CHRISTMAS CAME EARLY

Today was a good day, a very good day, I received a hefty box of goods from Germany purchased from 'Cherno' on the Lead adventure forums, this lot will keep me going for eons:

 

Various resin pieces, mushrooms, tavern, bookcase etc

AD&D Gargoyles, ral Partha Rat Swarms etc

Fire Demon, Black Dragon, Chimera etc

Blood Troll, various Wraiths, Xorn, worm corpse thing

Various Mages, a bed, a thief, I think these are all Ral Partha

Bar Staff and some fighters

Various Fighters and robed people

Some Undead and a little gargoyle thing

More Fighters

Ilithid and some unknown creatures. 

Confrontation Ogre wearing an elephant head as a hat and Rogon The Balrog Dragon.

You may be asking how I was able to afford all this as I still have all my kidneys, but this huge haul was only £37, I have no idea what I'll do with most of it but I'm all set for lead for awhile :)

On a less cheery note, please can someone have a look a the two pics below and let me know if the blotching in the two images is the dreaded lead rot (you can click the images for larger views).

I've never really seen the dreaded rot in person so I'm not sure and any advice would be much appreciated. It only seems to be affecting the the main body of Rogon and not the other parts of the kit. I gave the affected areas a scrub with a copper brush and it seems to have removed whatever it was and brought up the model in a nice shine.

Anyway moving on from the doom and gloom, I finished of a couple more old school orcs:

Also here's a little sneak peek at what I've been making this week, the start of a petrified forest/lookout tower.

Hopefully should have some more progress to show you towards the end of the week.

ORC FLESH PAINTING GUIDE

I was asked by Orlygg form the ever wonderful Realm of Chaos 80's blog (http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.co.uk/) if I could put up an orc flesh painting guide, so here goes, as always you can click on any of the pics for a bigger view.

Here's all the paints that will be used in some fashion in this guide,

I'm a bit behind on the current paints so some of these will more than likely be called something different now .
I mostly used the following:
Paints:
Catachan Green, Snot Green, Goblin Green, Camo Green, Sunburst Yellow, Emperors Children
Washes / Glazes:
Nuln Oil, Thrakka Green, Lamenters Yellow, Baal Red

The first thing you need to do is undercoat your orcs in your usual fashion. I generally undercoat all my mini's in codex grey and then give them a black ink wash as I find it provides the best base for most colours and you don't have the problem you do with black in that some colours don't cover.

First up give all the exposed flesh of your orcs a coat of Catachan green.

Once this is dry give them a liberal wash of Thrakka Green when this is dry give them a coat Nuln Oil. I try to have a few different groups of mini's on the go at once so I can be working an earlier step whilst waiting for the washes to dry.

Next step is to begin the highlighting, the first layer being snot green

Followed next by Goblin Green,

Once this is dry gave the whole thing a coat of Lamenters Yellow Glaze. I hate using this phrase but I think it helps everything 'pop' and blends together the previous layers of green and gives the green a 'healthy' glow.

Next up once the glaze is dry is to do some more highlighting, I use camo green for this step. I'm not sure if it's meant to be like this but my pot of camo green is very watery and tends to separate a lot in the pot and go on very translucent so you  may need to water yours down slightly. 

Onto the last level of highlighting, for this step I  just pick out the very highest points on the skin (nose, cheekbones, elbows etc) with a tiny bit of Sunburst Yellow.

That's pretty much it for the skin, for the protruding bottom lip I just highlight it with some Emperors Children pink and give it a once over with some red wash. Once that's dry I add some detail in with evenly spaced tiny dashes of Blood Red, as you can see in the image below:

That's it for this tutorial for now as that's all I've painted :)

If any of the above wasn't clear give me a shout

CITADEL ORCS AND A WANT LIST

I've given myself a break from painting zombies and gone back to some good old school citadel. It's partly due to the amazing Realm of Chaos 80's blog that my interest has been re-sparked:

http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.co.uk/

The sheer volume of scans uploads and images that Orlygg is sourcing is a credit to the blogiverse (?) if you have any interest in old citadel stuff and if you haven't already checked it out I suggest you go and bask in it's warm nostalgi-glow.

