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Hello all! I’ve been giving a set of orcs all too much of my free time recently while trying out NMM for the first time. I’d appreciate any constructive feedback! Especially with respect to how to finish off the chainmail. Also, given how top-heavy these guys are, they are prone to falling over with such a narrow base. any suggestions on how to base a medium monster for D&D whose footprint exceeds the 1” square? I’m guessing I just use a large base and blame the orc for engaging more foes with his obnoxious wide stance. Here are all of the orcs after base coating their skin with a mix of naga green and leather brown. After shading the skin with candlelight yellow, brown liner, and more naga green. Also worked on the bracers and boots. Painted and shaded the red skirt with dragon red and brilliant red. Base coated chainmail with black, metal plates with 50/50 black/white and a smidgen on vallejo red black. Filling in shadows on the metal for fist NMM pass. Filling in highlights. Now the medium blending... ... and then jumping ahead after working on the transitions, adding some edge highlights, and putting some scratches in. So, how did this go?

I was using this to try a different skin color which I like and I believe I was going to do a bit more detailed TMM but got side tracked. After several months of no work on him, I decided to get him "done" to tabletop level. Here are some shaky iPad photos. C&C welcome.

Howdy, Still working on models from the first Bones KS... Click 'em, Kev!

My third attempt at miniature painting. I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, though it's more green than I had originally intended and I struggled to get the large metal surfaces to take more paint after the first coat.

Had a customer walk into my store and request a painted Orc for a Monster Campaign he and some friends were going to be running. I figured send this was going to be a "hero" monster played by a character the armor would be somewhat maintained so I painted it with a small amount of rust as apposed to a large amount like I would normally paint it. I figure a monster trying to rise to power wouldn't let his armor go to waste. I hadn't done one before but I think it turned out great. The skin has more depth then the picture shows the lighting kind of washes all that out. If you like what you see I got more on my FB page. I'll be posting more both here and FB in the future. ( facebook.com/TabletopGlory )

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.

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.

This past weekend, I finished up the four Orc Berserker figures from the Bones 1 "Orcpocalypse" add-on set. I tried to do minor conversions to each figure to give them a little individuality. Armed with my hobby knife and some Gorilla superglue gel, I had fun cutting, repositioning and gluing the orcs to make each one look a little different. Looking at the row below; The first orc is the untouched basic figure. The second has had his forearms flipped around and repositioned opposite of the way they were, so the sword now is in front of the orc. I also replaced the sword blade with one from one of the Orc Stalker figures. The third orc has had the sword removed, his hands drilled out, and a toothpick spear-shaft inserted. I borrowed the spearhead from one of the Orc Hunter figures. The fourth orc, has had his forearms removed and replaced with a pair from one of the Orc Stalker figures. With surgery complete, I went to work giving them a quick tabletop paint job. I'm happy how they turned out, and I think they work well as individuals even though they're the same basic sculpt. As always, C & C welcome.

