A Little Experiment

One of the things I am trying to do this year is thin out my figure collection.  A quick rummage through various boxes turned up some old 15mm fantasy I had from years back, some of which I had painted.
Now I gave up on 15mm a while ago as I found it difficult to paint the detail as my eyesight succumbed to middle age.  However, I had a good half of a Dragon Rampant warband with the painted orcs, so I wondered, if I use a magnifying visor, could I paint enough of the remaining orcs to make it worth while?
I picked out three unpainted Kalistra Mountain Orcs (not strictly 15mm, but I want the orcs to look varied, so that works for me.
The visor certainly helped me see the detail, but I found my brush hand was not as steady as it used to be.

After the base coat was on I felt very discouraged, the paint job was scrappy, with lots of the wrong colours where they shouldn't be, but I persevered and gave them a wash of black over the armour, then a sepia wash over everything.  A quick bit of drybrushing and some highlights kind of saved them, so here they are.

For comparison, here are three of the orcs I painted years ago, these are some of the rather nice Grenadier 15mm fantasy range, now made by Mirliton.

Whilst not fantastic, I can live with them, so time to look out the rest of my old 15mm, and, maybe, see what is available these days.

They will probably get put on individual 15mm round MDF bases,and I believe that Warbases does movement trays designed for just such a thing.