Back to the Greenskins: a Megaboss enters the fray

Yesterday I finished my Ironjawz Megaboss model. And even though I foolishly glued the head in place and picked a paint scheme that didn't seem to work while painting, I'm rather pleased with the end result. The rusted metal plate was inspired by the incredible work the various AoS28 (Dark Age of Sigmar) people have been showing off over the past few years. For those of you who missed this I think Ex Profundis is a perfect starting point and the Aos28 Facebook group features some nice work as well. Basically it mixes (attempts at) John Blanche's style of painting, Sigmar models and the gothic horror theme of the Old World. It turns Sigmar's high fantasy setting into a Hieronymus Bosch like hellscape. It's awesome :)

I'm here to swing axe and chew squig, and I'm all out of squig....

The problem with this Orruk (aside from the glued on head (last time I'll mention this, I promise)) is that the armor takes up most of his body. I planned to use the same style I used on my Black Orcs Orruk Ardboys. That is: start by airbrushing a dark metal (Vallejo Gun Metal), zenithal airbrush a lighter metallic tone (Vallejo Steel), follow with a wash of Agrax Earthshade, then apply Gryphonne Sepia and finish with a strong highlight with Stormhost Silver. Then (aside from painting the skin and wooden weapon handles) pick a few interesting pieces of armor and paint them red. This helps to paint a unit of Ardboys quickly and effectively (I think). Here is an example.

The unit of immortals I painted in 2016 is about to receive reinforcements.

The Megaboss is a much larger model and his armor is basically to big for this to work. It turns into a really boring valley of 'nothing to see here'. Thanks to some texture a drybrush helps, but just not enough. As I was painting my Deathwatch marine's base I decided to vent my frustration over the ugly look of the model by going a bit Jackson Pollock on the armor, albeit not with Oil Dripping but with Airbrush leftovers. I thinned down whatever was in the cup (mostly browns and rust tones) with some flow improver and then randomly added small splats of it to the armor. At a certain point I actually added a purple sheen too. It's quite well visible here. All in all don't think just spray and try to feel artistic while doing it.

I don't think I'll ever worry about adding weird colors to metal armor again, just go for extremely thin paints and channel Bob Ross's 'there are no mistakes, just happy little accidents'.

After this step the armor got a lot more interesting, but the model was still suffering from a very serious case of lack of variation. That's when I decided to make the blood indentations in the armor and the cords tying the skulls down red. This extremely small thing helped a lot more then I expected. It manages to make a rusty model look interesting and also ties it in with the rest of my army.

Even though I usually shirk away from adding blood to a weapon, it adds the right amount of menace to this model.

Last, but certainly not least was adding blood to the axe and claw. I'm always slightly worried about adding blood as I think it can quickly look like a cheap effect (or worse perform the same ignoble job as badly placed mud (i.e. attempt to cover a painting mistake)). But thanks to this blood painting tutorial by ThirdEyeNuke from Tale of Painters I have a technique that works and looks spectacular (IMHO). Although I usually just mix Tamiya Clear Red with Vallejo Smoke for the effect. For the Megaboss I waited with the blood until the base was glued on so I could add some blood drips to match the location of the axe. All in for a model I've been cursing at for the last few weeks I'm quite satisfied with the end result. I think he looks big, grim, intimidating and deadly enough to boss all my other Greenskins around. As soon as the Orruk bug leaves me I'll shoot a bunch of pictures of my army so far which will serve nicely to get a better sense of size, especially of old models versus the new (my Orruk collection features models from as far back as 1987).