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Well, I have started alot of projects and most of them are still very much a WIP. However, my gaming group and I are planning on a very large campaign sometime in the middle of next year so I have about a year to get 23,000 points worth of Orks painted. The seems like a crazy goal but it is do-able since I have been expermenting with speed painting techneques for infantry and vehicles alike. So a heads up for gamers in the Kansas City area, there will be a local shortage of GW Foundation Red, Devlin Mud and Badab Black for the next year. I will be posting new techneques and lesson that I have learned along with advise.

Now, I having to balance work, family, painting and gaming so I decided to start a blog regarding this journey. Why did I label this a journey of a Mediocre Gamer you say? Well, if it wasn't for my dice rolling the past few months my 40K Fu has been pretty weak over the last few years. So, I figure that my suck tactics and my admazing luck that I have had balance themselves out to just Mediocre.

To start off the modelling and gaming blog I am already well head of the game with 23000 point Ork army is already been build with a majority of it base coated. So far this is where I am at:



I have alot more that is not in this picture but I don't have the time to upload them right now. So I have to close this entry out since it is time to go back to work (real paid work).

Wow. Just Wow.That is a lot of orks
Looking forward to this blog.

And I thought owning 16k worth the 'nids was silly.

Outdone =(

Holy moly!!! Cool name btw! im looking forward to fallout new vegas! apologies for the off topicness!!!

That is a heck of a lot of orks!!!

Ever since I went to Adapticon 2009, I have been just stuck on the use of resin bases for all my models. For my Chaos army I had used (surprise, surprise, surprise) Chaos spiky stone resin base. While as cool as the bases were they did not fit my Ork army which is centered around a 300 Ork Boy strong Green Tide supported by a heavy showing of Speed Freaks and huge Bully Boyz formation all in Battlewagons. While vehicles are easy and at this point value cheaper points v money value than infantry.

I digress, I wanted a cool bases for all my 400+ infantry models so I found a junkyard bases that uber cool, and super easy to paint and weather. However, when it came down to resin bases for all these models I could fund a small war for what it cost to order enough bases. A while ago I made a mold of some of the junkyard bases for myself and cast up a few dozen. Now that I have graduated from college, have an adult job (not including my time in the Army or working for the Sheriff's department) and a man cave that is empty and big enough it was time to put my hand into the ring casting my own bases.

!!! DISCLAIMER: I have checked into this deeply. Reproducing other peoples work for profit is wrong and illegal. If you reproduce for your own use then you are in the clear as for copyright and IP laws for most nations. Not only has this topic been beaten to death on here and on every other hobby forum !!!

With that said, later on I am going to attempt to mold my own stuff. I was thinking about a 40 ounce Stompa Beer Cozy or possibly a Beer Stine. All joking aside casting is a truly teadious job and about as stimulating as listening to a cd of the 100 best speeches by Margret Thatcher. Shake, pour, stir, pour, wait with gas mask on, extract, wash and repeat.

This has been a real learning process but very rewarding when you look that 5 25mm bases are almost $10 USD per blister. Multiply that by 400 and you can see why one will cast over and over again. What I have really learned is few things:

1. Carefully measure because too much is a waste
2. Resin is nasty stuff
3. Make sure that you have a good coating of mold release when you cast

So here is where I am at:

After 3 man hours I have 25mm bases and a good number of 40mm bases and a butt load of spare bricks that I am going to use for Ork terrain.

With a base coat of Krylon Camo Brown, a dry brush of GW Boltgun and an a good use of weathering powders these bases come out great.

The big thing to me is that it easier for me to get a model done when it is already on its base. I have never been good as painting on the sprue or a pinned model on a cork. So I have to get as many bases done before I hit the painting hard and heavy. What is going to fill the time between casting? Speed painting of vehicles. I have found a method of speed painting Speed Freak colors and making the paint looking old, faded and worn out with only one coat of red paint. This will be shown on a later Episode of The Journey.

Cast, paint, cast, paint, cast, paint... to be continued.

... Wow. I mean, damn. That's incredible. I hope you enjoy painting.

Painting is not what I like to do but If I can finish in a year it is something anyone can do. I am never going to want to paint green or red ever again.

I have been following your other posts on here and can't wait to see what you come up next.

Looking Good!

crazy crazy man. You talk of balance..

...

