Hobby Tips - Never put your drink near the painting cup!

Well, this will be a major hobby update. For the past few days I've been assembling and assembling non-stop. And up till today, I've managed to start painting on the stuff I've been assembling.

Why I said "Never put your drink near the painting cup"? Because, when your body is accustomed to the position of your painting cup, your hand will automatically dip the brush into the water and the swishing movement of the brush will begin. Lucky for me, my cup is already half way done, and I realized instantly that I was about to mix Badab Black into my drink. Will that be Yummy?

Here are some images from a few days ago. I've been assembling a lot as I've mentioned.

These will be my Alpha Legion Chosen Chaos Space Marines. Anyone smell 5 meltas?

I've also been assembling more Ork Boyz from the Black Reach set.

Not only that, I've finished assembling 5 Chaos Terminators along with a Chaos Terminator Lord and a Sorcerer Terminator Lord.

I also assembled 2 Chaos Rhinos for my Alpha Legion. One of them is for the Chosen Chaos Space Marines.

The one below is the Rhino meant for my Chosen. I've did a minor conversion on the twin-linked bolter. Since I want this Rhino to stand out more, I let the gunner hold two bolters which should count as twin-linked. (You may steal this idea.)

Sprayed with Chaos Black. Real good spray to have and use.

Today, the painting process started.

Looks sexy! Black Rhino with Alpha Legion doors!

I'll be doing my best in completing this Rhino as soon as I can since I've got lots more to paint. I'll also be including some free hands on this Rhino just to make it a little bit more "special".

Nurturing a new FEMALE Ork player!

It has been a busy week for me, I had to run around with my new classes, make lots of orders, paint lots of minis, assemble more minis and even teach a new player how to paint Orks!

My friend Janice has decided to go the Orky way, simply because they're cute. Hey, I do think Orks are cute too! For the entire day, I had to guide her on how to paint Orks like how I painted mine, which is why her Orks look like mine. She's possible the 7th person I ever taught how to paint.

She had a good start by buying a load of paints, some brushes, the tools, a box of Ork Boyz and Nobz.

I taught her how to speed paint, highlight, shade and drybrush all in a day. And here's what she did with minimum help from me.

Looks like someone is addicted to painting.

The Ork Boy 'ere needs more ladz!

I had to help her with the checks on the Orks. And looking at it, the motif here is very nice, red and black checks. She's decided to actually build an Ork Biker army.

To end with this post, I just had to add this poster I found online.

"More work for me to do now, need to build a new Chaos Lord."

Painting - 'ard Boyz and Alpha Legion

Since I haven't posted any of my painted stuff for some time, I decided to post some of my painted stuff today. I was really busy, since Uni has continued and I had lots of orders to make for lots of customers, thanks to the price adjustment that will follow in about 10 days...

So I've finished up a couple of my 'ard Boyz. My hands had some tremors during then, which means I resorted to lots of flame painting.

The tremors weren't that bad anymore, so I decided to do some checks on them...

This is what I've been painting recently. Alpha Legion. The pathetic attempt of NMM (Non-Metallic Metal) was shown on the cloth of the Chaos Icon.

Now this is my favourite part, the Alpha Legion Hydra on the shoulder pad. I intentionally bought some of these to give it a go, and it seems that it really does look good on the model itself! I'm really liking it...

"Off to paint up the whole squad..."

Painting - 'ard Boyz

My hands are seriously having such unnecessary tremors. As you can see from the checks I've been painting, it hasn't been very satisfying. I plan to fix it once the "tremor season" of my hands are gone. Either that or I'll have to look for a solution...

One with flash.

Another without flash from the camera.

"I'll have to stick to painting flames for now...

Painting and Gaming, Orks and Chaos - Rokkit Launcha Boy and Nob with Kombi Skorcha, Alpha Legion Army List

I used my past 2 days to complete these 2 Orks here. A boy with a Rokkit Launcha and an Ork Nob with a Kombi-Skorcha.

At first I actually thought that the Nob head was really ugly looking, but after I put it on and painted it, it looks quite cool...

The Rokkit Launcha boy was actually a fast work, next time I will draw more funny stuff on the Rokkits. Maybe a smiley shark face in front of the rokkit or some Orky words on it.

Today I tested my Alpha Legion Army List against a Space Marine army led by a Captain Lysander equivalent and some Inquisitorial Lords. Surprisingly, in turn 2, my Land Raider popped, both my Chaos Lords died, and my Terminator Champions ran from the battle. But the remaining force held the game and almost won the game for me, but it ended as a draw from a loot counter mission.

