'Old Citadel Nostalgia' - an ongoing project.

[JollyBob]

Thanks guys, I do like painting up my old Orcs in a grimy style. Clean Orcs seem wrong.

Yes, I have never quite got my head round the current trend for brightly coloured, shiny orcs either. They should be grubby, skinny, malevolent looking buggers, debased men not huge lime-green apes.

Anyway, that's my nerdstalgic rant out the way. 

Superb painting as always. I wonder, have you ever posted a step by step of your work anywhere? I am really taken by the almost impressionistic feel I get from some of your minis and would love to know how you achieve it.

[Cubs]

Oh you guys, too kind.

Superb painting as always. I wonder, have you ever posted a step by step of your work anywhere? I am really taken by the almost impressionistic feel I get from some of your minis and would love to know how you achieve it.

The only step-by-step I can remember doing was for some Paul hicks Airborne guys a few years back - probably not the sort of thing you were wanting!

To be honest I'd love to be able to paint in that satin-smooth style that the likes of Stone Cold Lead are able to achieve; that's just gorgeous. Or there's the wonderful luscious colours of Duff's Glorantha work, or Captain Scarlet's eye popping crispness, or even the creepy beauty of Blasphemia's Gothic portraits. My earlier work seems to have been much smoother and neater when I look through my back catalogue, so I'm forced to conclude that I think my eyes are going!

Without getting too pretentious (hopefully) I'm less married to a formulaic style now where I follow a well followed process and produce a consistent style made from base, midtone, highlight (nothing wrong with it of course and it's very useful for getting a nice standard to multiple models). Each figure now seems to require something a little different from me each time. Sometimes the light will catch it while I'm painting and seems to hint at something the sculptor wants to portray, or I'll be working from a source photo and there's an unexpected use of colour I'm going to have to reproduce somehow.

Like a lot of people, I've always admired the Godfather of tabletop miniature painting, Kev Dallimore, and his great economic style where a single brushstroke seems to convey so much to the figure. Perhaps as the old eyes fade, I'm trying to emulate that? Just blobbing the right sorts of colours and shades down in the right areas lets my blurry vision interpolate nicely. I'm always a bit annoyed when I do a close-up photo to see how messy it looks blown up on the screen, but I prefer to keep doing that, so people can see how I put the paint on easier, in case they want to try out a similar technique.   

[JollyBob]

Thanks for the reply, Cubs. 

That all makes sense to me, my own painting is getting a little more "relaxed" as my eyes get older... There is definitely less of the crispness you describe and I find myself relying more on washes and shades than I used to. I just have this mental block about introducing new colours to the mix - I can see in your work where a spatter of red or some blue undertones can really lift a figure, but I can't bring myself to do it - brown is brown and red is red and that's all neat and orderly! 

[Cubs]

Often it's a leap of faith! If working from a photo or particularly a piece of artwork, the unexpected colour can be seen in situ before you try to introduce it. You can't really go wrong with putting fleshy (or browns that contrast to look fleshy) around the eyes, nose, mouth and tips of the ears. I sometimes put it on the finger and toe ends and inside of the knee and elbow. If your skin colour is already fleshy or reddish, then adding a blueish or purplish shade to those areas can work quite nicely.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

While I'm not opposed to clean-looking Orcs/Orks, I do dig a well-done grimy look a lot. Speaks for the quality of the sculpts if either look works on them.

[JollyBob]

Thanks again Cubs, I can see it is quite an organic process, and I guess a lot of trial and error is involved.

I'll give it a cautious try at some point.   

[Hobgoblin]

It's interesting, looking at those orcs again (and again ...), to see how the Perrys upped their game between the solid-based ranges and the first slotta ones (like Yaskin Forit). The older miniatures are nicer designs, but the execution is just that bit slicker with Yaskin. And those solid-based fellows themselves are the best of/improvements on the Fantasy Tribe range, as they were among the ones included in the narrower C15/16 range (which is why there are more of those two kicking around than most of the earlier variants).

Looking at Yaskin's helmet, I wonder if that was the influence of Kev Adams' conversions of Perry orcs, some of which had the same sort of outlandish headgear. His two-handed dwarf-tickler is a very odd weapon: I have him kicking around and am almost tempted to convert it into a goedendag.

Anyway, they're an absolute feast for the eyes!

[Cubs]

His two-handed dwarf-tickler is a very odd weapon: I have him kicking around and am almost tempted to convert it into a goedendag.

It's a pain in the 'arris when the fluff doesn't match the models*. The whole idea is that the 'Dwarf Tickler' (which I see as a forerunner of the 'choppa') was a unique invention adopted by the entire regiment. But his looks nothing like that of the troopers, not even a scaled-up version! If he wasn't such a tricky model to get hold of (his rarity prevents me tampering with an original) I'd chop off the helmet decoration and replace the head of the weapon with something like a modified bill hook or glaive.

*This also applies to Mudak's Half Orcs, who are meant to be armed with clubs, but instead they all have long hook-tipped swords!

[Hobgoblin]

Indeed! Yaskin's dwarf tickler looks a bit more like the one in the Tony Ackland illustration - but that's more of a spiked club than a "hooked cleaver".



The other biggie in that regard is the description of Karnac's lizardmen each being armed with "at least two swords". The models don't have any swords at all!

[Cubs]

Some more McDeath goodies.

Arka Zargul, leader of the dwarf miners.








Juggo Joriksonn (alternate figure), Julia McEwman's bodyguard








Mergrey Calchoner, King Dunco's court magician








… and last but most, a wonderful model (with an enhanced tail because the original was feeble) - Spot, Lady McDeath's pet chaos hound 

[Elk101]

Thats chaos hound is spectacular Cubs, genuinely one of the best I've ever seen.

[majorsmith]

LOVE the chaos hound!!

[Keith]

Just brilliant as usual. Rapidly becoming one of my most visited threads so many thanks for that.

Interesting side note (to me at least) but I’ve been thinking about how my painting is evolving as my eyes get older. I seem to be slowly moving towards increased contrast - sharper edges and stronger colours. I think it’s easier on my eyes these days 

[Grumpy Gnome]

I am not normally a fan of the wide jawed GW Ork aesthetic compared to the more human looking orc look... but your amazing painting really has me rethinking that. Doing grubby well is harder than some folks think.

Overall your painting is brilliant. Love your color palette.

[Nord]

Cracking good work all round, you make some pretty shoddy minis look good. The hound is slobberingly well done.