Monday Miniatures: Ork Berserker
Back from my travels, and just in time to get bludgeoned by this fearsome looking character. I didn’t have time to paint (if the late hour of my posting didn’t give that away,) but I did spare a little time just to drool. That’s a reasonably orky reaction though, right?
Magnus is making great strides on his NMM technique.
Dirk does a great job as always, but I have to call out the face on this one. The muscles are well defined as a whole, but the face has such character, above and beyond what is provided by the sculpt. Really nice work.
Arjen set out to paint this ork in a slightly different color scheme that would still go with the rest of his mob. I think he achieved his goal; the style is unifying, but the differences are definitely noticeable. I love the motled skin – I’m sure that took a lot of layers.
Jake went for a more traditional color scheme, but the corrosion on the armor is really top notch. What’s your secret?
High Wizard – Please send pictures to Caffeineforge@gmail.com by 2100 MDT on 10/19/14
Caffeineforge 
All of the entries this week are awesome, but Dirk’s red armor is outstanding! I think Arjen’s orcs have a very strong “Lord of the Rings” feel with the colors he used. Good job, all!
The “Waaaagh!” is strong with these paint jobs! 🙂 Great works guys! Some day I might have to try to paint a mini myself.
Nothing special for the armour wear.
I make a fairly heavy glaze of English Uniform Brown – Vallejo Model Color as it has a nice olivey tint to it and use the shape of the brush to shape it. The paint is probably 40% opacity with roughly a 2:1 mix glaze medium/matte medium to paint. Dark Cammo Brown – VMC for recessed areas and finish it with a targeted black wash against any edges.
I like the look personally as I feel that while orcs wouldn’t take care of their gear, they wouldn’t let it get entirely rusty and would probably rub the rust away and oil their gear so it wouldn’t hinder them while fighting. But the staining/patina from the rust would remain.
I also use small amounts of Chocolate Brown – VMC to vary the discoloration on larger bits of metal.
I was rather pleased with my orc, but I have been trumped again 🙂
Magnus’ experiments are really paying off, Dirk has a vain orc that is wearing armor that matches his eyes (the female orcs will find him sexy, for sure) and Jake’s result is…..stunning. Jake’s photo quality is also very good: what kind of lighting set-up do you use?
I use one of these desk lamps from officeworks
And use a phillips LED 13wat lightbulb (cool day) for the lighting.
I bluetacked some paper to the wall and let it setting into a natural curve and that was it.
The camera was my phone -laughs- but I am happy with how it came out… Phone cameras are better than they used to be
Great thing about the phillips LED bulb is that it gets barely warm, meaning you aren’t baking the paint in the pallet while painting.
I use an LED bulb for my work lamp for exactly that reason; the heat from my previous bulb was causing my paint to dry too fast on both the palette and the figure!
I use the same lamp for my photos, but I have an older digital camera and I’m not entirely happy with the quality of my photos. Even in macro mode, I have to fight with the camera to focus on the figure (and even then, sometimes only parts are in focus). I need to experiment with my phone camera and see if I can get better results with it….