Anyway here's my most recent paint jobs:

The two on the left were in one of the first citadel blister pack I ever bought back in the early nineties and have been saved from oil paint disaster. I think the one on the far right is part of the crew from one of the early orc war machines.

 All I need to finish them now are some plastic shields with suitable grinning faces

I think I went a bit mad on this one's base and went a bit over board on the mushrooms and other guff.

 The plant at the back of the base is a tiny cutting from the aquarium plant in the background.

I wanted to try and capture the old school look by creating some mushrooms for the bases, I think to I need to go smaller on the next lot as they are a little on the large side.

They were pretty easy to make, just green-stuff on sections of wire which were then trimmed off and drilled through the bases.

Inspired by this amazing post on the Realm of Chaos 80's blog:
http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/do-you-have-miniatures-wish-list.html
I've put together a a very vague want list of old school citadel, this list is no way in any order of priority and subject to change whenever something else becomes my flavour of the month :)

1. A FULL SET OF C-SERIES ZOMBIES:

I think these are the best zombies that citadel/games workshop have ever released and capture the rotting shambling feel zombies should have perfectly. I'd love to have a complete set but don't really want to pay over the odds, so far I've managed to hoover quite a few of them up for nothing through ebay bulk lots.

2. MIGHTY FORTRESS

I had one of these, but stupidly sold it to my neighbours older brother when I grew out of collecting mini's in my teens and moved onto more grown up things  like dungeons & dragons (insert eye rolling emoticon here).
I love the simplicity of the model and the one I had got some good use in some crazy games of both 40k and fantasy.

3. FULL SET OF JES GOODWIN OGRES

The best Ogres ever created, so much variety and character in each sculpt. At the moment I've only managed to get hold of the guy in the bottom right giving the V's. The rest all seem to go for silly money and I'm nothing if not patient.

4. NIGHT HORRORS

I love this range, every sculpt is a complete one off, I've managed to grab a few here and there from ebay but most end up being completely out of price range.

5. GOBLIN KINS CHARIOT (COMPLETE)

I have most of this chariot as I my dad bought me one back a million years ago when I was 11 or 12 but for some reason I only have the boar the driver and the goblin on the back who for some reason is missing a foot. I'd love to have one painted up exactly as it was on the box.

6. MENTAL NON- GOAT BEASTMEN

C'mon what's not to like about a snail man and an owl man, back from the time when Chaos was in fact actually chaotic and not all about the skulls and spikes

6. MINOTAUR LORDS

I've managed to get the bottom two for decent prices from ebay but the rest I keep missing out on or they go for more than I'm willing to pay.

I could keep going but I'm going to leave it at that and maybe come up with a proper list ordered by priority for a future update.

DISAPPEARING UNDER A LEAD MOUNTAIN

Just thought I'd share with you pictures of what I'm working against, here's my stuff that's almost ready to get to the painting table:

Everything in here should be based up and most of it is undecorated ready to go it's just a case of me ever the time to paint it. On top of this I've got a crate of un-based treasures that I keep adding too:

The most recent additions are these old citadel goodies

All the old school action over on the awesome Realm of Chaos blog http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/do-you-have-miniatures-wish-list.html has re-sparked my old school citadel love and currently this lot is winging it's way to me from ebay:

There's just something about the old school citadel stuff that has wonderful character that I feel most of the current Games Workshop stuff is lacking, it's probably partly nostalgia but the new stuff doesn't have the same soul... Anyway moving on, I just scored these awesome tomes at the charity shop for £1.50 each:

I've mainly bought them to look a the pictures as I have no intention to play fantasy roleplay and completely lack the space or a castle to play siege games but still they are still nice things to own and will be added to the pile of unused rule-books

Moving on from old oldhammer I finished up some more zombies, first up are some foundry plague victims:

I've tried to keep them time period neutral so they could be used for modern systems along with fantasy settings. I went for different base colours and washes for them all to give them a different finish and look.

Next up are a couple of Alpha force mutated zombie's

 I love the look of these mini's the bursting head tumours and the general John Carpenters 'Thing' look they have going for them.

This update took about ten times longer than it should have as I kept getting distracted by the awesome BBC documentary 'Punk Britannia', if you can get on the BBC iPlayer and give the three part series a go it's well worth it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00s81jz/Punk_Britannia_PrePunk_19721976/