Masta Blasta WIP: Playing with Ork skin

In preparation for the Macharian Crusade I've done up a Big Mek as Masta Blasta, an Ork known for cramming Bomb Squigs into his Shokk Attack Gun.

The main things I focused on were matching the face of the Mek to the one in the campaign book, and adding a large bulge to the Shokk Attack Gun feed tube to represent a Bomb Squig. The head was easy: green stuff goggles and a light bulb. For the tube bulge, I cut out a round of plasticard to represent an Ork tank bomb and squished it into a blob of Milliput vaguely shaped like a squig (a large bump for the body and two legs). Once that was applied, I used some green stuff to restore the patch-work texture to match the rest of the tube.

For the paint work, I got my inspiration from this technique from Da Waaagh. Instead of doing the green+green+green base/highlight/wash I normally do, I wanted to paint the base coat of very light and bleached out colors and then use the new washes and my old inks to tint and shade the skin, clothing and gun until I was happy with the depth.

Here are the work in progress shots:



As you can see the base coat is really white and not very orky at all. But have faith-- washes to the rescue! Also, the model is not assembled in the above pictures, so things are a little skewed.



Here is after the first run of washes and you can see that the color is starting to come out. Two coats of wash were used on the skin and pants. The color is still a little faded for my taste, but you can see some of the nice red-orange-yellow on the pants and brown undertones in the skin.

Overall I really like the difference in skin and style that it will bring. I will probably use this for some of my other HQs and special characters, although I might try to stay closer to the technique posted on Da Waaagh for the next model since I still have a lot of shading to go with Masta Blasta here.