Almost looks like a GW Orc.

I finally did it, I finally sat down at my painting table and got some work done. Looks like it was my last chance soon, in a week that table will be gone and my painting station will be sharing a space with my computer. Oh well, maybe that’ll work better for me, as I found it annoying to have to unpack and pack every time I wanted to paint. It’s still not a dedicated desk, but hopefully I’ll be able to leave something setup over a couple of days. I’m considering getting one of those GW painting stations to make moving around the house easier.

The ears and cheeks were the last bits of sculpting finished. I even managed to work in some detail on the right cheek, visible in the picture. I’ve already primed the miniatures and I think it was a good first try, all things considered. I hope to get some more painting done by next week. By then I’ll have a better idea of what the sculpt really looks like. As for my buddy, I don’t think he’s gotten anything done on his side, good thing I didn’t buy anything.

Tyler

Update:

Due to my site being down for nearly a week, I’ve decided to keep this post up for an extra week so that people have time to read it.

The Washington. Yes, this is my chair.

As is traditional, let’s avoid the subject of this post for a little bit and talk about something unrelated. I’m very excited, because after months of waiting, I’ve finally ordered my new notebook. I’m getting a nice Dell XPS 1530 so that I’m no longer tied to my office. People often think that, working on a computer all day would make me not want to touch a computer when I get home. Not true, I still enjoy being on the computer, especially after a day of thinking about all the hobby websites I want to check out, like the Field of Glory website, but more on that next week. No, what I want a break from is not sitting at a computer, but a computer desk. Instead, sitting in a leather recliner, typing on a notebook is much more comfortable.

The head is almost finished. I need to add the cheeks and it’ll be done. One thing I haven’t had a chance to practice with so far is roughing in a shape, allowing the putty to cure, and then working on it in a stage that doesn’t resemble chewing gum quite so much. I’ve been looking around for sculpting articles, with the 1 List Sculpting yahoo group being the primary resource for most beginning sculptors. There are very few sculpting articles that I’ve found elsewhere that don’t also appear in the file section of this group. However, while the different working properties of greenstuff at different stages of being cured are mention, no real detail on what type of sculpting would be done at each stage.

A close up of the head.

This process has been a little trying so far, as trying as a relaxing hobby can or should be, but I am happy to say I’m already thinking about my next bit of sculpting. Whatever my next project, I will find a way to do a little sculpting. The more practice I get, the better. I don’t think I’ll ever be sculpting full miniatures with regularity. I’m still more of a painter. However, having the ability to change a head, re-position an arm, or add some bit of detail to break up a monotonous block of troops is a tool I will enjoy having at hand.

All I’ve really done was finish the mouth by adding lips, then add a smooth surface to the head. When I had originally been sculpting the face I had cut a center line to try to keep things somewhat symmetrical. A gave him a little bald pate and smoothed it out. I’ve seen a lot of advice for lubricating tools. I started with water, but I find you constantly have to re-load your tools, since water doesn’t tend to cling very well to smooth surfaces. I’ve switch to Mineral Oil. I had a bottle for oiling my butcher-block counter and pored some over a sponge taken from a blister pack. I’ve also got another, large, sponge stuffed in a mug of water. I use this to lubricate my fingers. The friction ridges hold the water on. When I tried the mineral oil I found there was too much on my fingers.

The problem with anything other than clean water is the residue left behind. In the case of mineral oil, or the petroleum jelly other people use, this can make it very hard for the next layer of green stuff to stick, not to mention making it impossible to get a decent picture. My solution is to wash the sculpt with some alcohol. I use a brush for this task, as well as for smoothing the surface. It isn’t an old brush, fairly new. Not cheap either, it says Kolinsky sable. It was one of the worst brushes I’d ever used. Fortunately, I’ve got some Windson & Newton Series 7 for painting miniatures. I had to say, the mineral oil seems to have conditioned the brush nicely and it may even be fit for painting someday, who knows.

I finished them, but never got a chance to play.

My friend, as far as I know, has yet to buy any paints for his miniatures. I still plan to paint my forces. If nothing else, it will be a few miniatures less in my unpainted pile and more practice with a painting style I’m still learning before I paint something I really care about. I just have the resist the urge to dive head first into the world of Games Workshop again. I’ve spent a bit of time on their website, looking at their Lord of the Rings miniatures, as well as thinking of the various armies I could paint for Warhammer. I’ve always liked the Skaven, and the Ogre Kingdoms looks like a fun bunch of miniatures to paint.

I need to pause for a deep breath and take stock of my hobby. This is something I’ll be doing over the next week. There are many projects; Starship Troopers, The Battle of Five Armies, Heavy Gear, WWII, Warmaster, 1700′s Native Americans, which are basically complete. Some, such as Heavy Gear, have room to grow. For now though, they are done and no longer take any work if I wanted to play them. In the case of Heavy Gear I can easily return to it by painting some miniatures I already own. Others, such as my Warhammer 40,000 Space Marines, will probably see no work unless the urge to paint some Marines grows too strong. This is a possibility, but there would be no plans to build an army, just scratch the itch.

