Orctober Warband - 77429, 77431, 77059, 77432 and 77056

[nihilville]

I'm a little late in posting these, but this year I made a concentrated effort to try to paint orcs and only orcs for October, both to participate in the loose ceremony of "Orctober" and because I really need to finally paint some Orcs for the table. I started out trying some contrast paint for the first time and I didn't really like how the skin tone came out on the first model so I started experimenting. I tried many combinations of basecoat colors, thinning the contrast paint, inks, highlighting and glazing, and different washes. Not all of these even look that different, but I enjoy the subtle variations going on in the theory that, like humans, not all orcs are going to look exactly the same. It was fun experimenting, and I'm looking forward to painting the rest of the Orc crew next year.

 

 

Individual pics with the different skin tone recipes I tried below:

Spoiler

The Orc Slicer (77432) I painted. I tried straight Orc Flesh contrast paint, but it came out way too dark for my liking, so I went over it with many thinned layers of Pale Green (09012) and White. Trying to salvage the skin actually taught me a lot about glazing and highlighting.

Second orc, the Chopper (77431). Same deal except I tried a basecoat of Ancient Bark with the contrast paint thinned down with Vallejo Airbrush flow improver. The base coat didn't seem to make any discernible difference as, even thinned down, the contrast paint just took over and I had to use the same glazing process as the first guy to bring it back under control.

With the Orc Sniper (77056) I decided to switch it up and use Jungle Mist (09322) as the base coat and then Green Stuff World Gorgon Dark Green Inktensity Ink. Surprisingly this looked nearly identical to the contrast paint (maybe a little less intense in the recesses). I glazed over with Jungle Mist and White for a slightly lighter look than the first two. This is the closest to the grey green I was hoping to accomplish at the outset I was able to achieve thus far.

For the Berserker (77059) I also used Jungle Mist as the base coat, but tried adding it (along with copious quantities of air flow improver) to the contrast paint as well. This really didn't work that well, lol. The whole thing came out kind of plasticky and fairly opaque, so I went back into the recesses with a little of the green ink and then glazed the over it with Pale Green and Candlelight Yellow to bring out some highlights.

Having utterly failed at getting a grey green so far, for the Orc Grunt (77429) I go back to basics and use Jungle Mist as the basecoat, and then Army Painter Military Shader as as a wash. This turned out looking the best to me after all that experimentation, and next Orctober I'll probably paint up the rest of the Orcs I have with some variations of this.

Including the back of this model, as I like the way the shield turned out too. :P

Thanks for looking!

 

[Glitterwolf]

I like them and the subtle differences in skintone work well imho.

[Metalchaos]

Great war band, I like the blood on their weapons.

[Chaoswolf]

Good job! I think the varied skin tones look good; makes them feel more 'realistic'.