Orc shaman, bought at Polcon 2016 fantasy convention that took place during last summer in Wroclaw (discount price :)). Classic GW mini, has kind of 90s GW orc vibe, nostalgic, reminds me of my early hobby days, first contact with wargaming and the fascination with miniatures. For it’s age the sculpt is quite interesting, allows to play with different materials. The cast was preety bad unfortunately (this is a “fine”cast version). Overall around 18hrs, a little too much, there are a lot of tiny tiring details to paint. I must say I prefer simpler minis. I wanted to achieve expressive paintjob, with clearly separated surfaces, some textures and try to up my contrast game, eye-candish but not make it too silly or colorful. That’s why I combined vivid red with more earthly tones, the base is milliput, oregano branch and sand, with some rust pigment to contrast with green skin. I think I’m slowly getting shaping the volumes with light, it’s not as boring as my previous paintjobs.

What I learned:

  • Painting complete part by part forces me to be more clean because of fear of fucking up an already finished fragment. This in effect trains brush control.
  • Making an effort to properly highlight & blackline small components makes them pop. It’s worth it to emphasize and exaggerate the sculpt when it’s flat
  • painting every other day even for a little will help to get consistent quality. After a longer break the first 30 minutes is pure struggle to get the right mind flow.

Stuff to improve:

  • learn wetblending? At least for first light/shadow situation. Washes are too dirty and leave stains, glazing takes too much time as an end-to-end method
  • start new miniture/model a base/prep something as a distraction, don’t force myself to paint unpleasant parts without full commitment to the effect
  • plan blacklining ahead for hard to access fragments. Got a couple of cases when this would help.
  • push contrast even more! With separate base color mixes for different height of the same element
  • got figopedia book by JBT, so definately try some color/light concepts explained there

What’s next:

  • reaper wood elf sorceress - speedpainting & chilling time! I’ll probably timebox it to 4hrs.
  • first diorama: duel between vampire & vampire huntress. Lots of modelling & basework, probably it will take a lot of time to finish with some other miniatures in-between
  • sci-fi/cyberpunk version of hasslefree’s jade with little display base? Just an idea though, it could change

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