More Space Ork Raiders

Just a quick post this week. I've been clearing a couple of things from my painting queue including two more 1980s Space Ork Raiders which have been an ongoing project for some time now.

The painting time for these two was approximately 2 hours per model. I was a little bit disappointed with this as I was aiming for more like 90 minutes, and I have another  8 minis to go on this project. As usual I am painting these as closely as possible to the box art. It can be a bit tricky because the main picture on the box isn't actually of the models.

There is a picture of the minis on the back which is what I'm working from, but it is rather small. The two mins that I have completed today are on the back row, second from left and first from right.

The box also includes a very simple painting guide... Of course all these colours are long obsolete. I am quite pleased that with my effort to reproduce the scheme, although the 1980s Games Workshop scheme has a bit more neon green to it which I haven't quite nailed. If I was starting again I would try introducing something like Moot Green from the current range into the scheme.

Here is my collection of Rogue Trader Orks. Most of them are from this Space Ork Raiders box, except for the Warchief "Boglob" who is from my Combat Cards project.

Of course, 40k Cat came to join me when I took my photos.

How to Paint Rogue Trader Ork Warpaint

The internet is full of orks at the moment with the new models and the codex release. As usual, I am bang on trend and have prepared a tutorial to help people recreate the warpaint that features on the box from the original Ork release in 1987 - nearly thirty years ago! Barely a day goes by without people asking me for this tutorial. Honest.

It's a pretty simple process really but I though that it was worth writing up.

There are no prizes for guessing that I work from a black undercoat. I block the eyes out a this stage using a foundation yellow so any mistakes can easily be tidied up.

Next the red areas get their base coat. I used GW Khorne Red which I actually prefer to its Vallejo equivalent. A liberal amount of black should be left in the recesses to recreate the Rogue Trader look. This probably easier to see in the next step when the white is introduced.

The first coats of white go on. In this picture it has had a couple of very thin coats of GW Ceramite white. It goes on a bit chalky, but that's not a problem because it will be tidied up later. With this step, the bits you don't paint are as important as the bits that you do. A really nice strong black line should be left in the recesses - the ears and jawline are particularly good examples.

It's a bit tricky to pick this up in the picture, but the next step is to build layers on top of the white and red sections. The white just gets a nice thin coat of GW Skull White (yes I still have the old one) to take the chalkiness out of the white give it a nice finish. The red gets a first highlight with a 1:1 mix of the base coat with a lighter red. I used Vallejo Scarlet but there are probably two or three reds in the current GW range which would do the job.

There's no point doing any more work on the white now... You can't really highlight up any further! A nice final highlight goes on the red. Pure Vallejo Scarlet was my choice.

The next step is the most difficult but also the most satisfying. With a very thin brush, and black line is added to the areas where the red and white meet. It adds to the black in the recesses to make the final look of the model really strong, and give it the Rogue Trader style that we are looking for.

This is the brush that I used for this step, and for all the freehand experiments that I'm doing at the moment. It is a Winsor Newton Series 7 Miniature 00 which Poot let me try out. I've been really impressed with it and told him that he's not having it back!

The finishing touches are some GW Bloodletter Glaze over the red areas, and a touch of wash in the eye sockets. This boy is ready for the Battle at the Farm!

This is the mini from the box that I was trying to reproduce. As you can see I made a mistake and picked up the wrong sculpt! Oh well... Finally, a couple of shots of my two warpainted Orks. Waaaaaaaggh!

Project Update: Space Ork Raiders

Now that my Captains Project is out of the way, I've taken the chance to make some progress on another one of my long term projects. I managed to find a complete, boxed set of Space Ork Raiders from 1987 which I gradually painting up as closely as possible to the way that they appear on the box.

This is one of GW's earliest sci-fi kits, and there isn't a great deal of variety in the sculpts, so the box picture features a couple of the troopers painted with really striking war paint on their faces to distinguish them from their otherwise identical pals. This is my effort at recreating that and it was a really fun paint job to do. Here a couple of views of the two newly completed minis.

Here is my small but rapidly expanding gang of Rogue Trader Orks, including "Boglob" from my Combat Cards project. He has now been re-based to match the rest of my vintage Ork warband.

"Why is that Ork fully painted apart from the face?" I hear you ask. Well that is because I have decided that what the internet needs is a tutorial on how to paint 1987-style Ork warpaint! The technique I used is very simple but very satisfying and I think that it could be used for loads of different minis so I've decided to write it up. It'll be up in a couple of weeks when I'm back from me hols.

Test Mini: 1988 Space Ork Raider

I managed to get hold of a complete box of RTB02 Space Ork Raiders from 1988 a while back, and I have just organised myself to get a test mini done.

As usual I am doing my best to emulate the scheme of the time... I am reasonably pleased with this a first effort, although I think for my next model I need to go a bit further with the amount of yellow that is used on the highlights on the Ork skin. This mini uses GW Waaagh Flesh, Straken Green and Ogryn Camo. Next time round I may add a step with some yellow mixed into the Ogryn Camo.

Here he is with a sworn enemy from the Rogue Trader era, an RTB01 marine from my retro Salamanders tactical squad. I am not much of a fluff fan, but this picture puts me in mind of something from the original Rogue Trader rulebook: "People say on their first meeting, Man and Ork exchanged a long, hard look at each other, and didn't much care for what they saw, and began the long interstellar conflict that has gone on ever since."

A couple more views of my little green pal: