Hobby progress over the past few weeks has reached a snail's pace as I've jumped into a kitchen remodel. With a little bit of time here and there, I've been plugging away at my Savage Orcs, but I've hit a bit of a wall. I'm not satisfied with my current method for painting bone. Here's what I've been doing lately: Paint the bone area w/ Bleached Bone --> hit the area with Agrax Earthshade --> pick out details with Bleached Bone. Simple, I know. I've been doing it for a while now, but it looks too dirty, and not up the the level the rest of the model is (at least I think so). Below is a picture of how it turns out.
I suppose it doesn't look bad, but I just felt a little bit disheartened when it didn't turn out the way I wanted. Also, I have around 50 guys to do this to. It's a little discouraging when you have a pile of dudes to paint and you aren't 100% on how you want to do them. How do you guys do Bone?
Anyway, below the fold I'll show off my Savage Orc Hero, and a couple of Tyranid projects that I've been working on the fight the Orc burnout.
Anyway, below the fold I'll show off my Savage Orc Hero, and a couple of Tyranid projects that I've been working on the fight the Orc burnout.
At the last Da Boyz GT, Grubnards won this model in a raffle and gave it to me. I love the way that GW is going with their plastics. I've mentioned how sweet the new monsters are to put together (the new Hive Tyrant & the Arachnarock Spider are super fun to put together), and the same goes for the infantry level models.
New Nids! The Dakkafex to the left has been in a brood of 1 for far too long, and I've been wanting to try out a larger brood. I finally picked up another Carnifex and have started the conversion process. The body itself doesn't receive that much conversion attention, but the guns and arms need to be heavily modified.
Each gun is a combination of Devourer on the front, mounted on a Deathspitter barrel, hooked up to a Venom Cannon or Barbed Strangler's supply tube. Add in a few sensor bits from the Mawloc and you have 2 sets of twin-linked Devourers. The arms are simply Scything Talon arms, with the the rending claws from the old Monstrous creature sprue.
To help chaperon the Dakkafex unit, I built up a new Tyranid prime. I have one that is loaded out with Lash Whips & Bone swords, but for the new challenge mechanic, I figure that dual Bone Swords would work quite well.
While it may look like a deceptively simple conversion, there was a bit of cutting to be done. I started with a leftover Ravenor tail, attached to a Warrior body. If you're familiar with the models, you'd know that the Ravenor is quite a bit larger than the Warrior. To compensate, I cut the rear portion of the Warriror's body vertically to create a beefier upper torso. With that done, it was a simple matter to make a few Boneswords out of leftover nid bitz.
-Crispy
I have found that dheneb stone from the old citadel paint range coupled with a sepia wash gave a very nice tone to bone details. I haven't tried out seraphim sepia yet though... i have about 3 full pots of gryphonne sepia that i mainly use for bones, i also think that a yellowish tone over bones will match very nicely with the vibrant green colours that you use on your savages :-). It helps getting a nice golden shine over silver colours as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice. I've moved onto the Tyranids for a little while to build up my spirits, but I'll be moving back to the orcs soon (as soon as I grout all my backsplashes the wife says). I have a little bit of the old brown wash, along with old and new sepia washes. I'll give them all a try.
DeleteAlso, great recommendation with the sepia/yellow tone. That's something I didn't think about.
All in support for more nids! They are my second favorite army to paint, only dark eldar happens to top them in my book :-) i have a little army of nids at around 1500 that i would really like to finish.
DeleteI use a similar method most of the time. I highlight the Dheneb stone with white before applying the wash however.
DeleteI paint bone starting with a brown base and lightly drybrushing with Bleached Bone. I do 3/4 light drybrushing passes each time to try and blend the brown into bone colour. Then finish with a light drybrush of white for the most prominant highlights.
ReplyDeleteI think that's the technique I'll be trying next time. It's originally what I used to do, but when the washes came out, I switched techniques. GOing back to old school.
DeleteThat savage orc is looking awesome!
DeleteI do my bone colors similar to 6th degree. Here is my method for painting bone.
1. Base with a dark brown
2. Add a lighter tan color to the brown and paint the whole area except for the edges and/or deep crevices.
3. Dry brush with a pure lighter tan color
4. Apply a brown wash
5. Paint a couple of layers of watered down white, building up to the highlights
6. sometimes I'll go back over the white with another brown wash, depending on the look I want to achieve
I know its a lot of steps but it really pays off in the end. I wish I could remember the exact paint names but since GW renamed their entire line I stopped trying to remember the names.
The Carnifex is such a lovely model. Great job on the conversion.
ReplyDeleteThank for the wip photos of your dfex - easily my favorite dakkafex conversion out of the many I've seen. You do such a good job of repositioning - it's one thing to consider a fex bearing down like an enraged rhino, but yours is about to pounce like some lithe jungle cat. Worlds freakier.
ReplyDeleteMichael & Ghostin, Thanks for the praise, it means a lot.
ReplyDeleteI think the bone looks good, but you're right ... it's a bit too dirty for the rest of the savage orc boyz that look cleaner. Instead of just picking out the highlights in bleached bone, you could do a layer of it, just leaving the deeper parts. Then highlight with a layer of bleached bone/white, then pick the highest points with white. I think that would give you a cleaner, bleached-looking bone.
ReplyDeleteSomething to try also is to add a little grey into the bleached bone to make it look more sun-bleached. Like it was out in the desert. I haven't tried this yet, but it should work.
That's a good idea. I'm going to try and get to them tonight, so I'll have at least a half dozen different methods to try out.
Deletethanks guys.
-Crispy