Ursa Battlesuit
by Dominic Heutelbeck
After I puzzled out how to put the miniature together, I found that it was looking much too static. So I decided to convert it into a running pose. For this I did cut off both legs and repositioned them, pinned, and glued them back on. Then I had to resculpt quite a lot of the main axis of the legs. After this the machine gun arm looked very odd when attached. So I had to cut it apart in many little pieces and glue it back together in new angles. This was the fun part of the project.
Now I primed it first white and then with some GW Dark Angels Green spray color. Then this thing sat on my desk for a long time because I suffered a major painters block with this figure. I found out that I really didn't like the figure as much as I first thought. I decided to give it a very simple paint job just to get it finished. For this I highlighted the Dark Angles Green up to Emerald green. I did set the highlights to the top left corners. And I painted some details Scab red to orange. I must say that I did not enjoy the painting of this beast at all. So I didn't use fancy highlighting and I used metallics with a simple shading with black ink as a short cut. And still it took me endless hours to complete this mecha.
After I finally completed the paint job on the battlesuit I glued it on top of a wooden base. I covered the base with some acrylic texture gel, because this was easy and fast. This was painted GW Snakebite Leather, washed with GW Brown Ink and drybrushed with GW Burbonic Brown. The result was a nice muddy surface. Maybe I should have done some more weathering, but I was happy to have the mech finished at all.
I decided that in the Vor universe such battlesuits would be chased by Growler Pups like cars by dogs. So I quickly painted a Growler Pup (Hawk Turquoise, HT + White, wash with Blue Ink; Spots done in light brown and yellow) and attached it to the base. I added some scratched on the surface of the battlesuit to simulate the attacks that the little Growler already made. Painting the Growler was quite fun, besides the fact that I used white primer on his back instead of clear varnish. So I had to paint him twice. And when he was finished I dropped it on a stone floor and again I had to repaint large parts of it.
Finally I painted the edges of the base black and covered it with a thick layer of gloss varnish.
Well, this is really not by best paint job, but it still looks better then I thought it would turn out. And I found out that I really don't like to paint mechs. They simply block me, but I am tempted to paint some of this new CAV stuff ... well surely not too soon. I am looking forward to do some fantasy stuff again. OK, I have to admit that the conversion part of this project surely was some fun.
Dominic Heutelbeck
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