Another blast from the past! My collection of older Orks is now finished once again, albeit with a twist. While these two were great figures, comapred to the more muscular new range of Orks, they paled in comparison ... so as rebuilding them made no sense, they had to become specialists to compensate for the size difference. Flash Gits fit the bill perfectly, so a quick trip to the bits box and a couple of comically oversized guns were born. Not even sure I could remember where most of these parts came from, but straws and plastic ball joints were involved. I'm lacking a suitable material to use as mechanical piping, and wouldn't mind returning to the first guy to add more wire in there for a slightly more chaotic fee, but it'll do for now.

Colour wise it was again a nice simple choice, with lots of reds, silvers and the key colour of yellow in there. I hadn't played around with a scorch effect before, and this one was achieved by adding lots of washes of Devlan Mud and Gryphon Sepia in a random order until it just looked right. There will be a few more of these to follow over time, but as they're not a unit being fielded in my army at the moment it's more of a casual project when I happed to have spareparts that don't really belong anywhere else.

Lots of fun painting these guys up really. Replete with weaponry, the tally stands at ... 2009 Pledge. Purchased: 6. Completed: 32.

I love this figure. It's what could lovingly be termed a golden oldie and was my pride and joy as kid. Two hours in the paintstripper and he was ready for updating, so he got a completely unnecessary banner, had his staff chopped in half and turned it into a voodoo shaker and the staff became a prop for a spare skull in the bits box. His right arm was changed over too, as the original Ork arms from this period were far too human and looked terrible. 

The quasi-military uniforms on the Orks of this period were great, and a particular favourite was a diorama by Mike McVey with Stormboy Orks in full regalia and they looked great. This fellow deserved something more akin to Sgt. Pepper than army officer, so the whole suit was painted up in yellow with red details. I'm opting to use a little more red on character figures than on the bulk of the army, so it's apparent from distance that they're clearly rather important Orkses. Even if I have yet to have a successful games with a Weirdboy as a HQ unit. Still, he looks nice.

With my psyker in hand, the tally stands at ... 2009 Pledge. Purchased: 6. Completed: 30.

Not much to say about this fellow really, other than he was a study in how quickly it was possible to paint up a Necron Warrior.

Well, a little more background won't hurt. A friend's son appears to have accumulated a large number of Necrons courtesy of his father ("although if you don't want to play with them son" etc) but to give him an opportunity of retaining interest while painting, I wanted to come up with a very quick way to paint them to tabletop quality with minimum effort. All told, not including drying time ... this was about ten minutes work and a filler project while I painted other things.

Basic colours are simply spray painted silver over the plastic, several washes of Badab Black to line and shadow everything. Gryphon Sepia was used around the joints and the back half of the head to differentiate between the different metals. The gun details were painted blue, although with hindsight I'd paint the rod before spraying and glueing it into place. The chest detail has been left silver, although I'd be tempted to paint this as a glowing blue or green if there was more time.

Another figure without a finished base, but in my defence this was deliberately left alone as I haven't a clue what the young man would like to do as a basing scheme.

On a related note, I did make a small error and happened to purchase three vehicles for my Orks as well. So that's doubled my otherwise rather good figures for the year. One Necron being worth the same as an Ork Battlewagon doesn't bode well for the coming month's painting achievements methinks. At this point the tally stands at ... 2009 Pledge. Purchased: 6. Completed: 29.

There's a little English pedant tucked away inside my tubby frame and he dies a little every time the Orks are saddled with yet another deliberate misspelling of a word, and the latest victims of this are these lovely Tankbusta figures. Originally purchased by the most excellent Cylindric, but he gave up on the idea of building an Ork army and I duly inherited them. Two hours in the paintstripper and they were ready for some action.

The assembly phase was a little frustrating and needed quite a bit of pinning and some milliput to fix things into place. They're great figures, and packed with character and were a blast to paint. With most of the army consigned to a rather dull shade of bluey grey for cloth, I wanted to liven these lads up with a brighter blue and some put red on the rockets as without it, they blurred into a single lump of metal. They're bright, brash and very clearly a little unstable in the mental fragility department.

Bases aren't quite finished yet, but that's because I'm mid-crisis as to how I want to paint all my army bases and mulling whether it's worth continuing with this style of basing. As usual, big shots below, and I warn you there's quite a few of them so it may take a little while to load. After my frenetic activity over the past two weeks, the tally now stands at ... 2009 Pledge. Purchased: 3. Completed: 28.

Okay, technically he's an Axedwarf, but man will do for the purpose of a title. Another one of the Confrontation figures I bought many years ago in a fit of excitement, then immediately consigned to the storage container. Crying shame really. So he's now finally out of storage and there's a very good chance the other dozen sitting in the drawer will make an outing at some point too.

