Based and ready: Orruk Warboss on Wyvern

My decision to ignore all the hobby rules I made for myself over the years (and not just the one that says 'don't buy anything new until the old is painted') is starting to pay off. Yesterday I actually completed the Orruk Warboss on Wyvern that had been abandoned after a failed attempt at painting black dragons (sorry wyverns). I even have him on a rather nice fancy base.

Waaagh, and all that! Now come over here, I want to hit you with my axe!

I found this model in a second hand 'I quit the GW hobby'-box. It had an eclectic collection of 40K and Fantasy models and this was one of the nice surprises. Even though I honestly have to say I don't really like the 'I'm about to fall off pose' of the rider. This has been a problem GW has had for years with dragon riders and for the Orruks it was only solved (in my not so very humble opinion) by the latest Azhag the Slaughterer model (now named Orruk Warboss on Wyvern) as the above model is no longer for sale. Here is the well seated Azhag I painted last year.

I love this Azhag model, it is one of the few dragon/wyvern riders whose saddle and pose actually make him look like he won't fall off any minute (the other being the current Maw-Krusha (that is very high on my 'wanted' list)).

This is a rather ancient Orc Shaman on Wyvern I painted in 2014 (its rear leg snapped later on, and that's how I found out some older models do not have the best thought out design in regards to long term posing).

Bad old photo of an ancient model I painted somewhere in 2014.

And here is the side view of my new Warboss.

Please don't fall off again boss, it'll make the grots giggle.

I do rather like the Orruk perched on top of the dragon, and attempts to change him for a different character all turned out not to work so I deceded to stick with the standard.

I had a lot of fun building the fancy base for this model.

As for the Wyvern I cowed out of painting it black. My attempts at bright red dragons so far have ended up with very ugly orange dragons, so I decided to go for green. I had some fun making a few of the scales different versions of green using washes, glazes and even a few patches of the GW gemstone paints.

Alternating colors on scales seems to be a viable tactic to make a scaly creature more interesting, I'm going to do that more often from now on.

As for the base itself, I felt like building something that looked a bit fancy and would raise the model to make it look a bit more impressive. So I decided to make the ruins of a raised highway or bridge with household materials. For those of you following along/looking for inspiration I'll post a separate post later on detailing the process.