40k Harlequins - Tricolor shenanigans!

Managed to get some more brush time in yesterday, and started blocking in the green and purple sections on the Troupe and Starweaver. Starting to come together nicely now!

Still need to brighten up the purple a bit, but I'm pretty happy with the contrast between the green and yellow. Once the base colors are laid in, the next step will be to go back in and add stripes, checks and polka dots for full clownishness!

Rather happy with how the Starweaver is coming along as well, it's a rather cool model with the riders hanging on. That all said, this paint scheme is surprisingly slow compared to my usual batch painting cadence. Probably taken as long to get this far on these models as it had to bring all the recent Orks to completion!

40k Harlequins - Choosing a color scheme

Got some decent hobby time in last night after it had cooled off a bit and started off by putting together the Starweaver transport for the troupe - First time assembling this kit and it was a bit of a fraught affair! I think I got the measure of it though, so the upcoming Voidweaver should go together a bit easier. Hoping to keep the painting simple I left the two passengers separate, but getting them posed properly was certainly a struggle!

On the last go around with the killer clowns I'd gone for the full chromatic assault on the senses, which was fun but exhausting both to paint and to look at afterwards - it was almost TOO busy. This time I thought I'd be a little more restrained and pick 3-4 colors - Garish though they may be! Decided to go with Mardi Gras-esque colors for the initial Troupe and Starweaver, and started laying in the yellow on various areas, and trying to envision where the subsequent purples and greens will go.

Falling back on the recipe that I'd used on the Imperial Fists which is a bit more of a mustard yellow than the canary brightness of the recent Orks. Depending on how it ends up contrasting with the upcoming purple and green, that gives me some room to brighten up the yellow if needed.

 

For the Starweaver, I'm intending to to half yellow, and half green-and-purple diamonds. Should look neat I hope, but to start it was just a matter of laying down some painter's tape to get a nice crisp line. The passengers are just sitting in place for the photo, really happy with how it's coming along!

40k Harlequins - Cegorach's Jest

What with all this Ork business of late, it's got me thinking that it might be fun to do an army of Xenos filth again. I wanted to do something very colorful, and when it gets right down to it there's no force more colorful than the Harlequins! Poked around in the codex and picked out a Formation to do as a little side project - Cegorach's Jest.

It's a compact little force that includes a bit of each unit type in the Harlequin book aside from the 3 characters, so should be just a little bite-sized project. I do plan to add a couple more Skyweavers to the force, as 2 jetbikes do not a viable unit make in my estimation (but the local shop only had one box in stock)...

Started off by building up the Troupe. The models are actually somewhat awkward to photograph - they have a beautiful dynamism in-hand, but somehow always seem to look silly in the pictures. I had built this kit once before so I knew what I was in for, however I have never built the Skyweavers or Starweaver kits previously, so that should be an adventure! Definitely have to be cognizant of building the models in separate pieces to facilitate subsequent painting...

NOCF Charity Ork Army - The penultimate session!

Real Life(tm) continues to be heinous to my schedule of late, so while the following pics were taken back on Saturday I'm only just now able to get them posted up on the ol' blog. That said, Da Boyz are 99% complete!

I say 99% as it's inevitable that during the sealant step that I identify some step of the process that I've completely overlooked until then. In this case, I missed out on painting the tongues on all of the Orks with open mouths. Doh!

That final cleanup notwithstanding the units are complete and I am really happy with 'em. It was an absolute blast to paint some Orks again after so long and was really refreshing to use the strong greens and yellows - colors rather underutilized in my other recent projects! I'm planning on getting them touched up and boxed up to send over to the rally point for the army later this week, and then it's time to dive back into the Heresy - got a Box o' Resin Joy heading my way from Forge World with some new Thousand Sons goodies to add to the force, can't wait!

NOCF Charity Ork Army - Allmost... Alllllllmost...

Oh so very close to the finish line now! Over the last few days I've been doing battle with the house refinance so that's eaten up some time, but I did manage to finish off the detailing on Da Boyz!

Got all the black flames done, added in the copper jewelry and bullet casings, and got the spot colors laid in on the Rokkit Boyz. Also went back and picked out all the little teef and leather I'd missed here and there one the way through the lot. Phew!

Next up is a little further work on the Rokkits, then on to the bases - hurtling towards the end!

In other NOCF news:
-Zab has started laying in the base shading on some Ad Mech goodness!
-Greg has started working on the Grots and pressed on with the Deff Dredd (which is shaping up to be a corker)!
-Celso has done a frankly astonishing job on a battlewagon for the force as well!

More to come!

NOCF Charity Ork Army - 'Eadbangers in leather...

...More leather straps than a Judas Priest concert! As we near the finish line on da Boyz, we start to get into the little fiddly details - the goal over the last couple days was to knock out all the leatherwork, and there was a lot of it! Early steps in the process can be pretty messy, relying on subsequent steps to clean up any slop but at this point I'm having to be very careful not to overspill which slows things to a crawl. However perseverance it key!

Next up is the copper/gold jewelry and shell casings, the rest of the black flames, and general cleanup of stuff I'd missed. Getting ever closer to the finish line!

NOCF Charity Ork Army - Heavy metal

Real Life(tm) has been a bear recently so not as much brush time as I would have hoped. I did manage to squeeze in a couple more colors since Saturday, but sadly I've fallen well behind my initial plan to crank out two colors a day. Curses!

Got the boltgun metal painted in and washed with a pass of Agrax Earthshade, which gives the metal an oily, rusted look which is rather fitting for the Orks! Also started a bit of the shoulder pad detailing, painting on the Bad Moons typical flame motif here and there.

So far it's just been the yellow flames on the black shoulder pads, but the yellow pads will also get the treatment with some black flames (a couple have been done so far). Once those are done it'll be time to pick out all the leather and fur which should really help the look. Right around this mid-point is where I usually start to get discouraged in the batch process but I have to say I'm still really digging painting them. If only I had more time to do so! Planning to carve out a good chunk of time this coming weekend with a goal of getting them done up to the point where I can start painting the bases. Fingers crossed!