Best in the West Painting Competition
A couple of weeks ago Emma Basc, one of the co-founders of the Objective Secured team, asked me to write a small article about my experience painting the miniature that I entered into the Best in The West painting competition. This annual painting competition is run by the West Australian Games Workshop store managers. The competition is run in two parts with an initial round of store finals culminating in a state final. It is here the store winners of each category are pitted against each other to see who is this year’s “Best in The West”.
Before I start, a little background about myself and why I was asked to write this. I started in the Games Workshop hobbies when I was around 12 or 13. However I didn’t really start enjoying painting until I hit my 30s. Until then it was more of a chore. Now I find painting much more enjoyable than actually playing. I also found that the quality of my work was much better and soon I started winning painting awards at tournaments and last year I won the 2018 Best in the West large 40k Miniature.
First step – choosing a model
Going into best in the west 2019 I wanted to challenge myself so I chose the Forgeworld Ork Warboss on warbike. For anyone who has not seen this miniature in the flesh, its big, and by big I mean HUGE. Compered to the standard Ork warbike minis this guy sits easily twice as big again and full of awesome detail. This was partly the reason why I picked this mini. Its Imposing size really shows what a Warboss should look like with his “Kustom Warbike”. What made it more difficult, apart from being a resin miniature, I had never painted an Ork in my life. Orks were an army that I had never really been interested in until recently.
Cleaning the model
Which is where I will begin, Resin. When building this mini the first thing I needed to do was clean each of the components to remove all traces of mould release agent. During the casting process it is used to stop the resin sticking to the inside of the mould. The reason for washing the release agent off is it will also stop paint from sticking to the model as well. I found the best way to do this is in the dishwasher using a suitable wash bag. But be careful that to make sure it can bet set to a medium temperature as excessive heat will warp the resin. For this mini however I did it the old fashion way with dishwashing liquid, warm water and an old tooth brush. It is at this point I stared to clean up each of the components removing any mould lines and evidence of mould slip. I also used hot water to warm up pieces that needed to be adjusted and bent back into place dry fitting each piece to make sure it will all go together properly.
Assembly vs sub-assembly
Once I’m happy that all the pieces are ready to be painted it’s time for assembly. For this mini is did not assemble the whole thing but instead broke it down into subassemblies and mounted those pieces onto wine corks. The reason for this is ease of painting when using an airbrush. It also helps with being able to access certain parts you may not be able to when its full assembled.
It’s prime time!
Now its time to prime. Its prime time. For this mini I used a dark grey primer from Vallejo that I apply with my airbrush. Something to remember is these primers can block your airbrush up very quickly if you don’t clean your brush straight after. As it is a polyurethane primer if it dries in your airbrush it’s the same as liquid plastic and is a nightmare to clean out again. Another thing to remember is to apply the primer lightly with multiple thin coats allowing each coat to dry before applying the second.
And now the fun begins!
Time to put some paint on the model!
Being that I had never painted Orks, I experiment on a standard Ork boy to get the skin tone right. I wanted to give him a more realistic skin tone. I decided to go with a technique I found on Youtube where the skin around the mouth, elbows and finger knuckles is more of a normal flesh tone which then fades into a more realistic olive green for the rest of the skin. I was able to use the airbrush to apply these colours as I had left the body and head separate from the bike. For the bike I started by pre-shading the areas that would be red by airbrushing the highlights using gradients of green before applying a very thin red over the top. This gives the effect of a dark to light highlights without having to use weird oranges or pinks to achieve the same shading.
The weapons were painted with an interesting heat modulation to its tips to simulate the stress on the metals from constant firing. The armour on the Warboss’s shoulders was painted to be rusty and not well maintained, once again to fit in with the more realistic theme.
The ugly stage
Its about now that the model is going through what is called the “ugly Stage”. It’s the point in which you have blocked in most of the colours but you haven’t started any of the real detail. It’s also around now I start to assemble more and more of the mini as I continue.
An Ork’s head takes up such a massive space in front of them so its worth spending the time getting that right. With this guy he has lots of scars and a bung eye so there is lot of details to get right. Next was the bike where I wanted all the metal to be suffering from weathering and corrosion. To contrast I wanted his red paint job on the rest of the bike to be relatively clean as we all know red ones go faster. I freehanded a few checker patterns on the panels to break up the red.
Basing
Originally, I wanted to use a resin pour on the base to simulate water. I had this idea that he would be smashing through a river bank and spraying muddy water in a roster tail behind the bike. However, when I went to pour the water effect it leaked everywhere, and I had to abort mission and wash it off before I ruined all my previous work. I stuck to a fairly basic base for now. In the future this model will become a Defkilla Wartrike and be rebased into a much larger base giving me more room to play with when designing that base.
Finishing touches
To finish this mini off I found an old resin squig in my bitz box and I had him perched on the rear fuel pod for the jet engine. I didn’t want to paint him the standard red because he would have been lost in the red armour plates. I went with a royal blue fading into a purple to magenta pink. I think it give him enough colour to make him stand out a but when it came time to judging!
The nerves kick in.
With my mini finished I headed down and entered him at my local store, Warhammer Baldivis. Along with the Ork Warboss I also entered a T’au Ghostkeel for the large miniature category, and a Nighthuant Guardian of Souls. When I arrived I was instantly nervous. Last year I entered my T’au Cold Star commander on a whim, so I didn’t really care to much about winning or losing. It was a well painted mini but certainly wasn’t my best work. Subsequently I ended up winning both my store award and the state award. However, this time it was different.
This time I had put a considerable amount more effort into these minis, in particular the Ork and the Ghostkeel. So I nervously waited until the winners were announced that Saturday afternoon. Success! I managed to win two of the three categories I entered. The Ork Warboss and the T’au Ghostkeel. Unfortunately, the AoS mini didn’t make the cut but I didn’t have as much riding on that one. The quality of the artwork entered this year was off the charts. I was very proud of my wins even at the store level as I really felt I earnt them to the point if I was the judge, I would have actually picked another entry for one of those awards, then again, we are always out own harshest critics.
State award results.
To finish this blog up I would love to say I won one of the State awards for Best in the West the following weekend. But alas that was not the case. To be honest I proud that my work made it to the state finals. To even be on the same table as some of the work there was out of this world. I am looking forward to the feedback from the judges and how I can take that to the painting table and improve on my work for next year. Thanks for reading.
Anthony Ellison
SHO Painting Competition
While the focus of this post was Anthony getting ready for Best in the West, it would be silly of me not to mention the Southern Hemisphere Open painting competition coming up 1st June 2019.
There are multiple categories which are not restricted to GW models and it is only $2 per entry payable on Saturday 1st June at SHO. Models must be dropped off before 2pm.
Painting workshops
If you don’t think you are quite ready to enter Best in the West or you would like to take your models to the next level you can also check out the awesome range of painting workshops we have on offer! To hear more about the painting workshops be sure to listen to the latest podcast.
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