I'll take a page out of hammer570's book and post a little introduction thread here and show off a few of my preliminary efforts. The very first mini I ever painted was about a year ago, at the very first PAX South. Reaper was there, and I had so much fun I kept going back. I had been wanting to paint a mini ever since Reaper started going to the various PAX shows and had some friends who did it, but it never really seemed to work out with so much else to see and do at PAX. On the last two days of PAX South 2015, I felt like I finally had some time to try it out and pretty much got hooked right away. Since then, I've painted at PAX Prime 2015 and PAX South 2016 which ended just last week. I am really looking forward to Reaper being at PAX East 2016 in a couple months, because I will finally buy some paints and start doing this hobby at home instead of just at PAX. In the meantime I've been getting paintbrushes and other supplies, and planning what sorts of paints I want to start my home collection with. For those not familiar with Reaper's set-up at PAX, basically you get an hour to paint something with a sampling of their paints, and like any good addiction your first mini is free. Understandably, they are very popular, especially later on at the convention when people's feet are tired and they're overstimulated from all the crowds and video games. Sitting down to paint a mini in a fairly quiet area for an hour is very relaxing, and the communal atmosphere is very fun. The time restraint is at times stressful, and the paintbrushes they give you are pretty messed up by the third day, but it's a great challenge and I always enjoy chatting with people around me at the tables and picking up ideas or tips. Honestly, I hope Reaper goes to every PAX forever, because it's become a major part of my PAX experience I look forward to a lot. Anyway, I'm a D&D/Pathfinder kind of guy. I got into this hobby because I want to amass a collection of minis for tabletop RPG, since I'm very often a DM. I don't currently have a group and the last few games I ran were done online using a software table and Skype, but I've recently moved and think I might be able to get a group together again in person. All of these are 60 minute paint jobs. I might've snuck in a little extra time here and there (shhh, don't tell Reaper), but I don't think any of them took more than 80 minutes from sitting down with a blank mini to standing up and walking away, as done as they'll ever be. Would I have liked extra time? Heck yeah, for most of them anyway, especially in the beginning when I was pretty new to all of this. One of the reasons I'm really looking forward to painting at home is that I'll be able to spend more time thinking and working on details. Most of all it'd be great to really let the mini completely dry between painting stuff. I'm not really complaining, though, the 1 hour time limit is really just part of the fun painting at PAX. That said, you can pretty much consider all of these unfinished, and I may revisit most of them in a few months when I've got my own paints. The images are all thumbnails. Click on them and they'll take you to a larger picture. Photographing these was an experience in its own right, but hopefully these pictures turned out alright. So, my very first mini was this guy: 89010 Damiel, Iconic Alchemist He was one of the free minis they were offering at PAX South 2015. I really didn't know what I was doing, and the whole thing ended up pretty paint-by-numbers, as I'd describe it. No blending, just paint colors straight from the bottle. No real technique or anything. I was pleased at the level of detail I was able to do, like the silver buttons, but obviously this is super amateur and mostly the experience was just trying to figure out the mechanics of putting paint on such a tiny little figure. But hey, every journey has to start somewhere, and I was quickly back to paint two more minis I paid for. I'm sure I don't need to tell any of you how addictive this is. This was my next mini: 77059 Orc Berserker (Greatsword) Oh man. This one was a learning experience. The end result I'm actually quite happy with, even if I spent the whole time super stressed out with no idea what colors to use for most of it. If I remember right, I started out with a green skinned orc, but I wasn't really happy with the color, plus I knew the guy was a berserker and berserkers make me think of the color red, or at least reddish. So I switched to making him a sort of reddish brown. You'll note there's no real shading or highlighting on the skin, it's just a mess of painting and re-painting, layer after layer until I got something I could live with, a bit of a nice splotchy effect maybe, but definitely not