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Hello All

This is just a response to my painted Orks post.

Grey Scale is a fast and effective way to paint a horde army. It is a painting style that mostly relies on applying washes to a model that that has been shaded. Its also cheap as you don't need to buy too many paints


Here are the colours I used to paint Nob. Note that you will use alot of black. 40 ork boys and 10 gretchin used up 1 pot. The other colours will last alot longer but i tend to use sepia and mud alot so its best to stock up on those too. Another thing to note is that some colours are weak to use (red is more pink and blue generally has poor coverage).


Its very important to have a nice white undercoat. The white creates the highlights. A step I missed taking a photo of was to paint the metal areas next. there is no metalic wash so its easier to paint metal on the mini.


Next you need to wash the mini in Black. This will create the highlighting and shadows. An important thing to note here is if you want more colour to show through use less wash. The heavier the wash the closer to black the model will be.


I accidently deleted the green wash step but wait for the model to dry completely and then apply green wash on the ork skin. Once that is dry apply sepia to the clothes and pants but not the belt or shoes. A thing to note here is that when the wash is wet it looks like it has poor coverage. its hard to explain but more pigment will show when it dries. A mistake I did was try to apply more wash and soak the model and made the shadows too thick and deep.


Once that is done wait for it to dry again and then apply mud wash to the boots, belt buckles and claws and teeth. As these are smaller parts its best to use a brush with a fairly small point but not too small or else it won't hold enough wash. At this time I would also apply more solid colours, here I painted enchanted blue on the wrappings and the left shoulder pad. Another option is to wash the metal areas with mud to create a dirtier look. I usually use this where there are vents like the end of big shootas or flamers.


I then finished up the model with a space wolf grey dry brush on the blue and painted the base green.


And there you go one grey scaled painted Ork as you can see its very fast, you only need to place one coat and you created the shadows and highlights. If the colour is too light for your taste you can apply a second wash of the colour. If you want to be even faster you can glue sand on the mini first and just wash the base with mud or green!

I hope this will help time strapped painters, or people that generally dont want to paint too much

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Nice Tut. I may use this.

Actually, this seems like a good idea :O
I gotta try this now >.> where do i get grey/white primer

ghosty wrote:Actually, this seems like a good idea :O
I gotta try this now >.> where do i get grey/white primer

Try Crylon or Reaper White Primer. I don't remember if they have a grey primer.

Thanks for doing this I will be trying it out,

Tamiya sells a fantastic Fine Surface Primer in a Light Grey that matches the basecoat perfectly and does a fantastic job of coverage.

If you wanted a darker green skin, would priming in grey work? Or give the skin a coat of mid-light grey to bring the overall tone down? Or does the wash not show up as well on the grey?

That is a fantastic tut, thanks for sharing.

Wow, Very nice and easy... thanks for the tutorial!!

Two questions:
-From the title, I was expecting a mono-chromatic, black and white type figure- why do you call this "grey scale"?
-Did you use goblin green anywhere? It's just the thraka green wash, right? I saw it in the first pic but didn't see you mention using it anywhere.

This is very appealing to me, since for some reason washes are less intimidating to me than paints (I guess it makes sense). If I start orks I'd be debating between your method and Chrispy's. Yours looks a bit brighter, and might have more variation in the sections since it's a different wash for each. I also think models look better on the tabletop if they're brighter... and yours is that!!

I might recommend this method over Chrispy's, if you're comfortable with washes. I find that they really shine when used in layers. If you want a more saturated color, go lighter on the initial black, then do multiple, thinner washes of the various colors until you're satisfied with the results. You can even paint the washes into recesses exclusively if you want to really darken specific areas without changing the rest. You can get a pretty intense green with nothing but thraka washes, you just have to use some control, otherwise you'll drown out the highlights. I'd at least try this method out (I'll take my own advice if I ever happen to pick up some white primer).

oadie wrote: You can even paint the washes into recesses exclusively if you want to really darken specific areas without changing the rest. You can get a pretty intense green with nothing but thraka washes, you just have to use some control

Yeah, good wash control helps alot for painting into recesses, very useful for people who are short on time/lacking a sturdy hand (sometimes for me its column A, but all of the time its column B ). For example, a little bit of black on the nobs wrist band would help with seeing the detail of how its all wrapped up... the only issue i have with him, and thats a minor one this is great for tabletop quality in minimum time. Will definately show this to my orky friends

Could we get an image that is not as over-exposed? I would like to know how it looks in regular lighting, thank you. =p

Because I am thinking of trying this out on my Beastmen ^^

Vargtass wrote:Could we get an image that is not as over-exposed? I would like to know how it looks in regular lighting, thank you. =p quote]

Please see this post http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/293451.page

Go to the second set of photos, those photos do not have flash. Hope that helps.

Also its called greyscale is that the highlights and recessess are always shaded in grey. Which means white and black so you need colours that work well with white and black. For example the natural hight light for red is not white which is why it doesn't work so well.

I used goblin green on the base.

double post

Iwanted to say thanks again for doing this i like the results I tried it and it looks very good. I will be useing this for at least my skin tones from now on

I know this is a very old thread, and normally only threads in Painting and Modelling Tutorials are allowed to be necro'd, but as this probably belongs in Tutorials anyway, maybe this is okay...

Hope you don't mind me sharing, but I just tested this method on a boy of my own today, so I thought I would post him.

I followed exactly your method, except I also added blobs of blue, red, green and purple washes to the metallics, all at the same time, in order to make the metal look slightly oily, as I thought it looked a bit clean otherwise.

i like this dude i will give it a try what paints did you use for that effect on the gun ?

Oh hello Mr Thread Necromancer. It's an eight-year-old thread mate.

Normally, threadnomancy in P&M is fine, but given that the images in the original post appear to be broken, I'm going to lock this one as it would seem to serve little point by now.