words brownish-yellow, right? Well, maybe, but darker. I'm not exactly sure how to describe the color I'm thinking of, but I'll know it when I see it. More brown, less khaki. Reddish-Brown I think of this as a sort of rage brown. Good for a berserker. I'll probably base coat a darker brown and then layer on reds. I might even throw in a little purple there. Orc smash! Gray Sort of a Lord of the Rings orc skin color. I think I'll base coat with a dark orange of all things and then layer on grays and maybe some tan highlight. If, as I'm mixing, I stumble across any other skin colors, or a different way of doing what I'm thinking of doing, I'll certainly talk about that here in the topic. I'll be happy to hear from anyone with skin tips, while this topic is running. It's a little too early to start thinking about the leather and fur pairings, since I don't even know yet which orcs will get which skin colors and not every orc mini has leather or fur. Still, I'm thinking I'll probably do the sorts of furs you'd find in highlands, as I imagine these orcs live in the shadows of mountains. They raid settlements for livestock and slaves and live a nomadic lifestyle, retreating back into the hills where organized parties of soldiers can't track them down too easily to end the threat once and for all. So, wolf fur, deer fur, maybe even mountain goat fur. The leathers I can have a little more leeway with since leather can be stained a variety of colors. I'll use what I think is appropriate in contrast with skin tone, though I'll probably stick to brown leathers of various shades. Wood is another interesting set of decisions to make. There's the shields and spear shafts. I've seen a couple good tutorials already, but I'll want to see some more before I do them. I think I'll probably go with old, aged wood. The shields may provide some interesting opportunities for freehand painting. I'm aiming for a blackened steel type color for the armor plates, as a base coat. I may get adventurous and start experimenting with a little color on top to dull them out and age them. I'll probably try some highlights as well with a lighter metallic. For details, I want to see if I can do a freehand painted design representing their clan, and make it look like it was smeared on there with a crude old brush (at their scale), or even finger-painted (at their scale). Could be a challenge to replicate that effect, but maybe I can do it. I'll spend some time thinking about what orcs would use as a thick, crude paint, what color that would be, and what technique I'd need to replicate that. And oh yes, there will be blood. Anyway, no pictures today, since there's nothing to see, really. Best I could give you is some pictures of unpainted minis against a very white background and that wouldn't be very fun to look at. Paints should arrive by Tuesday, so just four days to go. I'd appreciate any comments, advice, well-wishes, etc. in the meantime, and I hope you enjoy following along as I ramble about orc skin and teach myself to paint almost from scratch. As a bonus, I've been taking a drawing class (crazy me, starting two hobbies at the same time), and maybe I'll sketch some of these minis every so often and post those sketches. It's a non-credit, casual sort of thing at a local art museum, and the first class was only just last night so I can't promise quality, but it'll be good practice for me and maybe it'll help me figure out what I want to paint. It would also combine all three of my artistic hobbies (painting, drawing, photography) into one giant megahobby and completely take over my life. Just as a disclaimer, I would really thank you for your constructive criticism throughout this topic, even if it's harsh. Only way I'll get better is if people don't treat me with kid gloves and I can guarantee you'll never be able to hurt my feelings. I find that infinitely more useful than just a quick bit of nonspecific praise. If I've done something well, tell me specifically what that thing is, and if there's a way to do it better let me know that too. Of course some things will just be stylistic choices, but I still like to hear about how other people do things. I'm my own worst critic but I'm sure there's stuff I'll miss so let me know where I'm in need of improvement.

This past week I started working on the Orcpocaplypse add-on set from the Bones I Kickstarter. There's 4 each of 5 different poses, so I thought I would paint them in groups of 4 like poses (to speed up painting time), and I would modify 3 of the 4 poses slightly so as to create some individuality. The four Orc Marauder figures are what I did first, with simple tabletop paint jobs. As always C & C welcome.

Here is another set of Bones models that have set on my painting table for quite a while. These are some nice models, detail a bit soft on the face. As always comments welcome.

I didn't get in on KS1, but a nearby comic store was parting out a few sets for reasonable prices, so I was able to snag some of my higher priority minis, including the Tre Manor orc set. These are interesting sculpts. Big and bulky, with slightly more realistically proportioned heads than many orcs. It's odd though, because the big guy up front and the archer almost look like a different species. They're more like the warboss mini (not pictured), while the other 3 have differently shaped heads, no ears to speak of, and tiny little noses. It's odd. I was honestly so frustrated painting their faces by the end that I did find myself rushing somewhat, so I could get started on something else. Just a lot of very soft detail. Anyway! I'm reasonably happy with the final product, or parts of them at least. They're mainly p3 thornwood green up to reaper olive green, with some bone mixed in for highs, and rms regal purple in the shadows.

77042: Orc Marauders (Sword and Shield) NNM and metal with black wash.

