Abbadon: The Resurrection, and Ork Boyz paint scheme

Abbadon Returns!

Prior to our last weekend's 4K per side stoush at Adam's place I was required to remove Abbadon from the murky green bath of Simple Green concentrate that he's been living in for a while now, so that Ash could use him to lead his army. With him pulled out it could be seen that his old paintjob was lifting off everywhere, just what we want! I then placed him in a rigid plastic container, grabbed my garden hose and set the nozzle to 'jet'- a really sharp narrow high pressure stream of water (can bruise skin at close range), and blasted the Despoiler for about a minute. I think the following picture shows the results best- back to base metal :)

The slight "grey textured" look was just discolouration of the metal, its all smooth and even and hadn't done anything to the details at all. I then submerged Abbadon in a jar of straight tap water for an hour, emptied it and then gave him another hit with the jet. This wasnt to remove any more paint- it was already completely gone- but to remove any remaining traces of Simple Green. With this concluded i left him out in the sun for an hour, then brought him inside and reassembled him and when he was at room temp I re-undercoated him with 3 nice thin coats of Chaos Black undercoat spray. He then hit the tabletop the very next day and celebrated by carving his way through numerous Imperial Guard and Space Wolves squads and even destroyed a Land Raider Redeemer. Bat rep coming on that one really soon!

So in summary I'm very happy with how well he came up, Pedro Kantor is next on the cleanup list and should return the same results- his paint appears even more loose, I think the majority will just peel off all in one go!

Waaaagh!!! Paintjob now decided for the boyz
Sat down last night with the normal tuesday night animated show marathon on 7 Mate and decided to pull my finger out and work out a scheme for the 60 Ork boys I have. As always, this was preceded by a huge amount of google searching to see what others have done, what colour combos work and what id need to buy. Thankfully I was able to settle on a scheme that I have all the paints for, looks good and is easy to paint (within reason- I do tend to make things hard for myself). So behold, a not-so-good photo of what I came up with (i'll try to get a better pic later), this is actually a lot darker than the mini looks- all the colours are muted looking where in real life they are lot richer.

The main basis for the scheme is several differing shades of brown for the fatigues, pants, boots and straps that hold the armour on. The armour plating, guns, choppa blade and haft, rivets, buckles and boot toecaps are all boltgun metal. And the skin is Knarloc Green with a liberal Thraka Green wash, with a Devlan mud wash in the deepest arm muscle and face features recesses, then Knarloc Green reapplied on the raised areas and a final thinned highlight of camo green.

Everything gets a Devlan mud wash to shade and tie the colours together, especially the creases on the pants. A great tip to remember when using large all over thick washes is to hang the model upside down, this way the washes pool up "under" the areas that should be shadowed naturally. I then go back over most of the areas that i've washed and reapply the base colour again on the most raised sections, and a thin highlight if appropriate.



The boyz will also have a bit of battle-damage on their armour plating as can be seen in the picture, with the blue/white paint giving way to a black undercoat which then gives way to the bare metal underneath- this is best represented on the choppa. I also gave the choppa blade some dried blood on its edge, this is just very watered down dark flesh applied in a random fashion.

The spot colours for the boyz will be randomly applied red, orange, purple, bright green here and there- hair, gun pieces, wrist or arm bandages, straps, belts or whatnot. Im also looking to add some fluffy flavour- pieces of armour, clothing or weaponry lifted from other clans, primarily the Evil Sunz, Blood Axes or Bad Moons, due to the different colours and patterns they have. I'm not going to bother with anything looted from the Goffs- i've got enough white checked stuff in my army already, and anything with black and white checks is mainly just going to look like I've left something unfinished!!

This initial paintup took about 1.5 hours when you factor out the drying time for the two washes, including umming and ahhing about what colours to use. Im fairly hopeful that the next bunch of boyz will only take 45 minutes to an hour tops to get to the same standard now that all the hard decisions have been made.        

So, I'm done for now- hope you liked this small update!

Cheers,
Tempest