Of balance I see none.
SOOOOO many orcs. I'm going crazy trying to paint 40 guardsmen.

Looks like i need to suck on my teaspoon of cement and harden up. *sigh

For today's episode I am going to show Part One of my Ork Speed Freak Speed Painting method.

Of course with any model being painted a good base coat is a must as all modellers know. I was trying out different colors for my base coat when it dawned on me that a majority of an Ork is brown not green. Heresy some say so I went looking for a good dark brown spray paint for my base coat for my Orks and what I found was Krylon's Ultra Flat Camouflage spray paint in a 11 oz can. Bar none, the best spray paint I have used ever.

Front of the can

Label with color name and product number


I have found that this spray paint has an near perfect sprays in wide range of weather and humidity and dries perfectly within 15 minutes. The best thing is that it is designed to work on plastics that are used for hunting so it bonds really well with the model and can take alot of abuse. Along with that, it's is a great dark brown and I have found that it works almost as well as flat black. Here is a before and after base coating with this spray:

Before



After



In the white light of my desk lights it makes the brown look almost black in color and shade. The base coat was done in less than 30 minutes including drying time which the model was handled and brush painting began. This is the base coat of the my Speed Painting of Ork Speed Freek Vehicles. So in total up into this point I have 30 minutes tied up in this vehicle.

Next, after it dried I began the main color of my vehicle which is GW's Foundation Mechrite Red which is my only red I will use except for fine detail work. Some people will think this is crazy because it looks pink under most light sources (warm or cool, natural or artifical). In this speed painting that I use washes will darken and redden the Mechrite Red to a dirty washed out red that gives a well used, sun faded red that I picture that most Speed Freak vehicle on a long Waaagh! would be like.

Finished Basic Battlewagon with no Campaign Markings applied yet. Champion!



You would never guess but other than the Ork Commander there is only four GW paints, three GW washes and three weather powders used in the painting of this Battlewagon.

So, I started painting my Looted Wagon which was a MK I Rhino to start off. Other than the faded coloring that the Mechrite Red gives it covers the best of any GW red paint I have ever used. This vehicle's main color was painted with one coat over 90% of the main color surface area. Some large flat sections required a second coat right after but that was very rare. The only thing I have found is that GW foundation paints for some reason eat paint brushes like they are going out of style. But with the brush damage sustained which was very slight and fixible. After one hour of painting (being interupted for 10 minutes with a phone call) into all the nooks and crannies of the model all the areas that I want red was painted. This model has alot of hard to reach places that make it hard to paint. So in total that is 1 1/2 hours of total painting time.

Main color applied



Yes it does look pink in the pictures but it is the light source and the nature of the color till washed and weathered as seen in the evidence of the Battlewagon above.

So, as another feature of my attempt to chronicle my Journey is the start of my Sleep Deprevation Clock. This will measure the amount of sleep that I have lost in the finishing of this army. Right now I am up to 1 hour and 20 minutes of sleep that I have lost to painting my army.

P.S. and nobody is going to care, I got a promotion at work and next month I start 9 months of heavy classroom training. Yeah! a new stress added on to getting this army done. Oh well, love the they pay me.

On next episode will be the secondary colors added onto my Looted Wagon as Part 2 of my Speed Painting of Ork Speed Freak Vehicles Tutorial continues and remember, "Stay thirsty my friends."

congratulations on the promotion! I'm a very big fan of mechrite red. What an amazing color. Really good job with the basecoat. I remember reading in a 2008-09 white dwarf this guy's cheat for fast painting orcs was basecoating brown, cause most of the pouches etc are that color soo.. Great minds think alike and all that!
Look forward to seeing more of your work.

It has been a couple of days since I posted but had to crash out last night so no work on my vehicle was done. Had to get some sleep because my performance at work was not up to my snuff so a nights full of sleep was called for and low and behold I rocked my job today. Well rested and a head full of steam I decided to continue on with my Looted Wagon Tutorial.

When we last left off I had applied my base coat of Krylon Camouflage Brown spray paint and the coat of my main color of GW Foundation Mechrite Red.

Progress when the screen faded out:



Now I went on to the next color that needs to be put on as the other two secondary colors other than crew colors will cover up during the clean up process. Grabbing my trusty dry brush I go at all the metal areas of the Looted Wagon with GW Boltgun Metal. I didn't care with there was any carry over on to the other parts as the other colors will cover up that up easily. So twenty minutes later and my dry brushing was complete. Total time in the vehicle is 1 hour and 50 minutes.





