+ inload; Thrugg Bullneck redux +

+ inload: Painting Thrugg Bullneck  +

+ A while back, I posted up a conversion I had made based on the villain from the Rogue Trader scenario Battle for the Farm, Thrugg Bullneck. As you can see above, I got around to painting him over the weekend. +

+ He was a lot of fun to  paint – and a great exercise in practising the palette I want to use on my army project for the PCRC's 2014 campaign, da Blakk Kuttas.

+ I always love painting skin, and the character Brian Nelson got into his metal ork nobs is fantastic fun to paint. While painting it, I noticed that the face I used here had metal caps rivetted over his tusks. I toyed with the idea of retaining them, but ended up trimming them down and painting them as natural teeth to better emulate the original model. 

+ I used a touch of purple in the basecoat and reinforced that on the lips and eyelids. Just because the skin is green, it doesn't mean it doesn't deserve all the time and effort you would put into human skin. +

+ The pose tends to make the eye go the head and then slide down the gun to the base, so I added a little freehand chequer pattern on the bracer as a quick way to keep the eye lingering on the model. In addition, some relative tidiness helps set off the looser blocks of colour on organic forms like orks. 

 + This shot shows the fur texture – a very easy paintjob which was Rotting Flesh overlaid with Ogryn Flesh wash (to add a bit of warmth) and then Agrax Earthshade. I think the particular detail of a bone horn sticking through orangey-tinged animal fur is very Blanchesque. John Blanche is a huge influence and inspiration to my painting, so I wanted to get that across. The minimal base is also a result of reading that he prefers a simple base to let the miniatures speak for themselves. 

+ I enjoyed painting the trophy skulls and heads a lot, too – very sci-fi barbarian!

  

+ All this grim brooding darkness can be a bit much sometimes, so I leavened the paint scheme by painting the squig scratching his ear (a mini-mawe from the ever-wonderful Hasslefree miniatures) a nice bright orange, and scrawling 'Git' on one of Thrugg's trophy skulls. 

+ I don't like clownish orks, but a bit of 2000AD style black humour is very much in keeping with the original flavour of the orks. 

+ Overall, I'm very pleased with how he's come out – a nice mix of old and new, with a lot of character. Hopefully a fitting tribute to Thrugg himself. +