an advanced technique. The armor plates were also a bit difficult to get right. I didn't want a real shiny pristine armor, that doesn't look right for orcs, but color selections were really quite limited. The only shinies were true silver and gold. I needed to blend. What I settled on, was a sort of shiny purple, a kind of evil-looking fel-forged steel. I accomplished this after I'd already painted it with true silver, by basically layering on every watered-down color I could think of until I thought it looked okay. Every mini I've painted has been a learning experience in some way or another, and the big lesson I learned with this guy was that if you're painting chainmail, true silver is going to look really bad. However, if you water down some black paint and slop it around all over, it'll darken the holes and the chain mail will actually look like chain mail! Go figure. This was also the first mini where I actually tried blending some paints before applying it, to make the dark gray-brown leather gloves and skirt. I also really enjoyed thinking about how this orc might've used his leg spikes and arm spikes to smash in people's faces, and how blood might splash all over his armor on the front and back if he was just wailing on people with that greatsword in an all-out melee. I wanted him to be an orc that even other orcs were afraid of. It was just fun imagining this guy as a living being in a fantasy setting and how he'd fight. I'm really a storyteller at heart (in fact, that's my profession), and the idea that I could paint minis and tell a story with how I painted them was just really cool to experience. If I wasn't hooked before, I was definitely hooked with this guy. Last mini painted of PAX South 2015: 77021 Elf Archer Lindir I was really excited to paint this elf archer. Kudos to Werner Klocke. This thing has tons of little details that really inspired me. As a storyteller, I immediately jumped on the Tolkein-esque idea that elves spend a great deal of time and effort on everything they craft since they live such long lives and are very meditative, from their cities in the trees to the clothing they wear, and even the scabbards for their swords, it's an expression of their cultural values and their way of life to have all these great little details the model provided. So, I immediately thought in terms of layers. On every item this elf is wearing or using, there's a sort of base layer, and then there's this embossed detailed outer pattern. I didn't see anything to make me think this guy was elf nobility, or particularly a hero, he was just a typical elf living in the woods, but elves just do everything nicer than humans so he looks upscale by comparison. This was really a mini about blending paints, and I feel I learned a lot in doing so. In fact I think only his skin, his hair, and the red of his arrow fletching were straight out of the paint bottle. Every brown or green on the guy was a conscious choice I made to create my own blend of paint in just the right shade or tint. I wanted him to look like he'd blend in quite naturally in a forest, either to hunt dinner or hunt invaders in his land. The other thing I wanted to do was make him seem a bit magical. He's an elf, after all. The best way I know to create the impression of magic is to make something shiny. Immediately, I knew I had to make his bow be a blend of gold paint and brown to make it an enchanted bow conferring exceptional aim. The resulting paint was a revelation to me, the idea that I could add shininess to things other than metal was a big deal. If you look closely at the bow I actually did the an extra layer of gold on top for the detail work, so the wood is golden brown and the tips and—I don't know all that much about bows—rope thingies are even shinier. I added the same gold over-coat to the details on his scabbard and quiver after painting them their own shades of brown. For the cloak and boots (though it's hard to see on the boots) I blended green and dark brown respectively with gold to provide additional highlight to the pattern and take his clothes up a notch, making them fancier than your typical human fantasy wear. There are things I'm not happy with, mostly the face and hair, and had I more time I'd have corrected more of my mistakes and spills, but of the three different figures of my first weekend painting minis, I was definitely the proudest of Lindir. It was the first one I felt, when I was done, that I had fully expressed my vision, at least as well as I could with only an hour to paint. He was a challenge, but it felt awesome when my time was up. PAX Prime 2015 Minis: I spent a lot of time in the Reaper Room at PAX Prime this past year. A lot of time. I don't remember the order in which I did them, but PAX Prime is 4 days long, and I painted minis every single day. I'll just kind of list them in somewhat random order. 