Ogre Bulls

For the last couple of months or so I've been working on a unit of 6 Ogre Bulls from Games Workshop. At long last, I've finally got the ugly blighters ship shape and it's time to show them off to the world.

First up is the Crusher, the unit's champion, leader and biggest bad ass in the group. I'm planning on giving all the champions in my Ogre army names and possibly even short backstories. I haven't come up with anything for this guy yet, but when I do be assured that his name will be something thuggish and blunt.

Lurking by the Crusher's feet you can see the big guy's very own Gnoblar. In the Warhammer setting Gnoblars are diminutive creatures closely related to Goblins, yet somehow even more pathetic and cowardly. They're commonly kept by Ogre's as pets, servants and emergency food sources

I painted the meat on the ribs using a method for painting Dark Eldar Wracks posted on Game's Workshop's "What's New Today" blog. Over a basecoat of Ratskin Flesh I highlighted up with Ungor Flesh followed by Ushabti Bone. Next, I washed the whole area with Carroburg Crimson, followed by a glaze of Bloodletter. I think next time I'll be a little lighter with Carroburg Crimson, as it overshadowed the earlier highlights, but I'm still really chuffed with the result anyway.

Next is the Bellower, the Ogre's rather unique take on a musician.

And here's the standard bearer.

The banner head itself was an absolute pain in the arse to paint. Not because it's particularly detailed (it isn't), but because the damned thing just kept vibrating and wobbling about unless I took a firm hold of it. I hate touching the models before they're finished and varnished because it's so easy to get grease and oils on them which can really interfere with the paint job. Next time, I'll be leaving the banner head seperate until it's done.

This skull, along with another on a differet base, was pinched from an old Tomb Kings Battalion box I got over a decade ago. Fortunately there were still a few bits and pieces left on the various sprues which I've clipped off and bagged up to use as base decoration. I'm particularly looking forward to using a horse skeleton on something larger.

Lastly, here's a bunch of pics of the generic Bulls, and a handful of miscellaneous details I'd like to show off.

 Overall, I'm feeling majorly pleased with how these fugly brutes turned out. They're probably the best minis I've painted thus far, though I've still got a lot of practice to go. Some of my line/edge highlights end up a little thicker than I'd intended, for instance, and painting eyes is still a skill that eludes me. Admittedly the eyes look quite a bit better in real life, but they're still pretty poor. Oh well, learning is all about making mistakes after all.

I think I'm also going to need a better camera if I intend to keep this up. It's not that the one I'm using is bad exactly, but for some bizzare reason there doesn't seem to be any way to manually adjust the focus. Instead the camera only has an auto focus system which was clearly not designed with miniature photography in mind. In order to get photos which aren't horrifyingly blurry I need to hold the camera right next to the subject without any zoom. This is less than ideal.

Anyways, thanks for viewing. Feel free to post any comments or criticism. If you'd like to know how I painted something, you should know that most of my method came from this tutorial from Tale of Painters (which is an absolutely kick ass blog), though I didn't follow it exactly. If you've any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.