Here's the army list.

HQ

Chaos Lord

Lightning Claw, Terminator Armour

130pts

Chaos Lord

Lightning Claw, Terminator Armour

130pts

Elites

3 Terminator Champions

Heavy Flamer, Power Fist, Chain Fist

150pts

Land Raider

Extra Armour

235pts

Troops

10 Chaos Space Marines

Rhino with Extra Armour

200pts

10 Chaos Space Marines

Rhino with Extra Armour

200pts

Heavy Support

10 Chaos Havocs

4 Meltas

Rhino with Extra Armour

240pts

10 Chaos Havocs

4 Meltas

Rhino with Extra Armour

240pts

3 Obliterators

225pts

Total: 1750

The list is not bad, but looking at it, I will have to tweak it a little here and there. Maybe reduce the Chaos Havocs to a 5 men, 4 of them with melta, they will just go chase tanks and pop it then they're done. That should save me some points to put the Icon of Chaos Glory and maybe get a Power Fist going on.

The idea of this list is to imitate Alpharius and Omegon of the Alpha Legion by having twin Chaos Lords with the same equipments. Then an infantry based army without cult troops to fill up the ranks and some hired Obliterators to do the Alpha Legion's bidding.

"I've been planning this for a long time, maybe it's time to put it into motion and get going with it."

Assembled - 'ard Boyz!

Ah, the well armoured are here... I've been spending the past few days assembling and converting some Fantasy Black Orcs into 40k 'ard Boyz...

Though some of the poses are only meant for weapons, I find it difficult to swap parts with the normal Boyz, only because of the position of their shoulders... Some of them could be fitted with the Sluggas and they can only have Ork Nobz heads as replacements... Well, I figured that these Boyz will be more experienced than the other Boyz, so they would probably grow bigger in size due to the amount of fights they have been in...

I would need another box of them to make 20 and I will paint all of them at one day when they're prepared... The reason why they're on square bases is because it's easier to hold and paint.

At least now you guys should know what it will take for you to convert some of them Black Orcs.

I'll be making a more brutal and violent list, seems as though there's not enough power klaws in my army!

"I have to catch up on my painting and finish as many of my new Nobz as possible..."

Painting - Ork Boyz

Earlier today, I took photos of my completed Boyz that I've been painting, throughout the evening, I finished my last psychology assignment with the thoughts of how I would write my post for today...

After thinking up what I wanted to write, I completely FORGOTTEN to post it up in my blog. Mainly because I have the illusion that I was done posting because I did it in my mind... Thanks to my assignment (mental disorders and schizophrenia) I was so distracted, not to mention, I've been assembling Boss Snikrot too!

Well, suddenly it kicked me in my head and I realized that I have to post...

Enough of that, back to business, these are the 10 Boyz I've painted up... It took me 3 different nights to paint them up, which was not bad, I was speed painting, mainly practicing for the 19 hour feat...

This Boy here is lucky to have da green flames on him!

Some of the Boyz were my experiments on more free hands that I'm attempting...

I attempted some smaller checks just for fun, but it seems to work! Look at his slugga, I did some checks there.

A different angle of the slugga.

Overall, I'm quite happy on the new motive on my Orks, the green checks with green flames really fit them well...

Wait till you see what I'm doing with Boss Snikrot! ;)

"Boss Snikrot really looks wicked! I really think it's the best Ork sculpt ever made."

Painting Tutorial - Painting Checks on Orks

"Lissen' up ladz and lissen' good! Betta open yer ear hole big enuf ta pay a-ten-shun to da paintin' tutorial. Coz dis time ere around, yer gonna learn bout 'ow ta paint some o them nifty check we Orks juz luv!"

Enough of my Orky side, let's get on topic. I've did some searches on Google a long time ago and realized that there were not a single tutorial on how to paint checks on Orks! Even if there are, I just can't find it helpful. So I've decided to cook up my own tutorial since I've been practicing to use some free hand techniques on my Orks.

"ere' we go!"

Most importantly, pick a surface on the Ork model you want to paint checks on and make sure it is big and flat enough! For this instance, I picked the choppa on the Ork Boy. I've grown accustomed with using Rotting Flesh as the white part and Catachan Green for the black part. These colours can be replaced with any colour you want. Oh, and normally I would paint checks last just to avoid "accidents".