89026 Eando Kline This guy immediately struck me as regal in some way. Perhaps the confident way he stood, perhaps the amulet around his neck, perhaps the great deal of plate armor he wore making me think he's at the very least quite wealthy. I decided pretty quickly that I was going to add gold accents to his armor and give him gold buckles on his back pack. I tried to vary the color of his leathers. The biggest problem I have with this guy is the head, obviously it's a mess. I really need to learn how to do hair and faces. Looking at it now under good light, I see a lot of little details I messed up or simply didn't see at the time. I'd paint him pretty much the same color scheme if I was doing him again, I have no regrets on that score, but I'd want to take more time, use better paint brushes, and make sure I got all the details right. 77068 Anirion, Wood Elf Wizard This ended up being one of my favorites. Kudos to Bobby Jackson for such a wonderful design. It's relatively simple, but in a very elegant sort of way. I'm sure I could have shaded it better (or at all) but the folds in the cloak shade the figure for real under normal light. I mainly focused on making the lower half of the cloak look well-traveled-in. I added splotches of mud matching what little of the base there is, giving it almost a camouflage pattern, and kept the color scheme pretty simple from top to bottom. He's named a wizard, but I really thought of him more as a druid of some sort, very in touch with nature, sort of a Radagast type. He's still an elf, so I wanted that flowing blonde hair, and a green color scheme, but this is a guy who's used to trudging through the forest talking with animals and defending it from intruders. I gave him just the barest hint of golden green around the trimmings of the upper part of his cloak, and some gold around the top of his staff, but otherwise he'd be easy to mistake for a simple traveler using a walking stick. This is one I'd love to paint again, several times, in various different color schemes. Perhaps a blue, perhaps a red, perhaps even a gray or silver. This mini seems like it'd be really versatile for a D&D campaign with different paint jobs and I plan on picking up a couple more of these at least. Since the ears are tucked away in that hood, he could easily be a human, too. 77210 Sarah the Seeress Of all the ones I did at PAX Prime 2015, this is probably the one I'm most disappointed in. Between the ridiculous color scheme, and the paint-by-numbers, complete lack of blending or any technique, it's kind of embarrassing to even show this one off. The problem really was time. When I sat down and pulled her out of the blister pack and looked at her, I had no idea what to do with her. Then my mind sort of went to Wonder Woman, and then suddenly I'm painting her red white and blue. I might have pulled this off if I knew how to do hair, and shadowing, but I really don't know how to do that yet. She was also so wet the whole time, it was hard to hold her and find places I could paint without making a mess, and I ended up layering a lot more paint on her than I ever wanted to, just correcting bleed. The only good things I have to say about this one is that I managed to get some of the tiny tiny beads painted red, and I'm happy with how her eyes turned out (I made then pure white, as if some kind of magic is going on and she's seeing the future or something like that). Looking at her now, though, I missed a ton of details and even misinterpreted some of her dress. I would like another go at her someday, with an actual plan and some more experience behind me. 77033 Callie, Female Rogue This one may not photograph too well, but I think it's really cool how she turned out in person. I thought of her as a sort of assassin, attacking in the dead of night, using her very dark cloak and dark leather to sneak up on people and take them out from a rooftop with her signature blue-fletched arrows before vanishing again in the night. Really cool mini, I have to give Gene Van Horne credit here. 77022 Human Ranger, Michelle This is a really awesome mini by Jeff Grace. It's so dynamic and expressive. I immediately thought of a bull fighter dodging a bull, which necessitated me using the bright red cloak lining. Rangers are hunters, and as I painted I told myself a story of this very competent, very experienced female ranger who hunted exotic beasts in far-off lands, as a means of testing herself. Naturally I had to make her hair gray, she's been at this for a very long time, which is why she feels so comfortable on any continent in any