Painting Ork Madboyz step one: Warhammer 40K style Industrial basing for impatient people

My hobby painting got slightly delayed by a major real-life project. I had to build a 1:1 scale shed after a fire wrecked the previous one. Aside from that activity I've got a lot of half finished projects (including some playing around with contrast paints) crowding my painting station and no real inclination to finish anything. Time to end this lazy attitude! Luckily a painting competition was announced on the Oldhammer Community group on Facebook. The mission: to paint Bob Olley sculpts. In other words a call to start a small project with a tight deadline (for painting purposes). Now that sounds like a lot of fun.

Joining a painting competition on the Old Hammer Community is a bit foolhardy. The best painters not actively working as pro-painters tend to hang out here (in my very humbly opinion).

I started in my own inimitable style: confused. I skimmed over a description of Bob Olley's work and concluded he was behind most of the Skaven. Ignoring the voice in my head screaming this was a stupid thing to think I suggested this in the competition discussion. Luckily I was quickly corrected. Skaven are Jes Goodwin's domain. Back to the drawing board. It took a bit of a search and I started wondering if I had any Olley sculpts in my collection. Then I found three old Ork Madboyz. I had started on these quite a while back, but a quick bath in Biostrip-20 later they where completely ready to paint. I only had to replace one arm that mysteriously went missing in the Biostrip-bath. Above is the picture needed to enter the competition. Not pictured, the precarious stack of containers needed to lift them to screen height.

How to make an Warhammer 40k style industrial base? Use carpet underlay and slap on leftover bits...come to think of it, why haven't I written a full tutorial on this subject yet?

After priming the Orks with German Grey, followed by a zenithal prime with White I had to hold off painting the Orks. The Vallejo airbrush primer I use works best if you blow dry it for a bit after application and then allow it to cure for about 24 hours. Damn the patience required to paint models properly! To keep going I moved on to preparing the bases. I want these to have a nice 'rusted industrial crap' look to them. I also really felt like a 'just slapping things on glue and see what happens' bit of hobby time. I used some Ikea carpet underlay, plasticard, small rocks, leftover cork, cutoff flash from other metal models and random bits from my bits box to cover the bases. I also used  a scalpel and needle-nose pliers to unsubtly wreck a lasgun and the sides of a Leman Russ cannon bit.

Splash primer on wet superglue, add colors on wet primer and texture paste on wet colors...I'm starting to wonder who the real madboy is in this story.

The process of just slapping stuff on with superglue turned out to be pleasantly relaxing. Humming happily, I decided not to allow the glue to dry. I just took out my Airbrush and coated the bases with a Vallejo German Red Brown surface primer. With the primer still wet I added spots of VGA (Vallejo Game Air) Beastly Brown and finished up by spraying random spots of VGA Hot Orange. With a basic rusty look in place (and nothing dry) I covered everything that looked too flat with Vallejo (this is starting to sound like a Vallejo commercial) Dark Earth texture paste (I've managed to almost finish an entire pot of this on my hobby projects and I'm rather strangely proud of that).

Don't let anything dry, just keep painting until you get to douse it all in a flood of wash. Now you really have a reason to wait.

I followed up by adding some military greens to bits of plasticard and things that looked like they should be covered in military green looking paints. I airbrushed the center of the green bits with a lighter color, taking no care at all too shield against overspray. Its good to practice difficult things on bases and anything I would've missed here, I could just cover over later. I also took the chance to practice my chevron painting on the bit of chainsword sticking out. After drybrushing some metal on the grating and painting metal edge highlights on metal bits that needed a metal edge highlight it was time for a wash. The I blobbed spots of Athonian Camoshade on random parts and followed up by applying bigger blobs of Agrax Earthshade. I allowed the two shades to mix and basically covered everything in a huge blob of mixed washes. Then I took a shaky picture for my Instagram feed (I've reused it above). As a note to aspiring followers of the Impatient School of painting and modeling (can I trademark this?). I used extremely cheap, bad brushes for all but the edge highlights and chevron (attempt). The risk of encountering wet superglue on a happy-go-lucky approach like this is high and it will destroy your brush.

With the wash dried, I could add some technical paints. Now for the biggest question: do I add a few grass tufts?

The extreme wash mix took about a day to dry. I followed it up by adding some typhus corrosion on bits that looked to clean. After the Typhus Corrosion dried I sponged on some Ryza Rust for an extreme orange effect. I finished by painting the edges of the bases German Grey. Now these 32mm bases look ready to hold some insane Space Orks in a proper setting.

Meanwhile on another set of bases...

The next step was blocking in some colors on the Orks. As I only have three Ork Madboyz to paint, I figure I can take my time and paint these guys one after the other. I've decided not to use classic Space Ork guns. I think they look way too puny and I want my orks to look like the overcompensating maniacs they are. Plus I really like the crazy designs of modern Space Ork weaponry.

Block in the basic colors, add wash, and wait for that to dry now.

The first Ork I've picked is going to be wearing leopard print-pants, so he's starting out with a nice yellow-brown basecoat on his legs. I've picked black for most other clothing (might change my mind later). This particular Madboy is wearing rather a lot of metal, so I'm alternating Vallejo Model Air Gun (metal) with Scale75 Decayed Metal. I'm mostly going to be using this competition to try new things. My competitors are awesome painters and I don't think I have a very serious chance of winning. Competing does motivate to try my very best, so I'll be trying new things at my sharpest. As a start I'm going for a different Ork skin. I'm following along with this interesting tutorial on The Lost and the Very Damned blog but I'll be adding a bit of my own stubbornness to the mix.

I should remember to paint an appropriate sign on the backplate. 

Aside from trying new thins I'll be using this competition as an excuse to get myself painting a project start to finish again. As you can see in the background it is not the only thing I'm working on right now. I've been playing around with the new Contrast Paints for a bit too. I haven't got any completed project there to make for an interesting blog post yet. I think I will write one in the near future though. For now, lets finish these Madboyz. Dakka Dakka Dakka and all that.