This little Project project is obviously taking up a large amount of head-space and I’ll have to make sure I take advantage of my enthusiasm before it wanes. I think this sort of exercise is good for all wargamers. One’s head gets turned by so many new games and different miniatures that it’s hard to tell if one is coming or going. I am sure a few readers can remember a time when they’ve looked back and wish they’d spent their energy differently. My first eight years as a wargamer were characterized by buying too much and painting little. If I had been just a little more focused how much happier would I have been? When I met my wife I did become more focused and consequentially painted more miniatures in the first year of our association than I had in the previous eight.

Ok, I really need to wrap this up, or I’ll have nothing to talk about next week. I look forward to writing this post and may even surprise myself by finishing early.

Tyler

PS: In case you are wondering, I did finish those Heavy Gear Blitz! Northern Infantry a few weeks ago. I really should take the time to photograph some and throw the pictures up here. They look much better with the matt varnish applied.

It’s like an optical illusion for un-observant people.

In a class-less display of self-promotion, I’m going to use my descriptive post titles from now on, especially with such traffic gathering keywords as Warhammer. Work continues on my Orc skirmish force for Warhammer Skirmish. My friend is planning to pick up some paints from the GW store this weekend. I was supposed to go over to his place to give him some pointers for painting. Due to staying up late with my Friday Night Magic group, which I couldn’t join due to a family meal, and then sleeping in until 3pm, which I couldn’t do because I had to work at 8am, he didn’t manage to get out to the store.

Oh well, I consoled myself with pounding him and his buddy at Magic. It was good fun, with the first game coming down to the wire, and the second being a straight beat-down. I had an Elvish Eulogist, a Wolf-Skull Shaman, a couple of 2/2 Wolfs, an Imperious Perfect, a Jagged-Scar Archers with a Mosswort Bridge hiding away a Vigor. I like Vigor, he’s a good way to draw out answers and removal from an opponent. I’d rather have my opponent go hell-bent for a Vigor or a planes-walker than for things that are going to win me the game.

For the Luches out there: If you don’t have the things to win the game out, don’t draw the heat with a Vigor or a planes-walker. However, I still think Vigor looks like a dude in a helmet with weird handle-bar mustache horns. It was weeks before I noticed the face in what I though was Vigor’s strange buck-toothed grin. In my defense, I wasn’t the only one. It was like when I got excited when I thought I had a misprinted Horde of Nations.

But I digress, a lot, for two full paragraphs. I hope at least a few of my readers know enough Magic to make sense of that. This post, as the title states, is about sculpting a Warhammer Orc head. As I mentioned last week, I’m sculpting a replacement head for one of the Orcs from the Warhammer 6th Ed. boxed set I won way-back-when. I didn’t take pictures of all the stages as I had planned. I’d say I made a conscious decision to not let the blog interfere with the hobby, but must admit that when I sat down to sculpt, that was all that I thought about.

Half-way finished.

On one hand, I am happy with the sculpt. It looks like something and I’m definitely learning from the process. The head doesn’t resemble a GW Orc, but it isn’t really human. Depending on how the mouth turns out, I may slice off the top of the head and re-do that area. On a real GW Orc, the eyes are smaller and closer together, with very little skull afterwards. This looks more like an Ogre’s head. When painted, I don’t think it will stand-out too much. I don’t want to spend too much time perfecting this. Get in, get the experience, get it finished. Without the completion you never finalize your lession and never move on. Ask my non-started writing career about that.

One thing that is frustrating is that I really want to paint the rest of his crew, but don’t feel like making a separate painting pass just for him. Each layer of putty must cure before the next, especially for a beginner like me. This means I spend maybe 15 minutes pushing putty where I probably could go for an hour or more. The urge to buy something came in really strong while I was struggling with that desire to paint something. I resisted, and instead, while I wait for the putty to cure, I’ve started cleaning and assembling the Arrer Boys that came from the same box.

I probably won’t even use all my Orcs at first, and having some bowmen will really be helpful in giving me a bit of diversity. I don’t know if it’s important against hordes of Skeletons. Perhaps it’d be better to smash through quickly with a large mass of Orcs, rather than spreading myself out to be destroyed in detail. Since I’m up against a single opponent, someone new to the hobby that I’m trying to encourage, perhaps a less-efficient force is better. This will help me fight my natural competitiveness that keeps me from letting off when I’m winning.

Those that have gamed against me know how funny that last statement is. I am definitely not the scourge of the wargame table. For from it, I frequently lose to even the greenest players. I once mocked a player for not pummeling me enough in a game. I felt he’d definitely let himself down by merely destroying my forces convincingly, rather than spectacularly.

Well, that’s enough rambling. It’s time for bed and I have work tomorrow. Not Tuesday, which will be tomorrow Monday when this goes up, but tomorrow Sunday. Working weekends suck. At least I have left-over pizza for lunch. Yum.

Tyler

PS: Anyone know the Pizza Ode that Drew Carey sang on an episode of The Drew Carey Show. It was something like: I love you pizza, I love you when you’re hot, I love you when you’re cold. I even love you when you’re two days old.