Oldhammer at last

Enough of this practicing now for some proper Oldhammer!!

I had to do pin a couple of weapons on these boyz as usual i got them in a job lot.

First Spikk from the 1987 compendium







Then there is a two weapon boy who should have a mace and sword but now it's two swords







All comments welcome I still need to improve a lot to get the effects I'm aiming for. I think I'm still a little messy.

Close up photos can be very cruel in showing up flaws, but they can also be very useful in areas to improve. eg taking the first guy you can see where you have mis-painted stuff - like the bindings on the weapon. If you go back over that to paint it in a leather colour (rather than the metal) plus the bracelet on the arm, the inside of the hood, etc it would definitely improve it. If you look at the shading on the face you can see it is also the wrong colour - looks like it is more orange than green. You also have some spill over from the skin onto the armour and weapon. Did you dry brush the skin? That can be very difficult to control - perhaps think about actually painting the layers next time to really nail down where you want the paint to go. The dry brush on the armour can go first then paint in the skin so you are less likely to spill over onto it. Good start though and good repair on the second one.

I love the metal effect on the weapons. Hard to do in enamels (yes, I use enamels).

Thanks both for the really helpful comments.

jon_1066 I'll try your suggestions and pay more attention, perhaps I should photograph them then see where I've gone astray? I'm very old school in my technique - or is that just old?- so I tend to rely on washes and dry brush rather than edge highlighting and layering but I can always learn. I will however never return to enamels arghh SS panzer troops and Humbrol

Cool mate, nice old orcs.

You might want to re-size the photos a bit. As mentioned, super close-ups rarely do a model any favours. Even just a little smaller looks better to me. Think of how small those photos is WD/rulebooks were.

Paint seems a bit thick, or is that the undercoat? (Or repainting over old paint?).

You've done my usual trick of taking a photo with the odd bit of static flock still on the model

I think that the shading on the hood of the first orc has turned out very well - there is a nice smooth transition from darker to lighter brown. I think you could improve it by adding a bit more contrast, eiter buy highlighting or shading a bit more - or both. I am guessing that you painted the hood in a light brown and then used a darker brown wash to make the shading. If so, making more contrast is relatively simple: Just add a second layer of wash, but this time use a detail brush and apply the wash only to the deepest recesses. After the wash has dried, you could also add a highlight of the original lightbrown just to the most raised areas, since the original coat has already been darkened a little by the wash.

Try giving the metal a wash of dark brown ink, or better still use some dark brown and some chestnut brown in patches. That gives a great tarnished, lived-in feel to the metal.