Retro 40k Duck Style

First squad is now finished. Of note is the Rogue Trader plastic Space Ork, who I added to the squad mainly to help me break up the painting a bit. I’m really pleased with how he came out, so I will start with him.

Skin tone done as per the tutorial below.

Plasma blue effect is simply Contrast Aethermic Blue over my trusty Halfords white primer.

Yellow is Averland Sunset base with a wash of Serpahim Sepia, layered with Yriel Yellow and a final edge highlight of Flash Gitz Yellow.

So here they are in all their finished glory. Having sat in my loft for over 25 years, they have finally gotten the paint job that they so richly deserve!

And just for Lloyd

I hope that you like the updates and I always love to read you comments. I’m not quite sure what is up next, I might have a stab at the next 20 Grots (when I am feeling braver), I also have a special project in the loft but probably need a few more models in the basic force before starting that one.

I’ve been searching for more 1st and 2nd edition models to add to my collection however the eBay prices are pretty steep, so any advice on where to pick up similar style models would be apprecaited.

Thanks for reading!

After the “excitement” of 20 monopose Grots, I wasn’t quite sure that I could cope with the next batch of another 20 identical models <’nuff said>. So I decided to treat myself to starting on ‘da Orks. The eagle eyed among you will notice from my first post that although retaining 18 of the original 20 Space Orks (I suspect the other 2 got lost in the Warp), unfortunately I only had 9 of the original arms. I guess that 12 year old me may have been wayward with the arms.

So I started with the 9 (Nazgul pun intended) and I am sure that I will come up with something for the rest later on in this project. To spice things up – yes I know how to live. I threw in 2 old metal Gretchin as well as an old plastic Rogue Trader Ork with a very large Plasma Cannon.

After some thought I decided to stick with the same skin tone approach I described earlier however, I went a bit heavier with the wash and less heavy with the final stage highlights on the Orks, so they are slightly darker of tone than the Grots, which seemed right to me. I made use of a few GW Contrast paints, in particular Snakebite Leather was used to great effect on the ‘boyz axe handles and I was really pleased with the finish directly over my cheap White Halfords primer.

This is my half way basecoat shot. Here you can see the Contrast Basilicanum Grey basecoat on the Shoota and Axe, Black Templar on the body armour, Blood Angels Red on the trim and Steel Legion Drab on the trousers. The horns on the helemets got a coat of Skeleton Horde with a second one applied to the base of the horns, to darken them where the meet the ‘boys helmet.

After the Gobbo’s there was a surprising amount of detail on the ‘boyz. GW went to town a bit with the ‘ladz. They have quilted armour, pauldrons with sculpted details and belts and buckels that show how much ‘bigga and more important they are than the Grots. Anyway after a week of sold evenings work I got one test model done.

I had a lot of fun doing checks and Dags, as I felt that the model was worth the effort. I really wanted to try and do these models justice. I know by modern standards the models aren’t the greatest, but they have a nostalgia value that I feel, to me makes it worth going that little bit further than I would for my regular foot slogging Boyz. So I added Dags and a small amount of weathering . I wanted to stick with the 90’s style basing, although by modern standards it is pretty twee. I was very happy with how he came out.

Next up the rest of his Gang and my two custom Gobbo’s!!!

Hello all,

Things have been busy with me, both with work and family, but I have made some good progress these past 3 weeks and have finally got around to updating the blog. To break up the sheer monotony of painting 20 identically posed Gretchin I went with a few different paint schemes. The first was a pretty standard Goff Red & Black scheme which I mixed up with some Gold and Silver highlight details. I also wanted to try something a little different with some of them:

After a bit of experimenting I went with a basecoat of Rakarth Flesh, which is one of my favourite additions to the GW range – I say additions, but it’s been in the “new” range for probably getting on for 10 years now – anyway, on this I put a wash of Seraphim Sepia and then I layer back on the Rakarth Flesh and add a final highlight of Pallid Witch Flesh. After all that you get a Grot who’s outfit looks like this.

The rest of the 20 grots came together pretty simply after that. There is a certain beauty to these models to my eye, they have a wonderful simple-ness which is almost a pleasure to paint. You can make quick progress as there is only a few small details to each figure, painting them reminds me of being 12 and I can almost smell the Humbrol enamels.

I recently watched a cool cross-over video by ZorpaZorpand GeekGaming where they went back and revisited their ‘dream armies’ from their youths. This got me thinking and when a very old friend of mine posted pictures of his 2nd edition Eldar taking shape I thought “Why not give it a go myself, how hard can it be”?

So a trip up to the ‘loft of opportunity’ yielded a pile of my old Orks. These were the first army I ever collected and helped develop my love of wargaming. I love the idea of these battle crazy loons hurtling into battle and I love the 2nd edition Ork ‘Cultcha’ with their tiered society and clanz. The loft as always yielded an opportunity, which upon further examination looked a bit like this:

This being a second edition challenge I thought it best to start with the old plastics that came in the 2nd edition boxed set. Luckily most of these seem to have survived their 27 year wait quite well I have however lost quite a few Ork Boy arms.

Deciding to just take the bull by the horns (Goff pun), I charged straight in with the first 20 Gobbos/Gretchin. The thought of 20 identical static mono-pose Gobbos did not (surprisingly) fill me with Dredd. I always base my models with adhesive magnetic material for ease of transport and after cleaning up the mold lines, I decided to go with a classic green sand base, no rocks, not grass, just good, old fashioned sand painted green. That was how we rolled in the early 90’s.

Next up was priming and I went with a grey primer (Halfords) with a zenith of white sprayed directly from above. I had a bit of a challenge with the skin as it has been a long time since I painted Orks, but I wanted the skin tones to get progressively lighter as the Orks get smaller from Nobz being darker skinned down to light snotlings. So my Gretchin needed to be quite bright. I went with the following combo:

So here you can see the steps, the first highlight is using just the warboss green and the final is using just the moot green. The good thing about hte Citadel Layer paints used in this example is that they have a good level of transparency. I thin them a bit with water to increase this and was really happy with the result. It’s quick and good for the level of quality I want to achieve, given that I have 40 of these guys to paint.