Igrak The Orc Girl
1/8th scale PF Works resin bust
Painted in 2018
Another release from Pedro Fernandez that caught my eye and that quickly moved onto the bench.
The pose and the dreadlock style hair somehow looks right for such a character, and there’s a lot of detail to play about with to individualise the finished piece.
This is another purchase from PF Works stand at the SMC show in Holland – so much to buy here with the selection of traders, I could easily bankrupt myself !
However, this one attracted me, so it went in the bag, got taken home and almost straight out onto the bench.
I’d picked up another Orc around that time – I think it might have been from Greg Girault - a male version, and I had the idea to pose the two together – which seemed like a good idea at the time.
Photo #1 shows the bare resin casting – picture taken off the PF Works website – although the box art shows a stylised drawing of the character which still gives a good idea of what is inside.
The sculpting is very good and it’s a single piece casting with little or no clean-up necessary. The dreadlock style hair tips might need looking at for very small amounts of flash, but that’s about it to be honest.
Photo #2 and I’ve primed the model and given the skin areas a couple of coats of MP paints Flesh Colour acrylic. I like the MP range of colours, they’ve got a good strong pigment to them and they thin well with water, even down to using them for washes.
Sometimes they can be a little difficult to get hold of, but they are worth searching out, oh and they’re relatively cheap for the amount you get in the bottles.
Photo #3 really leaps forward – um this really is a case of the model helping the paints just fall off the brush, or maybe a testament to the model giving me a lot of enthusiasm because it’s so good to work on.
Either way, the flesh is done with a “not so different method” from my usual, simply substituting Olive Green for the usual Mars Brown, and still using Titanium White.
The leather bodice is great to paint too, there’s some sewn detail where the material has been joined together to make the clothing, and so it could be painted to represent a patchwork, although I did opt to use a Burnt Umber base, with Mars Brown, Light Red and just a few touches of Mars Yellow to build up from shadow to highlight.
Photo #4 shows the initial idea of posing two buts together. The scales match OK, but whilst the second bust is a nice sculpt on it’s own, It is upstaged by the PF Works girl, and really the pairing doesn’t work all that well.
Photo #5 shows her finished, the hair is probably best painted with careful layers of drybrushing and thin washes to bring out all that very fine detail.
The necklace uses very similar colours to the leather bodice, but topping the highlights off with a lot of Titanium White and using an old brush to paint from the points of each tooth or claw towards the root, and using an old-ish brush that the bristles are spreading on, so that lines are left in the paint.
Photo #6 and a closer look at the face shows blue lips and the eyes painted.
I’d initially painted the lips with Mars Brown, but they didn’t look quite right. Strange, because all the many, many lips I painted on GW Orcs and Goblins during the 80’s and 90’s ( Ohhhh, showing my age now ! ) were that colour, and they looked fine. Maybe lady Orcs need something different and have access to lip-gloss.
So, whilst a few of t he pictures still show the two busts together, they have since got divorced and now occupy separate bases.
Fortunately there were no children, so the split was much simpler if still a little acrimonious – well, they’re Orcs after all !
Final thoughts.
So sometimes what seems like a good idea in theory, doesn’t work out all that well in reality, and unfortunately this was a case in point.
Individually both busts are nice sculpts, but they just don’t make a happy marriage.
Of the two, I like the girl best, there’s quite a few female Orc figures and one or two busts available, but I think this one somehow manages to make what should be ugly, kind of beautiful, without having to resort to being a “girly” style offering with breasts bared.
The dreadlocks work so very well, and the pose is clever but still natural looking, and I think that animation is what lifts it above the male version when they’re put together.
A shame, because I liked the idea, and I’d given it the title “The Lovers”.
The PF Works range has some really, really nice pieces in it, and I have to admit to owning quite a few of their kits. However, I can also say that I’ve managed to get paint on a few too, so they’re not just sitting glaring at me from the Grey Army shelves, which surely must be a testament to how good the sculpting and production values are.
This, along with the rest of the range I feel I can confidently say I highly recommend.
