Big Boss Bob's gnoblog, Update 8-18-2014, Airbrushed horns

After too long a time of having these models and swearing to myself, "I'll paint a little this week" (which I never did), I'm finally pushing myself to make it happen. It's my first army and I really want to play, but I won't field Grey Legion. Just get it done already, right? No real excuse. I guess it's just easier to come home, plop down, and watch internet videos.

I was originally going for a cooler color palette with blue pants, paler skin, etc., but, after a few test models, felt restricted about what I'd be able to do in the future. I can't really explain it. Maybe my thoughts of ogres living in what I imagined was a cold, dull, colorless place couldn't overcome their being a rough, gluttonous, hot-blooded people. It just didn't do it for me.

I've settled on what will be a warmer palette with a rustic, earthy feel to it. I liked red, but didn't want it too bright. It's funny because after leaving my original color ideas due to them feeling dull and lifeless, I still chose something of a muted look. By comparison, I feel it will still be vibrant, but in a different kind of way.


I've made good progress into this already. I just decided I needed to start posting pictures. I'm glad I took a few along the way.


Currently in this gnoblog:

9 Bulls
7 Ironguts
6 Leadbelchers
1 Slaughtermaster/Butcher
1 Golgfag (count as bruiser BSB)

Photo 1. Prep work: black primer with white airbrushed over to make a light/medium grey color.
Photo 2. Basing: skin and pants blocked in, metal undercoated in dark brown

1-2. Gutplates, weapons, and other metal areas worked on
3-5. Skin had wash applied into the recesses and was tidied up, pants also had wash put into the recesses. For some reason I also starting painting beards while working on skin and pants.

It may be hard to tell from the photos, but I did a few conversions on the gutplates and weapons. Some gutplates from the Bull and Irongut kit had hanging parts clipped off and neatened with green stuff. In particular was the Irongut gutplate that had what I think was dragonscales or something attached to the cloth.
Several of the weapons were converted from left hand to right hand. I've seen a lot of people with a big group of ironfisted ogres and most are wielding swords in their weapon hand. I wanted to mix in some clubs.

I'll eventually put up some better, closer pictures when things start getting a little more interesting.

Dig it! Lots of units to work on to keep you busy. Skin tone looks nice and smooth and it is human tone at the moment which is by far my most preferred.

Cant wait to see more

~ConOgre

Looking good. As already said, very clean and smooth looking. Look forward to seeing more.

I made some progress on base coating a few parts and filling in some details.

Teeth and nails- base coated and applied a wash to both areas then highlighted the teeth to make them more visible. I decided to leave the nails alone after the wash. If you look at your own finger nails you'll see they basically blend in to the rest of your hand so it made sense to do the same here.

Arm/wrist wraps and straps- I was going to go with typical khaki cloth here, but my skin color lacks the pinkish hue that you see on the box art. This made it hard to differentiate the sections. I decided to pretend it was all leather and went with black like my boots and belts. I think it works just fine.

Stitches- I filled those in with a khaki color and called it a day

Beards- Base coated all the beards, black and brown for most, dark grey for the bigger beards. I figure the army needs a couple gruff, old guys.

That's all for now. I promise there will be better quality pictures someday but for now I think a cell phone camera is fine for these basic progress shots.

On a different note, good times today. My order arrived at my FLGS. I'll be holding off on working with them until I get these lads done, but it's great to see all the shiny new boxes. Zelda approves.

Looking good!
- Love the cat

~ConOgre

Dear Ford! Talk about mass production.

No seriously, very smooth, clean and good looking painting this far. And seems like you are also painting fast, which has always impressed me as I'm probably the slowest painter that ever walked on earth.

Mass production is right, but I've seen blogs and forums where someone getting started does three to six dudes at a time and decided that wasn't for me. I get so much more done putting these through the assembly line.

I actually may be in competition with you for slowest painter. If you didn't notice, the first two posts were put up consecutively. I'd been working on them for a while before starting this gnoblog. After that, it's been real time. Let me tell you, washing the skin and trousers then tidying up the skin around all the recesses/defined muscle on twenty four ogres takes me a long time. But all that slow painting pays off in the end with good coverage and neatness so it doesn't bother me in the long run.

I know what you mean mate. I've got loads of unpainted models that I paint through a relatively slow process. I used to buy the large bundle deals with the huge discounts (by GW standards anyway ), which I really never opened and got to it... So haven't bought anything new for the armies that I've got models for lately, as there's really no reason to buy more at this point until I've got everything painted And as I'm a somewhat mercurial as to what type of model or army I want to paint, having the large amount of different armies does guarantee continuous painting inspiration

Of course, my new Ogres are an exception as I didn't have any before. They're also my first model purchases since last September when the new Space Marine Veteran models were released

- Loran

Its very stark contrast to me, I spend a couple days on each guy usually. But the skin looks lovely, nice smooth paint job. Nice use of washes. Well done for sure, looking forward to seeing more

~ConOgre

That is quite the way of mass painting, can't wait to see everything done and ranked up in an army wide shot.
Couldn't see using Golgfag as a BSB as that's quite an expensive model, hopefully you aren't converting him so him can be used with his own rules at some point.