environment up against any sort of animal or monster. I also imagined her spending long periods of time studying her prey, developing a strategy, and so for the outside of her cloak I wanted to paint it almost the same as the ground and mottled it subtly. I imagined she would sneak up on a wild beast, using her cloak as camouflage, and then only when she was ready she'd spring up, using the red liner to taunt the beast into charging. At that point she'd expertly strike just the right spot and earn herself another trophy. I didn't want the colors to be too boring, though, so I mixed up the shades of brown used in her leather armor. I thought about how real-world snipers will paint their faces, with lighter colors in the shadows around the eyes, and darker colors on the cheeks and nose, which makes their faces less recognizable as a face, thus making them harder to spot. If you can tell, I made the outer parts of her armor darker and the inner parts lighter, the opposite of what you'd expect, using that same sort of philosophy to trick the viewer and add another subtle bit of camouflage to her outfit. It adds I think just enough texture, while looking plausible for an experienced hunter to wear. 77205 Alistrilee Again kudos to Werner Klocke for another great elf archer. I don't normally think of elves decked out in plate mail, or much armor at all, really. So it was a matter of thinking about the sort of situation in which elves would really gear up and go to war. There'd have to be something pretty serious going on for an army of elf archers in full armor to go off and fight. That made me think about The Lord of the Rings, and the opening scene of The Fellowship of the Ring, when the elves were still in the spring of their society in Middle Earth. I did not want to paint this elf in silver or bronze armor while I was thinking of spring, so I went and used a light green that reminded me of new leaves and then washed it with gold to make it shine. I think it's a pretty surprising choice that stands out, since we don't normally think of armor as being green. For elves, and their magic forges, in some kind of fantasy setting, it does sort of make sense though, right? And with that bold, new-leaf green and gold armor, it needed contrast. Again, I had Lord of the Rings on my mind, specifically the cloaks the Fellowship receives from the elves that make them very stealthy. I made Alistrilee's cloak darker, for more contrast, but I did add some shine to it with some silver paint mixed in to make it seem a bit magical and no doubt they would serve an elf army well in any environment. Lastly, I used orange for the fletching to add a bit more color. I felt it went with the green well and contrasted against the dark gray. 77008 Garrick The Bold I think it looks alright, now, but I really messed this guy up a lot to get to this point. The paint is layered on so thick, quite a bit of detail is lost (look at the helmet), because I just couldn't get it right. Garrick really seemed to me like a paladin. With the tabard and the symbol on his shield, I felt like these were symbols of his deity, and decided his boldness comes from the absolute certainty of his faith. I decided that his armor should reflect the purity of his spirit, and so I set out to achieve a lighter silver. At the same time, and I had a lot of drying issues in the limited time I had to paint him, I needed to darken up the chain mail in various places, and also paint a bold tabard. I ended up changing my mind several times about the tabard, I ended up screwing up the plate every time I tried to get the chain mail right. It was just a disaster at every step of the way. In the end I managed to get the tabard kind of okay, and after the fifth or sixth coat I got the plate silver but a lighter silver, but it's also kind of dulled from the white I added. In the end I had to scramble to get the gold details done but this guy was just a mess. One of these days I'm going to have to redo him with a new mini with a good plan from the start. Okay, well, this post is already crazy long. I'll come back later and show off the last few I did at PAX South 2016. I would like to get feedback on what I've already posted though, and especially advice. Don't worry about hurting my feelings, I really do want you to be merciless so I can learn something here. So far I just have done a bunch of trial-and-error, and while I'm for the most part happy, I know I have a long way to go. I also hope these photographs aren't too bad. I had a little bit of trouble lighting them and I'm not really sure the auto white balance worked especially well. In particular, I'd really like advice on hair and faces. Any tutorials you can point me to would be much appreciated.

