Gruumsh One-Eye, The Patron Deity of Orcs...

"Gruumsh is the unblinking god of destruction who unleashes the savage multitudes against outposts of civilization. He is worshiped by orcs and half-orcs and has come to dominate some of the other savage humanoids as well. Gruumsh is a god of conquest, his shamans advise chiefs and warmongers to raid, kill, and conquer".  -The Forgotten Realms Wikipedia

Gruumsh was the second of two models I sculpted for the D&D campaign; the second of three bosses the PC's encountered at the perilous end of their 2 year journey.  I had a slightly more detailed physical description of this model to work with.  He had a few defining features. He needed either an empty eye socket or a bandaged eye, a spear, and some kind of orc-like armour/attire. The sculpting process was very similar to the previous model that I had made for the campaign: I made some sketches, built an armature, secured it to a base and began roughing out some basic shapes in Super Sculpey polymer clay.

For those of you who haven't worked with Super Sculpey before, I highly recommend it for projects like these, especially for one-offs.  It comes in two types; regular and firm. The regular is the pink clay, which is what I prefer. The firm Sculpey (gray) was too hard to work with for my purposes on this project, it's designed for jobs that require more detail work.  The regular Sculpey (pink) is relatively inexpensive (so is the gray), it is easy to work with, non-toxic, and you can use rubbing alcohol (91% or 99%) to smooth out your tool marks very easily. Once you complete your sculpt, you can cure the polymer by baking it in a household oven and then paint it if you desire.  However, I recommend inspecting this product before buying it since it can become brittle after a prolonged period of sitting on the store shelf.

The Gruumsh project was far more challenging than Erek - Hus.  Since orcs have a more identifiable, human-like anatomy, you can't really get away with not having your muscle groups down correctly. This was something I struggled with big time, but like I said earlier, it just takes some practice.

So I sculpted his little spearhead, then baked it and the model separately, and then glued the spear to the end of a tig welding filler rod I brought home from work. I primed the model using automotive primer, then I painted it with regular acrylic paint that I had lying around the house.  Gruumsh probably went through 5 or more shades of green before I decided (more like settled) on the final skin color. After the base color was painted on, I added multiple layers of different greens dry-brushed onto his body to achieve depth and highlights.  His kilt was another relative pain in the neck, but in the end I was satisfied with the colors I chose and I think he made a very handsome orc god.