Monday 28 October 2013

Painting Orc skin

Someone over on the Warhammer forum was asking about painting Orc skin. And as I had a few Orcs and Orks in the painting queue and as its Orctober I thought I'd show how I do my Orc flesh.
It's pretty crude, but when you've got several big units to get through I find that's the only way.
All the paints are GW and are all now replaced with newer versions, but you should be able to find similar colours out there, or use the GW Paint Conversion Chart
The model is a slightly converted plastic Arrer boy from the venerable Warhammer 6th edition starter set.
Starting from a black undercoat (I used Boyes car primer)

First paint all the skin areas with Orkhide shade

Then overbrush the skin with Knarlock green, leaving the Orkhide showing in the recessed areas

Next, wash with Thrakka green

Bit of a bonus close-up

Then go back and highlight some of the raised areas with Knarlock green

And that's it.

Here's a finished model from the same unit.


On character models I go and add some extra highlights, such as on this WiP warboss


Here I've added Goblin Green and then Goblin Green/Rotting flesh highlights to the basic recipe above.

4 comments:

  1. Simple but efficient .
    Why do we choose always green for orkish skin ??
    Maybe pink could be nice too ....

    Seriously : thanks for the "ho-I-do"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice skin, prefer my orcs as older sculpts but these look great. Good tutorial for those starting out with orcs.

    ReplyDelete
  3. These sculpts must be getting on for fifteen years old now, Erny!
    But those old Kev Adams ones do have their charms I admit.

    As for brown 'uns, they iz Lord of da Ringz orcs! Dese iz Warhammerz Orcs and day is green!

    Pink un's is 'umies and deyz all skwishy.

    ReplyDelete