I decided to avoid white as painting white can get really tricky, we don't wanna go there.

Make sure the paint you spread on the surface is watered down to about, let's say, milky consistency. This is to avoid having brush strokes on the surface.

"Yer gotta make sure dat yer in komfurt when ya paint! Sit in a posishun ta make sure those hands of yers ain't shakin"

From then on, I started with some imaginary lines on where the middle should be, so I just paint the checks on and also provide some space for the next check!

It's ok if  you got it out of the line, that's what I did! As long as you got the main picture on the surface, it's good enough.

Reason why I used Rotting Flesh was that the colour can cover up black! So just tidy the lines up. Doesn't matter if it's straight as a ruler or not, Orks can't paint that well anyway!

From far it will look marvelous! The key to doing this is confidence, patience, and some thinned down paints. Remember, practice makes you better, (I won't say "Practice makes you perfect", nobody's perfect!) so practice hard enough and you'll get the results you want. Not only that, using the same techniques, you can also draw other stuff up.

I've been practicing on more free hand techniques lately, my latest batch of Boyz have lots of free hand work on them.

"Dis painta 'ere done good! Me WarBoss gonna be 'appy with da paint job!"

"Any questions? Feel free to ask."

Painting - Ork Boyz

Well, after a series of busy days, I've managed to finish 9 Boyz and a Nob.

Here's a group shot of them.

Some of the free hand works I've done on them...

I practiced more on painting checks, it wasn't easy at first, but somehow or rather, it becomes natural and it's hard to resist not to paint checks on them...

Remember, practice makes you better, nobody's perfect. I still have to touch up on some of them too, looking at their weaponry, I will add more colour to their sluggas and choppas...

"Time for 10 more Boyz! Ya ready ladz?"

On my painting table

Well, in response to the Bell of Lost Soul's What's on your painting table? This is what I'm working on for now...

A huge mob of Ork Boyz and some Ork Nobz from the AoBR (Assault on Black Reach) set...

If you notice to the right, those are cough syrups, I've been coughing like mad recently, I hope the syrup doesn't make me sleepy in the day...

One of my painting steps involves the use of the Thraka Green wash, but I noticed that instead of darkening the recesses of the skin, it actually brightened it up!

Take a close look at the mini's head...

If anyone could let me know what is the cause for it and how to counter it, I would really appreciate it...

Getting back on track...

Finally, after I'm done with my presentation movie for my Project Management subject, I could get back on track to continue working on my Orks...

I've assembled all these and filed their mould lines off, based them and sprayed them...

Well, the picture here shows them when they're still fresh from assembly...

Sometimes people feel intimidated when they paint by batches, I just felt that it's more challenging, as there are more than 20 Orks that I'm gonna paint at once... Not to mention, increasing the painting speed and quality at the same time...

"Batch painting, yum yum..."

Painting - Ork Shoota Boyz

Finally, I'm done with my Shoota Boyz Mob! I didn't update last night as I was expecting to finish my Shoota Boyz and use it for the next update. Anyways, painting Shoota Boyz are fun, especially when it comes to giving them different coloured combinations of clothing! Enough talk, pictures are what you're looking for here...

Here's the full shot of them lot.

The guy in the middle sez: "Ya gotz ta call dem humies ta giv us a good fight! If dey get close, we shoot 'em den clobber 'em with our Shootas, if dey shoot us, we shoot 'em back, in any case, juz shoot dem humies..."

"Waaagh!! Time ta clobber dem humies!"

This is what I've painted so far, I can't believe it takes  a long time, but I'm already working at breakneck speed, nevertheless, everyday, I make it an effort to at least assemble/paint something.

This picture is my new wallpaper, you can let me know if you want one! XD

Now I'm working on the Ork Trukk, it takes quite some time to understand which part goes where as I feel that it is way more complex than the Battlewagon. Let's see how fast this will take me...

"Time ta get me Boyz those Trukk!"

Painting - Ork Shootas

I've been feverishly painting for the past few days to make sure I finish these 10 Shoota Boyz as soon as I can and still maintain quality.

I've also been painting their clothes as different as possible to make sure every single Ork is Orkily unique. Here are some shots.

The Shootas can be quite tricky to assemble if you're not careful with the positioning of  the body, especially when the gun collide with the legs. These models really have to go through dry-fitting to ensure a proper assembly to minimize the 'urty paint chipping after the painting is done.

"Now, time for the Battlewagon!"