The dry brushing is always the easiest part for painting I find since I don't have to be neat and it is generally the quickest part unless you are doing a Necron army. So, a quick can of soda and a check of my email later I went into my next secondary color: GW Tausept Ochre. I use this as my yellow since the washes and weathering powders I use ir make this a great yellow color that goes on in one coat with very little streaking. Once I apply the washes and weathering powders, the Tausept Ochre has this great dirty, faded color that just blends in perfectly next to the GW Foundation Mechrite Red but still has the contrast that just makes the model pop once on the table. Again neatness is not a key at this step unless it is next to an part that must remain Boltgun Metal. Eventhough the Tausept Orchre is a Foundation Paint this took awhile to paint because I was being as neat as possible which took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to paint the yellow so total time in the vehicle is 3 hours and 5 minutes.





Up to this point over 98% of the model has been only been painted with only one coat of paint per color due to the ablility of the GW Foundation colors coat evenly and with a thickness not to streak but still leave the wonderful details of the mini. Whoever designed the GW Foundation and Washes should get a pay raise since they have made my job so much easier. Yes, I know that this vehicle still looks like a pink and baby yellow monster but trust me this works out in the end.


Sleep Deprevation Clock: 2 Hours and 30 Minutes.


...to be continued.

...oh my....GAWD! Orks...! Orks! Ork, orks, orkses and more Orkses! I have never seen an army so huge!

That tank is looking fine! Your army is going to look incredible, way to go!

--- Frankie

Great work so far. Keep it up and don't lose heart, by the way I feel ashamed that I gawked at my 150 guardsmen that need to be painted...

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen to my slow desent into madness with my thrid part of my speed painting tutorial of Ork Speed Freak Vehicles. I have noticed from playing 40K since 1997 that what has held up gamers from collecting a Speed Freak army is the color red. It is such a difficult color to pull off without streaking and looking like . As we have seen in the last two parts of this tutorial that GW Foundation Mechrite Red is a wonderful base coat for any red and if it is pulled off right as you will see by the end of this tutorial it is really the only red you will need for your Speed Freak vehicles. Where I left off was with the coat of GW Foundation Tausept Ochre for my yellow color. Just like Mechrite Red, Tausept Ochre is 95% streak free and able to have a perfect coat the first time.

Where we left off last:



Now I am onto my next secondary color for the vehicle which is GW Foundation Dheneb Stone. While more of a tan than a white Dheneb Stone is wonderful since all the Foundation colors have a washed out or dirty look to them already which makes my job so much easier. Also, just like the other two Foundation colors used so far it coats evenly the first time. While I only use white for Ork Glyph markings such as teeth and skulls white is a minor secondary color but it does break up the red and yellow nicely. Up to this point I have only used one regular GW paint so far. I should have called this Orks by Foundation Paint but the crew of course blows this out of the water. Painting Dheneb Stone took a total of 5 minutes since I had to put a bit of water into the pot. Total time spent on the vehicle 3 hours and 10 minutes.

GW Foundation Dheneb Stone applied:




With the main colors of the vehicle finished it was time to turn to the Grot Crew. I love these little guys and want to thank Forge World from making them since they look oh so much better than the GW production Grots. Just as with all the rest of my Ork infantry I have been using the Irondog Studio's speed painting of Orks with some minor changes.

Link to Irondog Studio's Ork Speed Painting Tutorial: http://www.irondogstudios.com/tutor_EZorks.html

I have changed around some of the colors in their speed painting and made it so much faster. The tutorial they have uses GW Goblin Green for the skin and I use GW Foundation Knarloc Green and for the pants they use GW Graveyard Earth which I ignore and leave as the basecoat of the Brown. The dark Brown looks great against the Red Shirts. Plus I love the idea that Gaz has a whole army of Red Shirts to back him up. So a 300+ Ork Boy Green Tide of Crewman Rickys. Instead of writting out the how I painted the crew I am just going to show it in pictures and captions. The crew took a total of an 50 minutes since I was already pretty praticed with this painting. I could normally do ten grots in 50 minutes but since they were already attached to the vehicle it took longer. Total time spent on the vehicle 4 hours.