This was an interesting diversion from the swathes of greenskins that have been painted of late, and with the weather being so distinctly rubbish at the moment, I thought it was apt to play around with ruddy skintones. The blonde hair almost works, but in the end I think my clumsy brushwork has let it down a little. The metals look good considering they're done with two metallic paints and a couple of washes. Very happy with the nose and lips, and a triumph for finally applying a little patience to my technique.

I did find a few examples online of how these little chaps should really be painted, complete with gorgeous NMM ... but simply by closing the browser window I can now pretend they don't exist :) Things to improve for next time; pick different colours for the cloth and leather work in contrast to the hair and skin as it all runs together a little too much.

As usual, big shots below. At this point the tally stands at ... 2009 Pledge. Purchased: 3. Completed: 23.

The art of slacking is something I do very well, so it's no big surprise to myself that some five and a half months after this figure was painted and submitted to a competition that I've finally put it up on my own site.

This fellow was painted up for a TWF Challenge under the heading of "The Red Period" to celebrate that most feared of times under Games Workshop where everything possible was painted red, no matter how appropriate it was. As a result, this is a homage to painting metals red for no reason at all. And jerkins. Oh, and shields.

At this point the tally stands at ... 2009 Pledge. Purchased: 3. Completed: 22.

After digging out some of my original Space Orks from what we shall generous term Days of Yore and attempting to repaint them, it was obvious my original attempts back in '91 had done me favours by obscuring the majority of detail present on the figures. Time to strip these bad boys down.

Boot's own acetone free nail polish remover is the best stuff in the world for stripping the paint off metal figures. It's around £1.20 and you get enough liquid to do 20 metal figures in a day. Firstly, just run the figures under a warm tap and ensure there isn't a layer of dust or generally accumulated cruft still stuck to the surface, dab them dry in a paper towel, place a couple of figures in a small shallow bowl; I use a dipping sauce style bowl from Ikea ... it's probably got a funny name like Wänkspåsm, but I digress ...

Pour in the nail polish remover to literally just cover them, then seal up the top of the bowl with tin foil. The reason for this is the sheer speed the liquid will evaporate ... oh and this will stink the kitchen out if you don't. A couple of hours at room temperature will see the entire bowl dry, so that tin foil is a moneysaver. Now, leave the figures sitting for around 90 minutes in the solution. You did remember to cover it up right?

Return to the bowl, and don your finest pair of rubber gloves ... preferably kitchen ones, rather than "specialist Friday night" black ones. Now take an old unloved toothbrush and begin the process of gently scrubbing one figure at a time and watch the paint come away. I do this with as much of the figure still in the bowl as possible to avoid splash (jnail polish remover to the eye is no-one's friend) and look to take off the majority of the clumsily applied paint on the first pass.

Once that's done, take the figure out, run it under a tap and give it another quick scrub to pick up the loose detritus, then dry down with a paper towel and repeat this process for all of them. Now place the little fellows back in the bowl for another 90 minutes just to give you the chance to get rid of those tiny little pieces left over; if indeed there any any. Repeat the above process then rejoice in a near-mint condition figure ready for repainting.

This pack of figures were responsible for getting me back into the Warhammer hobby when they were originally released some time in January 2008. They've been assembled and primed for around 15 months without receiving any further attention and considering that they and my Warbikes have been the stars of the show this state of affairs could no longer continue. So here's the first batch all painted up!

Several mistakes were made during assembly, prepping and painting of these figures and I hope to not repeat this errors when picking up a second pack next week (as I tend to run with 8-10 of these). Definitely dry fit the gun harnessess to the men and number them up so they don't get mixed up, as some of them are a surprisingly tight fit and you'll just end up ripping up the undercoat. Don't fit the heads until everything else has been put together and painted as it becomes far too fiddly getting detail to stand out, and ended up being a more frustrating process than one would have hoped. The fun part now will be to assemble the same five figures with the new pack, but make them sufficiently different whilst retaining coherency.

At this point the tally stands at ... 2009 Pledge. Purchased: 3. Completed: 21.

Good old Mekboy. This is one of the very, very old Orks saved from my clearouts and repainted in a rush to a tabletop standard to be used as either a standard Boy or as a makeweight in a unit of Burnas should they tickle my fancy.

Not over the moon with the job I've done on him really, and there's a chance he may be stripped down in the future and looked after properly. The non-black base colour is horrible and that'll be avoided in the future. To distinguish between units I'll pop removeable colour markings on them as and when it becomes necessary. The stump of a right arm was more of a trial and error session trying to mix up blood and rust on the tank underneath his arm, but it all seems to get lost as a single amalgamous mass without clear distinction.

At this point the tally stands at ... 2009 Pledge. Purchased: 3. Completed: 16. While it won't be winning any awards in the near future, it's wonderful to finally have this many figures painted up and ready to play ... and that is the crucial aim of the whole project.