-GL

I think I can have access to a better camera tomorrow or the next day but this is starting to look like an army and I wanted to throw up a quick shot. The next update will include some closer views and I'll point out some simple conversions I've done.

Looking good, mate! Keep up the good work. Can't wait for the close ups, as the unit as a whole looks very nice already

- Loran

PS. Oh, and something I forgot from the earlier post: Kudos on the cat name

No good camera today after all, but it doesn't matter for this. I just wanted to show some simple weapon conversions I did to make the army less repetitive. There are three right hand weapons in the bull kit and two of them are swords. Each of the right hand weapons pictured here are converted from left hand weapons. Also, the gutplates on the left and right are from the Irongut kit. I trimmed off the dangling parts then fixed it up with some green stuff.

Looking good. For some more simple conversions, you could always try re-shaping the swords with a craft knife or just hold them down against a cutting mat and slash the hell out of the blade edge, makes them, look very used.
Simply gouge out one of the ogre heads eyes for a "been in the wars" look. Cut hair off, or cut sections out of the bearded face.
Some of the chaos marauder shields are not too "chaosy" and can be substituted for gut plates. Some simple examples of all this are on my gnoblog.
G_H

Long ago, in a distant land, there was a guy diligently painting his army. He spent hours at a time at it and had gotten a lot done. Though there was plenty of work left, the most grueling parts were over.

Then, he burnt out super hard.

That's my story. The days turned to weeks turned to months. Looking at the date of my last post it's both sad and amazing how long I've ignored these things. I've been telling myself the whole time, "a few minutes a day and you'll be finished before you know it", but I never sat down for even those few minutes.

I bellied up to my table yesterday and today to work on a few completely different things I had lying around to get into the painting spirit. What I have now for an update is not fancy but it's a sign of life and that's good enough for me.

These gnoblars, which are all destined to be decorative bits for the ogres themselves, have been basecoated, washed, and the shirts have had their first post wash layer applied. I know it's not a good photo but there isn't much reason for a close up at this stage.

Aye, we've all been there with the burnout. I've gone upwards of 4-6 months at a time not touching my stuff (due to various factors). It's not a terrible thing, though; it lets you take time to refresh yourself, and when you get back, you can get a taste of that first-time vigor that got us all into the hobby to begin with

That being said, you've done a great job with your painting so far! I'm shocked I didn't catch this gnoblog sooner! Keep it up, no matter what the pace is

New acquisition that I'm happy to have. I think it's an extra good find because, unlike a lot of other painted or primed specimens on ebay, this one is new. I got it at a good price too, $52 shipped.

Painting wise I've been dealing with my decorative gnoblars and various other details. I'll try to have enough done soon to make it worth a new army shot.

In the meantime, I'm trying to get a starter list figured out and learn more about formations and character placement. If you'd like to toss some advice my way, check out my thread in the army list section.

http://www.ogrestronghold.com/forum/index.php?topic=28943.0

I've been busy painting my lads but I'm at the point where I feel like I spend as much time deciding what to do as I actually spend doing. I see all the details that need to be picked out and I just sit there figuring the best way to go about it. Much has been done, but there is more yet before a new set of pics will be interesting to look at.

I meant to show these dwarves long ago but didn't. Better late than never and since the boards have felt quiet lately why not now? I did these sometime last year as a commission for a friend at my flgs. The whole lot of them spent a while in the store's display cabinet (my friend works there) so that was cool. It was nice to have them available for folks to look at even though they were only painted what I consider "good tabletop".

I learned things painting them: mostly that I may hate dwarves, static grass kind of sucks, and that I will never again accept a commission to paint another person's army. It's hardly worth it.

King Alrik was fun to paint. I plan on hiring myself out for individual characters sometime in the future.

Oh man, that BSB is amazing! I really love that model, with the pose working exceptionally well on a stocky, little Dwarf And the paintjob is great as well! So all good there!

And it's lovely to see the old Dwarf models. Dwarfs have always been a favourite army of mine, mostly due to the background, but also the models. Sure, the new models are amazing, but the old models always bring about a feeling of nostalgia Might have to get some Dwarfs in the future...

Do you have any full army shots? The units themselves are great, but I'm a fan of large armies of models, so if you haven't yet taken army shots, please do

Can't wait to see what's coming up next. Keep up the good work!

- Loran

You might hate dwarfs, but hey look great

I wanted to show some simple airbrush work I did to paint these horns. I wasted time trying to feather like the pictures on the boxes but it didn't look right. It worked out since afterwards I decided I liked this better. I also painted the horns on Golgfag this way but the lighting I have isn't right to show it well.

I did a quick tip post showing alternate ways to mask things off before spraying. You can check that out here if you haven't seen it.
http://www.ogrestronghold.com/forum/index.php?topic=29012.0

The horns look sweet on this standard, but I have actually seen this done with a simple drybrush technique.

I think if you check Conogres Gnoblog then he has done a video on how to paint this technique on horns. Not taking anything away from the great job you have done here BigBossBob, it looks stunning, very clean and a really smooth transition. But if you don't have an airbrush and want to give this a try I would heartily suggest taking a peak at Conogres video.

http://www.ogrestronghold.com/forum/index.php?topic=27844.175
(page 8 post #177)

G_H