Saturday, 3 January 2015

CRUSH ELVISH IMPERIALISM!




I've been on a bit of a fantasy kick lately, and I have had piles of orcs prepped and ready for painting on my bench for months. With the holidays I finally found the opportunity to knock some of them over.

Slowly but surely, and clandestinely under the noses of those pesky lawful-gooders (like any mad, corrupt, power hungry sorceror) I have been mustering an army of black clad vicious hunchbacks with bad teeth- no not teenage metal heads!


While this lot has hardly made a dent in the pile, at least I'm getting somewhere.

Not just any old orc will do for this army. I have been carefully selecting the models from ranges that exude the desired ambience.





























The command group is from the Citadel Regiment of Renown- Throgg's Despoiling Hobgoblins of the Dark Lands. This is how orcs oughtta be- brutal, savage, and mean. These guys clearly mean business, while they seem to be wearing furs and equipped with a variety of scavenged armour and weapons, they exude an air of militarism.






Citadel ME44 Uruk Hai from the Lord of the Rings range.





 Another superb range that fit my vision is Aly Morrison's C36 Hobgoblins.


























I live in Australia alongside all kinds of fascinating animals as I'm sure you are aware. I have found the exotic fur of many of these creatures to be quite inspirational. I attempted to paint this fur cloak like the hide of a Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger, a remarkable carnivorous marsupial which was tragically hunted to extinction within living memory (though some believe otherwise!).




The guy on the left has a Numbat fur hat, though unfortunately the picture isn't the best to show it off. The guy on the right is one of my favourite orc (or hobgoblin) figures, the arms and armour of the figures in this range combine a wide range of different "oriental" influences imparting a great "lost civilisation" feel.























































































These final two are from the Monster Starter Set- the Manic Hobgoblin Hero, and Vile Goblin. I think these are also sculpted by Aly Morrison.
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13 comments:

  1. Asslessman3 January 2015 at 07:23

    Wonderful as always, You really manage to make those dark tones look superbly vibrant and avoid making the result messy. I do not know what you secret is but man I love it !

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    Replies
    1. Archaeopteryx4 January 2015 at 01:30

      Hey thanks. I definitely don't have any kind of disciplined process, pretty much slapping layers of paint on until it looks right. Mostly I just try to keep in mind when painting dark drab colours to find a couple incidental areas of the model to apply some contrasting saturated colours to. I also try to add interest to areas which would otherwise be flat colours as much as possible by glazing with other colours eg. orc flesh with purple, red with purple or blue, bronze with teal oxidisation, furs with a variety of shades, steel with rust etc.

      Delete
  2. Mr Papafakis3 January 2015 at 10:33

    You talented bastard!!!

    Love that banner, is it mostly or wholly freehand?

    Oh, and the Thylacine is definitely alive, how else do you explain the photograph of them on Cascade bottles?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Archaeopteryx4 January 2015 at 01:56

      Ha ha cheers!

      The banner was done in a similar fashion to how I make most of my banners. I find a suitable image, in this case the skull-hand (in fact the logo of an old thrash band called Septic Death), and print it out onto regular office paper using a standard desktop laser printer, the fidelity of the image is impressive considering it is no more than 10mm wide, and cut it to size. But it really doesn't look like much until I've painted it and added a lot of details. First I stain the paper using several layers of thinned brown inks, then I paint the other elements in the same way I'd paint anything. Fraying the edges, flicking blood and dirt onto it, adding stitches, and general weathering helps. I haven't had much success merely printing out banners, I find it important to disguise the elements of it that are printed by over painting and embellishment.

      Delete
    2. Mr Papafakis4 January 2015 at 06:09

      Thanks for the info on how you do your banners,

      I'm about to embark on a similar enterprise i.e. painting printed shield designs that I photographed from Slaves to Darkness. There's a post on my blog about it if your interested.

      I'll give the watered down inks a bash I think, cheers :)

      Delete
    3. Archaeopteryx15 January 2015 at 13:39

      Your printed shield design idea is a really good one, and I'm sure that the approach I described would give a good result. I'll look forward to see how you go! I might give something similar a try myself.

      Delete
  3. cheetor/sho3box5 January 2015 at 04:25

    These are really wonderful.

    The presentation of the orcs and goblins in the LotR movies irritated me a little, as they were relentlessly dark, which made them hard to distinguish. You approached the same issue here - the desire to make orcs look dark and menacing - but countered it in a way that I wish Weta had.

    Inspirationally great work, as usual :)

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    Replies
    1. Archaeopteryx15 January 2015 at 13:55

      Thanks Cheetor! Agreed, the depiction of the Orcs in the recent woeful Hobbit films are also disappointing in this regard (and in every other way too).

      Delete
  4. Springinsfeld9 January 2015 at 13:19

    Some of the best painting I've seen!! And great music too to boot. Would love to follow, but am not on Google+, but I'll keep an eye on the blog.
    cheers
    Mike

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Archaeopteryx15 January 2015 at 13:50

      Thanks for the kind words and for dropping by. For me the metal-punk-thrasher aesthetic of 80s GW and other rpg culture of the time is something that I'm sure attracted me to gaming, and I guess I still closely associate certain music with this, hence the youtube vids.

      Delete
    2. Mr Papafakis15 January 2015 at 17:03

      Hey Springinsfeld,

      What I usually do when there's no follow tab is just copy their link, go back to your dashboard, click on the "add" tab on the left of the page, paste it into the window & click "add".

      Job done :)

      Delete
  5. Gareth20 January 2015 at 02:50

    A bit late to the party, but I simply wanted to echo the sentiments written above. Superlative work: both the choice of miniatures and painting connote a man of the soundest aesthetic taste. I look forward to seeing more.

    ReplyDelete
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