Pair of Orcs

I finished painting my pair of old orcs. When I started them I applied a fairly neutral bland pale green, then added some quite intense green, blue and yellow inks to create the different green tones. I did also apply some fairly basic highlights (just dots of a light beige) before glazing with the highlight tones. The interesting thing is how intense the figures started, but gradually toned down as more shading was applied and the rest of the figure was painted. If I was really radical I could probably replace my whole collection of paints with about a dozen paints and half a dozen inks.*

These figures date back to 1992. That was the year I started playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle, with the boxed set containing plastic night goblins and elves. I loved the elves, the models were really nice and it probably stirred my inner Tolkien nerd. I also collected Undead, as they were easier to paint. I never really appreciated the greenskins, they seemed deliberately jokey and not to my taste - and anyway my brother collected those so I never gave them a second thought.

Fast forward to the start of this year, 2018, so that's about 26 years later. I had been up in the loft on the annual xmas decoration hunt, when I came across all my old White Dwarf magazines. I dragged them down and had a flick through, especially those very early issues when I first started gaming. It's definitely a nostalgia trip, and a lot of figures have been collected, painted, played with and sold down that quarter of a century. Somehow, I suddenly realised how much I missed the simplicity of those older models. Not the elves, they are covered in jewels and other details, but the orcs and goblins in particular struck me as very simple, but evocative. After scoring a couple of good deals on ebay and facebook, I had a handful of greenskins to add to Mount Unpainted. And now, ten months later, I have painted three of them. Maybe, in another 25 years, I will have them completed. The original post on the troll can be found here.

*Hmmmm, maybe this would be a good project for the new year?