GW Foundation Knarloc Green (Skin)


GW Blood Red (Shirt and tounge), Boltgun Metal (Metal, Armor and Bullets) and Shining Gold (Shell Casings)


GW Blazing Orange (Eyes)


GW Snakebite Leather (Leather) and Bleached Bone (Teeth and Claws)



Heavy use of GW Badab Black over all surfaces of the crew and a light highlight of a 1:1 Mixture of GW Goblin Green and Bleached Bone. I don't go for the super highlighting as Irondog Studios since I let the wash do that for me. Just lazy I guess but I still like the look.



Now, after doing little bits of touch ups on the crew it was time to get back to the vehicle. No need to show the clean up of the vehicle since all it consisted of was just painting over the spill over of the dry brushing of GW Boltgun Metal and where the Tausept Ochre went over on to the Mechrite Red. This clean up took 25 minutes so total time on the vehicle so far is 4 hours and 25 minutes.

Once I had all the clean up done it was time for the washes to stop making this look like a pink and baby yellow monster. To begin the wash process of the vehicle make sure that you have plenty of the colors because this process uses alot of wash but it speeds up the painting of the vehicle by hours. So, to start with I go over all the Mechrite Red surfaces with three, thats right three heavy coats of GW Wash Baal Red. It is ok that there are puddles of Baal Red on the vehicle as it will darken the Mechrite Red from a faded pink to a faded red. Then I covered the yellow with a heavy coat of GW Wash Devlan Mud. This lightly darken the Tausept Ochre and gave it a dirty look.

3 coats of GW Baal Red on the Mechrite Red and 1 coat of GW Devlan Mud on the Tausept Ochre



After those coats of wash I covered the entire vehicle with another two heavy coats of GW Wash Devlan Mud. This gave a darken and dirty look to all the surfaces of the vehicle. The Devlan Mud is wonderful since it will cover most small mistakes where two different color panels meet. You can almost feel the oily, dirty look that Orks should have and not that right out of the factory weathering feel that you see alot. If you are doing this and have huge areas of Mechrite Red such as on the Battlewagon you can throw on a couple coats of GW Wash Badab Black and this will dirty those areas even more. I use alot of wash on these vehicles bit the look is wonderful. Total time it took to wash the vehicle with 6 coats was 1 hour and 5 minutes which is including allowing each coat to dry. So total time with the vehicle is 5 hours and 30 minutes.




To finish off the vehicle and give it that well worn Orky look it took a good dose of Weathering Powders. While alot of people use Mig powders or Forge World powders I only is Bar Mills Train Modelling powders that come in a four pack. There is a dark rust, orange rust, light rust (I use as dust) and soot. These took alittle bit to get use to but I will never go back to weather by paint again. While Forge World or Mig have a whole huge range of colors they are so damn expensive and Bar Mills right from the manufacture was $9.95 for all four colors and these powders don't rub off easly as with the others. Oh, so wonderful.

To begin the weathing process I start with the orange rust for the tracks, road wheels, and any place water would run or sit. I will even do a very light dusting over most surfaces except for the crew. Then I hit the vehicle with dusting of the light rust powder to give it a dusty feel over most surfaces. These vehicles are in the field and Orks don't carry wash pits and cans of paint with them so dusty is good. Lastly I apply the soot powder on the exhust, parts of the hull that follow right behind the exhust and at the end of Cannon and Big Shoota barrels. You can achieve the same effect with Badab Black wash but you run into the problem of the residue not looking as even as with the weathering powder.

I do recommend that if you are going to use these powders to put them into empty, clean pots and have a #2 Red Sable Brush or similar type of brush. These will give you a nice even dusting. Do not apply right out of the pot to the vehicle since a little bit will go along way. The brush will always pickup more than what you need so I lightly tap it on the side of the pot or take for the powders on the lid and then run the brush over a dry paper towel. This will get rid of the excess powder and give you just what you need for the section you are to hit. Practice on a junk model to get use to using Weathering Powders. The application of the weathering powders is always pretty quick and it only took me 35 minutes to put all three colors on. So the total time weathering the Vehicle is up to 6 hours and 5 minutes.

