Showcase: Orruk Ironjawz Megaboss by FruitBear

Hello everyone, FruitBear here! Lately, it’s been quite an exciting time for Age of Sigmar releases with the most recent Orruk releases being mine. When I saw the Megaboss I knew I had to paint one. I took it as an opportunity to really focus on the armour, weathering and shading/glazing of metallics. I aimed to focus on painting one element at a time instead of the batch painting method and found it quite rewarding.

The first thing I thought about was the colour scheme. If some of you are familiar with my Badmoons Orks then you would know I like the Badmoons colour scheme a lot. At the same time I knew Lecoqadoodledo wanted to paint he’s Orruk mini with a yellow colour scheme so I went with the red colour scheme I painted the Ork Boy in my previous post.

As with most of my minis I started of with the Zenithal Highlighting technique with an airbrush from black, grey to white followed by base coating a section of armour. The two overall colours mostly used for the armour are Mephiston Red and Screamer Pink but when I base coated the armour I use a 1:1 mix of black with Mephiston Red/Screamer Pink. I then blended the red armour to Mephiston Red followed by highlighting. For the Screaming Pink armour I didn’t blend up to Screamer Pink but used the colour as a first stage highlight followed by a final highlight.

For the scratches on the armour I painted them with Fire Dragon Bright then lined in the scratches with a 1:1 mix of Rhinox Hide and Black. I wished to add some flames and chequered patterns to the armour. To me there is no quick way around free hand details. It requires a fine detailed/ 000 brush,thinned down paint, a steady hand and patience as it may take a while and you’ll need to paint the details in several layers due to the paint being thinned down. Finally practice practice and more practice!!!

For the Axe I base coated the axe with Boltgun Metal then shaded it with Nuln Oil. I glazed certain areas with Agrax Earthshade and Seraphim Serpia. The other areas were glazed with Drankenhof Nightshade. The shades were thinned with Lamia Medium as it’s always better to glaze in layers because you can always add more, not take away. The highlight and scratches were painted whit thinned down Mithril Silver.

Speaking of Silver. I thoroughly recommend the new metallic paint Stormhost Silver as it has the same shade as Mithril Silver and has great coverage for a layer paint.

The Dragon Skull was the element I had a long thought about because I really liked the version painted by Eavy Metal and wanted to stick closely to that scheme. In the end I decided to base coat the skull with Zandri dust with another layer of Ushabti Bone. Glazes of Agrax Earthshade, Seraphim Serpia, Nuln Oil and Carroburg Crimson were used to achieve the variations of colour on the skull. As you can imagine it took me quite a while but I got there eventually. After that it was only a matter of highlighting the skull and add in the scratches.

One important element of a miniature that often gets neglected is the base. The base should add to the story of the mini whilst not overpowering it. It would be weird for someone to compliment the base before the model unless it’s a diorama.

I constructed the base with cork board and sealed up the gaps and seams with Milliput. Sand was glued onto the base, making sure to cover the seams in the layers of cork board. Then I applied two layers of watered down PVA glue over the base to seal the cork board.

Overall all it took me quite a while to paint this mini but the outcome was well worth the time. Painting one element at a time made it more enjoyable as I could see results more quickly, motivating me to progress with the next element. This is the largest infantry character model I’ve painted so far and I think after this I will be painting more. I really hope you all like this model as much as I enjoyed painting it.

Until next time, take care all!