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.

I realized I never posted the finished mini in show-off. The WIP started all the way back here and the mini was done in June. It got sealed in-between posting.

I bought this guy as the model for one of my players. I haven't decided what I'm doing with the base yet (other than "I'm going to do something with the base" - I boiled it into shape before painting but after I had paint all over the model it decided to curl up and get wobbly again) but the rest of it is starting to take shape. I decided to go with the dark elf triad for skin colour, just because it seemed like fun. Here are pics: I know I need to work on the highlights on the leather parts (especially on the lower body) and fix a few goofs with the metallic paint... Aside from that, what would you folks suggest? Anything I've done wrong, anything you think I've done particularly well? I'm guessing the eyes don't fall into that last category... But I'm making progress! I'd personally be quite happy with him as is (well, with the base & touch-ups) as a pretty decent tabletop model, but I know that a lot of you have higher standards than that and I'd love to get to that point. So... yeah. Tell me where I can do better!

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.

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.

I love painting these guys. I thought I had him done Monday, then I looked at the pictures... "Whats wrong with his eye? and Needs more contrast on NNM... I may base him (and all this set of orcs) in a red desert environment, but I will need 40 mm bases. Final version:

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.

Done in the style of my regular orcs, except I switched the clothing bits to rust instead of red. I think it suits the orcs better. This is the first orc outside of the early Bones ones (normal orcs) I've done, so I'm glad to see the scheme translated over well. I have some 77105 Kagunk, Ogre Chieftan minis that will also get done this way. They appear a bit orcish, so I'm using them as even bigger orcs. That'll give me normal orcs (Norcs; 1HD orcs), big orcs (Borcs; orogs), and huge orcs (Horcs; ogre stats). When I get one of each done I'll share a family picture.

I finally got to painting my Bones Orc Berserker, by Tre Manor. It was one of the first Bones I purchased, an awesome sculpt. I didn't get him nearly as green as has been my tendency with previous orcs. Was aiming for some more bluish black. In other news, my first use of a Secret Weapon wash is here: I used Baby Poop (lol) on the dark armor. Again, having trouble with the photos. I went back and took the last couple shots here after; I think maybe they give a better representation of how he looks in person. Thanks for looking. Comments and criticism are very welcome. Still trying to get better!

I decided to start a new thread for the various other Orcs I'm going to be painting over the next few months. I'll probably do some comparison work here too. This way I can have accurate tags. If I do any more Marauders or Swordsmen, I'll update that thread. Orc Berserker - full shading treatment. I plan to do three more of these with different painting techniques.

I was going to post this in Bones, but since I couldn't post pictures there, I figured I'd do it here. I'm one by one making an orc warband (no good reason, I may play them in something one day, and at any rate they'll be great for tabletop RPGs.) I love Tre Manor's orcs - the problem is they're a bit too big to fit on a 1" fender washer and if I put them on a 1 1/4" washer I can't fit them into my smaller miniature case. Besides, they'll be a bit big for our grid. I went over how I fit my first Tre Manor orc, a Marauder, in this particular forum post: http://www.reapermini.com/forum/index.php?/topic/52371-reapers-gnolls-too-big/page-7 I was playing with an Orc Beserker (the one with the greatsword,) when on a lark I ran him under very hot water straight from the tap. It gave me enough flexibility that I gave it some thought. I chopped off a significant amount of the broccoli - I left enough to get plenty of surface area to glue down, but small enough to give me pretty much full range of motion when positioning the feet. I then microwaved some water, plunked the guy in, fished him out about a minute later and dried him off. The water was probably over a hundred degrees, but significantly cooler than boiling. This gave me plenty of time to reposition the feet and glue them down on the base. It actually gave me more than that, I was dissatisfied with the front foot, so I pried it up, turned it a bit, and glued it down again. Here's a picture, sorry about the focus, it's from my cell phone: Here is a close up of the feet: Incidentally, to be on the safe side, after this point I did immerse him in boiling water, do some slight stance adjustments, and gave him the cold water bath. I did this mostly because I thought it might alleviate potential stresses created by doing the relatively cold water adjustment. For example - when working with metal it is best to heat up metal that you've bent (into, say, a bracelet) so the structure re-aligns to it's new configuration. This may be unnecessary with Bones, but I thought it couldn't hurt. So anyway, I got an old digital camera from my dad (he's an avid amateur photographer,) but it didn't have a battery. I ordered one, if it gets here I'll continue on with this WIP. Next step - filling out the rest of the base with miliput. Comments welcome!

Here are two of the orcs I just finished from the Kickstarter package. I did these in an open/group WIP if you'd like to see the progress. When I first saw the sculpts for this line of orcs, I knew I had to do a few in a Blizzard Warcraft style. I've spent so much time in the Warcraft universe in various games, when I think of orcs, this style of orc is the first thing that comes to mind. Still not completely happy with my gold NMM, but I'm very happy with the steel results on the Berserker's 2-handed sword. I used more blue than in past attempts (including the stalker next to him), and it really does make a difference. As always, C&C are welcome, and thanks for looking! For the Horde!

Aren't they precious. I just want to take them home and roll dice against them! These were sort of speed painted in 1 week. I used NMM on the bronze and chainmail, but shaded metallics for the blades. In case you're wondering, I deliberately put the heart tattoo on the wrong side. You know orcs...