I completed the main gun in about 45 minutes so the total time from start to finish for this Looted Wagon was 6 hour and 50 minutes. This is pretty quick since I put alot of small details and the odd angles that I had to reach. On top of that my Battlewagon only took 4 hours and 45 minutes to finish since I had only one crew member to paint and very little yellow to do. When you figure that I have 65 more vehicles left to paint and just the red on my Fighta Bomma with my deep red method took 6 hours to paint without any other colors this method is next to nothing since it is from start to finish. With no futher adu here is the finished Looted Wagon and the end of the Ork Speed Freak Vehicle Speed Painting Tutorial.

Looted Wagon at the beginning of painting


Completed Looted Wagon






Looted Wagon next to the Battlewagon completed with this method


These are the paints used:

Vehicle Colors


Crew Colors


Bar Mills Weathering Powders

Good work and a good read as well! Really enjoy following your progress and luckily I get the added benifit of seeing this army across the table. Keep it going.

Ash

Very nice results!

Can you give a little more info on your use of weathering powders, please? Do you use white spirit or anything like that, or do the powders just stick on themselves?

Do you varnish after weathering?

Cheers

Great posts. I'm trying to pick up hints for painting, because I got a whole lot of Space Marines recently, and I'm trying to convert them to chaos. Good luck!

nice.

Keep it up Mike!

For inspiration;

Really enjoyed coming back to this thread after being without internet for 2 weeks! Your work is very impressive!

Small update: Well, I got sick on Friday and it has lasted even up to now. The medication the doctor put me on Monday has really messed me up so I have not really had much done. However, I have put the base red coat on my three other GW Battlewagons over the previous weekend. Two whole days off from work wasted. Damn I could have finished two and maybe three entire Battlewagons in that time.

I just want to say that Meniere's disease sucks. It has taken all the steam out of me so I am sorry about not updating more often. I have so bad that I have barely done anything other than work and lay about at home tired because of my system stablizing to the medication to handle it. Getting better now and have starting working on Grots to back into the swing of painting. Will post some pictures soon of my progress.

Hey Pipboy101! sorry to hear you have been knocked off your feet!!! Get well soon!!!

Well, I'm back. I hate being sick but the medication they gave me has stopped the light headiness and the other issues that came with the illness. Still get a loud, painful ringing in my ears from time to time but I can deal with that. I have been working on a project for my friend for Adepticon this year but since it is not part my my Ork army it will not go on the blog.

What has been keeping busy hobby wise is the openning of a new gaming store near me and a rescue mission of a mini I picked up off ebay for next to nothing. I was doing hopeless searching on eBay for a Armorcast Great Gargant and I came across a guy that was selling a scratch built Digga Stompa. It was going for cheap and it looked it but the legs were very well done so I bid on it.

He didn't have any minis next to it so I could only guess on its true size but if wasn't true Stompa (GW or even Epicast size) I could deal with it because I always wanted a Ruzzbot. When it got here I knew it was cheap but damn. Oh well, here is what it looked like as it was discribed on eBay:




I started to rip off parts such as all the guns and the head to find that the core was made out of a old toliet paper roll and the use of bitz really screamed of someone that is not a good conversion or scratch builder. However, the seller's saving grace was that the body was solid and the legs were top notch so I was able to save both. So when I started to trim and cut I had to use a heavy duty dremell for the major cutting work. About 3/4 of the way through the cutting the paper roll in the center caught fire but that was put out with a glass of water with no harm to the model, house or myself.

So over this long weekend I have installed the top, crotch Kannon, left and right firing platforms and approx 700 rivits to the enitre model. Just about an hour ago I basecoated the mini in my normal Krylon Camo Brown spray and here is what my rescue job (what I do best) of the mini:





I am pleased on how it turned out. So, what is a Ruzzbot you ask. A Ruzzbot is in all intents and purposes it is a Looted Leman Russ with a but is a small tracked Stompa. I installed this mini with a Kannon, two big shoota and a Kusom Mega Blaster to act as a Las Cannon. Well, that is what I have done so far so C&C always welcome.

Well, for today I do not hav any pictures but there is paint going on it. So far half of it is GW Foundation Red as in the paint scheme that I showed earlier. I am trying to figure out if I want this to be a Ruzzbot or a walker with special rules but of course it is an Apoc only item and it will look good planted in the middle of a street putting out as much dakka that it can.

So, it is back to the old grind stone from me.

Nice work. Looking forward to seeing that big beastie painted.

Orks orks orks orks!

With a subject or mediocre gamer, this was totally not what I expected. Wow.