I'm painting the 5 Bones Black Orcs for my D&D game, and I figured I'd try a few different combinations of color to achieve some different skintones for each orc. I thought I'd show them here along with the color choices in case it's useful to anyone else, and so I can refer back to it if I ever end up needing to paint another greenskin. The photo quality isn't great, and of course, my painting skills are rudimentary, but I think the pictures are good enough that the differences in color should be visible. With each of these figures I tried to work from shadows and layer up to highlights. Everything started with a wash of brown liner before putting on basecoats. The Orc Sniper was done with a Military Green basecoat, which seemed too bright to start from, so I applied a 2:1 water:brown ink wash to deepen the shadows. Then Military green again, skipping some of the deeper recesses, progressively adding drops of Camoflage Green for higher highlights until I was working with near-pure Camoflage Green, and then finally a drop of Bloodless Skin to the mix (diluted heavily with water and glazing medium. Bloodless skin can be very opaque) The Orc Marauder was done with a straightup triad. Olive Shadow, Olive Drab, Olive Highlight. At the very end I may have added a drop of Bloodless Skin to the Olive Highlight to do the final highlight. The Orc Hunter was probably the most unusual attempt for me. The red-brown shadows are on the other side of the color wheel from the yellow-green highlights, which I guess is a thing that a person can do for shadow effects. He was basecoated in Mahogany Brown, and layers of Muddy Olive, and Olive Green were put over top. I think it's a neat finished effect, and I'll probably play areound with it more in the future. I just now realized that I forgot to paint his hands. The Orc Stalker was supposed to be an attempt at a grey-green orc. Basecoated with Dusky Skin Shadow, followed by 1:1 Dusky Skin:Ghoul Skin, and then 1:1 Dusky Skin Highlight:Moldy Skin. Ultimately it just looks grey to me, which I will keep, but in the future I might attempt to mix a more vibrant green with the dusky skin colors. Kavorgh is probably the one I was most pleased with. He is Basecoated with Brown Liner, with Uniform Brown and Green Ochre for highlights. I was very surprised to see the final result reading as green, given that the highlight colors are a kind of swampy beige in the bottle.

I'm having the first holiday of the year with the family and have gone to a Center parcs in the UK. With the Bones 2 still in transit I have decided to take a limited amount of equipment away with me to paint. I recently based and undercoated some of the Orc and so decided to take these along, as I wouldn't need that many colours. So far I have put the skin basecoat on and painted the chain mail black, sometimes I think I should prime in black. Some photos to follow.

For the last 3-4/4 for the Feb RP Challenge, 2x of the Orc Marauder as seen in the LTPK. Somethin' feels a little off in the finished product but I can't tack down just what yet Better pics will likely come when I get time to setup/use my lightbox.

After painting 77042: Orc Marauder for the Bones Learn to Paint Kit, I decided to paint the other Tre Manor orcs in Bones in the same style. The original Orc Marauder (second from left) is shiny due to a reaction between spray varnish and Bones. It has received a coat of Reaper Brush-on Sealer to remove the tackiness, but it looks like I need to hit it with Testor's Dullcoat to remove the shine.

Hello. This is my second topic post. Yesterday I posted my beginner metal minis, and now I am posting the Bones I have painted. I missed the first kickstarter but my friend went in on it, so he bought me a Kaladrax as a gift (never knowing I would discover it only cost him $10) and also handed me a pile of minis he never intended to paint, including some really nice ones I would have paid for. I pledged to the second kickstarter with that same friend, so shortly I will be getting a boatload of new stuff and at the rate I paint I will never need more. My partner has already told me I'm not allowed to buy into Bones 3 but we will disuss that again if and when Bones 3 is anounced. Anyway, without further ado... This was my first Bones, fittingly. I added static grass but it was all one shade so it doesn't show up well, even in person. However I am quite happy with the layered highlights on the back of his cloak as it was the first blending that went this well. This was my second attempt. I got new static grass so it shows up better on the base. I tried to make her skirt look more patchwork with different colors but I only have a couple browns and by the time it had been washed and highlighted a little all the contrast had disappeared. This is an orc marauder. I followed the paint scheme on the website because I like red. On the sword I used some corrosion made by GW. Next time I will use less of it because when I tried to do a clean silver edge it picked up the grit and looked bad. I really like the work I did on his skin that is too subtle for this picture, although you can see some of the darkest folds between muscles. There is a nice subtle yellowish tint on the highest highs that is extremely well blended, not even sure how I managed that. This sculpt is an assassin but his studded leather and dual wielding said "ranger" to me, so that's the way I went. Unfortunately I can't claim credit for the paint because I only did the basecoat, the details were all done by a friend. The base, on the other hand, was all me. I love the "log" that was just a twig I found outside. Amazing effect with the peeling bark makes it look like a fallen log. I guess I can't claim credit for that either, that was Nature's doing. Not so happy with this one. Not enough shading, I wasn't happy with the wash I did. I used some more of the corrosion and added the GW rust effect too. That I kind of liked. This one didn't really turn out great either. I have several different browns but they all kind of faded together in the end. I also tried to do the stones under his feet like sandstone I had watched a youtube demo on but it didn't turn out right. Oh well, I have plenty of goblins to practice on. Well thank you everyone for going all the way through this long post. C&C are welcome. These two posts represent the entirety of my painting experience. I won't need to make such long posts in the future because I will do them one mini at a time.

I have a lot of catching up to do, I was going to start with a different mini but I went back to my old "Works in Progress" thread and realized I never went any further with it. Unfortunately the WIP thing is a bit time consuming - I still plan to do it but not for everything I think. Still, I started an Orc Marauder, so lets post it here so I can get some closure. :) My greenskin army is growing! Maybe one of these days I'll gather the lot and post some pictures.

Once upon a time, I had a consolidated Show Off thread, and in it I posted some smurfy orcs. However, they were not based. My gaming group generally uses a 1" grid so I wanted to have the orcs on a 1" base, but they have such a wide stance that they don't fit well on a round base. A square base has about a 1.4" diagonal, so I decided to pick up some square bases and try to fit the orcs as "medium" creatures. Months later, I finally got around to it. I think it worked out fairly well.