Ork Man Love

Maximillian

The month of August through the beginning of September are a total fucking blur for me.   Out of five weeks I spent three of them traveling to game conventions -- Gen-Con, OFCC, and PAX.   While they were an absolute blast they were also absolutely exhausting.   The dim twilight periods between each event were just enough to clean up from the last one and prepare for the next one.  No time to actually recover was allotted.  Now that all the travel is done I'm slowly but surely unburying myself from a pile of work and trying to tame the crazed beast that is my poor house.   All the while the unrelenting beat of time and Soda Pop deadlines continues to loom.   Suffice to say this kid needed a break to remember why he likes tiny soldiers.   Which meant taking a moment to paint something entirely selfish.  Naturally that meant a GW Orc or Ork (depending on Fantasy or 40k) in Momma's Boyz colors.

Da Momma's Boyz may be a bit neglected at the moment but they are an integral part of my gamer DNA.   They were the third army I ever painted to completion.  My first for a GW system.  More importantly they were my army of choice during my heady college days, the origin of my game club, and part of the foundation of me meeting many of my dearest, lifelong, friends.  Plus Orks hit things and are really loud.  I admire that.

While I have a large (4000ish points) worth of Warhammer Fantasy orcs painted my 40k orks remain, tragically, unassembled with only a lone kiddo painted.  Poor guy.   I decided he needed a brother.  Specifically a larger, meaner brother to bully him around.  That meant a nob.  I wasn't feeling fancy so I just took one of the fantastic Attack on Black Reach nobs and gave him a chain axe instead of a slugga and strapped a fantasy goblin banner to his back to be his boss pole.  A quick spray of grey Dupli-Color Sandable Automotive Primer and Maximillian was ready for my brush.  I didn't take any work in progress pictures or anything so I'm mainly going to hit the highlights.  

Skin.  I love painting skin.  I deliberately never write down a recipe for skin because I want my guys to always have subtle variations.  Plus experimenting is more fun.

I started with some P3 Iosan Green.  I then drybrushed the whole thing with P3 Khardic Flesh and then a lighter drybrush of P3 Thrall Flesh.  After that came a wash of Vallejo Dark Green Ink with a bit of the P3 Iosan Green mixed in.  I then did some highlights with P3 Midlund Flesh mixing it on the fly with the wash.   After that came some spot washes of Foundation Leviathan Purple.  Then some Khardic Flesh highlights and some more Midlund Flesh Highlights.   After that the whole skin got a really thin glaze of P3 Beaten Purple.  Lastly he the undersides of the muscles got a glaze of P3 Green Ink. 

There was seriously zero method to my madness.   The end result was a little less green than I may have intended.   But I dig it.  He has a nice gritty flesh tone that I like.  It has a fair bit of subtlety to it if you look at it closely.  Sadly my on-the-fly pics don't really do it much justice.

Armor.  My Fantasy orcs are primarily purple and white with orange accents.  I decided their 40k dopplegangers would be primarily orange and purple with white accents.   Cloth would be purple and armor gets the orange.  I started off with a basecoat of Citadel Bolt Gun, which then got a wash of P3 Armor Wash.  After that dried I gave it a second wash of  P3 Green Ink.  Foundation Solar Orange was then stippled on key plates.  Followed by stippled P3 Khador Highlight and P3 Heartfire.

Banner in focus.

Boss Pole.  All Da Momma's Boyz carry banners that either have something your mother would tell you on them or a reminder that Mom is firmly in charge.  Most my text to date has been pretty plain white block letters.  I decided I needed to make the text more distinctive for this go round.  Ultimately I settled on a font that mimicked graffiti.   A bit of internet research netted me this handy graffiti creator.   I elected to keep it simple the first time out.  I just wanted to key on the shape of the letters with a basic white outline to make it pop.  The saying, "Mind Mom" I find nice and suitably blunt.  I am starting to think maybe I need to winnow a "yer" in there though.

I laid down the basic shaped of the letters with P3 Menoth Base.  I then filled them in with the Solar Orange and Khador Highlight.  I then cleaned up and brightened the edges with P3 Menoth Highlight.

I gave him the same base that my Ultramarines have and which I have a half completed game table for.   You can't see it in the shots I took but it has an off white cobble stone effect with some red Cities of Death ruins on the backside.

There we have it!  A second 40k DMB joins the ranks.  At this rate I should have a completed army by the time I'm about 60.   Which will be well before Marsters ever has a Fantasy army painted.