nerodine

Over the last couple of weeks the most frequent question asked has been how I've managed to push through my army so quickly, to a reasonable standard. This week I wanted to cover some of the things that have allowed me to get so far on this project in a decent time frame. And apologies for the repeated use of "me" and "I" in the below. Elephants A phrase I use in my day job is "how do you eat an elephant?". The answer, of course, is one bite at a time. But initially it seems so daunting to look at a mass of unpainted figures and think "I have no idea where to begin" or "I can't do this". I'm 84 hours into this project now, in around four weeks, with just over a week left, and have applied a few key learnings. Deadlines Set a deadline. If you don't set a deadline, you'll definitely miss a deadline.  It started from realising in mid-September that I had enough unassembled Orks to make an army, and Armies on Parade

 When the Ork 4th edition rulebook was released in 2008, it rekindled an old love of the Orks and that quickly spiralled into our gaming group jumping into 5th edition and enjoying Warhammer after a few years I never built any Burna Boyz, as the Lootas were my preference for a heavy weapon, but adding them to the army now is a real pleasure.  

The ridiculousness of Orks never ceases to amaze, and the Stormboyz are a great example of this. Backpacks with rockets to get them closer to the fight, faster. I'm using the check pattern on large surfaces to break it up and be more interesting. It's fun on missile warheads, and good for weapon surfaces.

Rokkit Boyz don't have much in the way of armour. But what armour they do have is yellow. Lot of fabric on these models, so I gave them lots of check patterns for a bit of interest. When everything's painted and on the table, the heavy checking should differentiate them nicely, but remain coherent in the army.  This unit also features a sneaky Death Skull, as a little tribute to Warbringer who has spent the last two weeks saying "you're painting things yellow, but blue are the best orks".

So now we have a basecoat of yellow in place, we can start to see the task ahead. It's definitely yellow, but without edging or highlights, it's quite dull. You could certainly go "it'll do" for a challenge like this - but that isn't what I want. Before we get into detail, I want to mark out areas to be check patterning. Couple of reasons for this. One, cleaning up any accidents with black will be a real problem when I have yellow highlights in place, so getting this stage out of the way now will help me. Any overpainting can be cleaned with the basecoat yellow, Scrofulous Brown, with very little effort. It also lets me see the effect and check it doesn't overpower areas of the model. With the test model done, it's time to hit the other models in the first wave of batch painting. Small panels on vehicles, heads of rockets on troops. I wasn't brave enough to try fancy swirling patterns on the rockets, but happy the check effect looks good.

And so the first unit of the army is done. The Gretchin, accompanied by their runtherds.  There was quite a few duplicate models in this set, so I opted to add scenery to force the variety. Still yellow, so it fits thematically across the force. Albeit a slightly different yellow - more akin to an Imperial Fists colour.  Completing these quickly is key to finishing the army in time. I can't afford to be overly fussy with the finish, so cheated in a few areas. For example, there's a small mould line that runs down the forehead of almost every model. To sand that out properly would take quite some time, so it's hidden under a line of warpaint, which also gives the unit a little more identity, as they don't have armour like the Orks. The 20 Gretchin and two runtherds took about 14 hours in total. As a bonus, the excellent @ArtistsEmpire on Twitter did an unasked for paintover of one group. It's fantastic, and really adds narrative and drama to the scene. Do chec

 This is probably one of my favourite sculpts from the nostalgia era. Couldn't find an appropriate left arm, so he got a more modern upgrade, and it turned out alright.

Two more oldschool metal figures, and slowly the producion line for my overly ambitious project to create an Ork army in one month. I'd like to think they're an improvement on the last time I painted them, which was at least 12 years ago. Here's the comparison shot before they were stripped and repainted!

My love of Orks was rekindled in October/Orktober, after painting the Bad Moon Warboss and I set myself the challenge of trying to build a whole Ork army in time for the Armies on Parade deadline of late November. Below are the shots of the prep phase of the project, with a lot of explanation steps. But ... why an army? Why a month? Here's the reasoning. I've looked at Armies on Parade for a few years, and keep coming up with reasons to procrastinate, instead of joining the fun. This year I wanted to join in the fun, but felt just putting a board together for my Space Wolves was a bit of a cheat, and wanted a different project. My backlog of unpainted miniatures is pretty big. Despite now painting more than I buy, it's still a large pile of unpainted and unassembled models. This is a shame, because there's plenty of cool models in there - and quite a few Orks! I've invested in coaching this year with the excellent Aleksandra & Marko of Craftworld Studio . The g