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This past weekend, I finished up the four Orc Berserker figures from the Bones 1 "Orcpocalypse" add-on set. I tried to do minor conversions to each figure to give them a little individuality. Armed with my hobby knife and some Gorilla superglue gel, I had fun cutting, repositioning and gluing the orcs to make each one look a little different. Looking at the row below; The first orc is the untouched basic figure. The second has had his forearms flipped around and repositioned opposite of the way they were, so the sword now is in front of the orc. I also replaced the sword blade with one from one of the Orc Stalker figures. The third orc has had the sword removed, his hands drilled out, and a toothpick spear-shaft inserted. I borrowed the spearhead from one of the Orc Hunter figures. The fourth orc, has had his forearms removed and replaced with a pair from one of the Orc Stalker figures. With surgery complete, I went to work giving them a quick tabletop paint job. I'm happy how they turned out, and I think they work well as individuals even though they're the same basic sculpt. As always, C & C welcome.

I'm painting the 5 Bones Black Orcs for my D&D game, and I figured I'd try a few different combinations of color to achieve some different skintones for each orc. I thought I'd show them here along with the color choices in case it's useful to anyone else, and so I can refer back to it if I ever end up needing to paint another greenskin. The photo quality isn't great, and of course, my painting skills are rudimentary, but I think the pictures are good enough that the differences in color should be visible. With each of these figures I tried to work from shadows and layer up to highlights. Everything started with a wash of brown liner before putting on basecoats. The Orc Sniper was done with a Military Green basecoat, which seemed too bright to start from, so I applied a 2:1 water:brown ink wash to deepen the shadows. Then Military green again, skipping some of the deeper recesses, progressively adding drops of Camoflage Green for higher highlights until I was working with near-pure Camoflage Green, and then finally a drop of Bloodless Skin to the mix (diluted heavily with water and glazing medium. Bloodless skin can be very opaque) The Orc Marauder was done with a straightup triad. Olive Shadow, Olive Drab, Olive Highlight. At the very end I may have added a drop of Bloodless Skin to the Olive Highlight to do the final highlight. The Orc Hunter was probably the most unusual attempt for me. The red-brown shadows are on the other side of the color wheel from the yellow-green highlights, which I guess is a thing that a person can do for shadow effects. He was basecoated in Mahogany Brown, and layers of Muddy Olive, and Olive Green were put over top. I think it's a neat finished effect, and I'll probably play areound with it more in the future. I just now realized that I forgot to paint his hands. The Orc Stalker was supposed to be an attempt at a grey-green orc. Basecoated with Dusky Skin Shadow, followed by 1:1 Dusky Skin:Ghoul Skin, and then 1:1 Dusky Skin Highlight:Moldy Skin. Ultimately it just looks grey to me, which I will keep, but in the future I might attempt to mix a more vibrant green with the dusky skin colors. Kavorgh is probably the one I was most pleased with. He is Basecoated with Brown Liner, with Uniform Brown and Green Ochre for highlights. I was very surprised to see the final result reading as green, given that the highlight colors are a kind of swampy beige in the bottle.