Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 John Prins wrote:

 docdoom77 wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
While I've never painted orks, given how long it took to bang out 11 indvidual Deathwatch marines to character standard, I'd say about 2 hours, 3 including assembly (but not spray-undercoat as I normally leave them to dry 2-3 hours, partially out of laziness)

I'm betting you'd revise that after painting your first Ork Despite being a horde army, Orks are not quick to paint. Every one has teeth, nails, gums/tongue (all highly visible), 4 to 6 straps/bands, handwraps, jewelry, more buckles than you can shake a stick at, clothing stitches, etc. I find Marines to be much easier to paint.

While this is true for Orks in general, the Ork Boyz unit (specifically) is mostly pretty clean and simple. Almost all the heads have closed mouths, very few straps/buckles. If painted in a manner that favors speed (brown basecoat, metallics and green next, wash, detail), the Boyz themselves should go quickly.

Have you actually attempted to paint a unit of boyz?

Pretty much every model has multiple straps on the body, some have straps on the legs and arms, many have wristbands, they all have lots of random buckles and plates all over them, even the closed mouthed boyz have exposed teeth so big that you can't just wash them, they need to be basecoated a dark colour and picked out individually.

A lot of models you can just grab a big arse brush and slop on 75% of the paint job in a few minutes, that's not really an option for Orks.

If you want to paint them faster than other stuff you're pretty much making a conscious decision to ignore details and/or paint a lot of the model the same colour. If you decide to paint pants/boots/shirt different colours, you end up with a model that has no 1 colour covering more than 25% of the model. Of course you could paint those things all the same colour, but the same could be said about any other army, if you paint all the details the same colour, thus losing contrast, any model becomes faster to paint

I'd also argue that Ork skin is actually quite a hard colour to speed paint with washes and still have it look half decent.

Orks also don't take tremendously well to using an airbrush to speed things up (not saying you can't, but it doesn't really speed stuff up to do it).

I wouldn't say boyz are the worst basic infantry model for painting, but they're the one of the worst of the horde armies I think. There's really not many "tricks" you can use to speed them up other than just painting them badly

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
11 Boyz? If I don't care about how they look, 5.5 hours. I can't paint models faster than half an hour each, that's the limit of my speed painting ability. At that point I'm not highlighting and shading things directly, it's all about the inks and washes, often straight over the primer coat.

If I want them to look decently nice, probably about 3 hours per Boy, so 33 hours.

If I want them to look REALLY nice, about 8 hours per Boy, so 88 hours.

Realistically I'm going to get bored after painting 5 of the bastards and move on to a different army

I'm heading towards 40 hours with the current 12 I'm painting and I've not done the skin teeth and the straps have only 1 edge high light.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
]Have you actually attempted to paint a unit of boyz?

Nope, not painting a 3rd army in green (Death Guard, Salamanders) anytime soon. I did paint some WHFB orcs many moons ago, and painted some metal Rogue Trader era Orks a long, long time ago, so I'm not a compete stranger to orks.

Anyway, the OP was talking about 'tabletop standard', which might vary based on opinion, but I think we can generally agree that it's a pretty basic paint job.

If you want to paint them faster than other stuff you're pretty much making a conscious decision to ignore details and/or paint a lot of the model the same colour. If you decide to paint pants/boots/shirt different colours, you end up with a model that has no 1 colour covering more than 25% of the model. Of course you could paint those things all the same colour, but the same could be said about any other army, if you paint all the details the same colour, thus losing contrast, any model becomes faster to paint

I don't think you're losing much having the shirt/pants/boots be all the same color. For Boyz, you've got cloth, green skin and metal armor/weapons/buckles. Anything more is 'nice' to have, but not necessary for a 'table top standard'. Ork cloth should benefit well from drybrushing, and their weapons need only a wash to gain definition.

I'd also argue that Ork skin is actually quite a hard colour to speed paint with washes and still have it look half decent.

You're right, and that's why I'd rely on drybrushing instead. With the strong features of Orks, I'd say drybrushing green over the black undercoat would work well. Follow with a lighter green drybrushed highlight and a green wash only to really cut the dustiness down a bit and it should be good to go, at least for table top purposes.

Very fast, cause i dip em

 John Prins wrote:
Anyway, the OP was talking about 'tabletop standard', which might vary based on opinion, but I think we can generally agree that it's a pretty basic paint job.

Yeah, and because of all the details and lack of unifying colour that covers a decent proportion of the model, it tends to take longer to paint Boyz to a table top standard than many other models.

I don't think you're losing much having the shirt/pants/boots be all the same color.

Agree to disagree I guess. I think it makes them look quite plain.

Ork cloth should benefit well from drybrushing, and their weapons need only a wash to gain definition.

You're right, and that's why I'd rely on drybrushing instead.

So basically what I said earlier....

"There's really not many "tricks" you can use to speed them up other than just painting them badly "

I don't really see that many drybrushed Orks either because, like washing, it's hard to make it look good, if you layer the drybrushes so it does look good it isn't much quicker than regular highlighting which scales better to the character models that you want to spend more time on.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:


I'd also argue that Ork skin is actually quite a hard colour to speed paint with washes and still have it look half decent.

Orks also don't take tremendously well to using an airbrush to speed things up (not saying you can't, but it doesn't really speed stuff up to do it).

I wouldn't say boyz are the worst basic infantry model for painting, but they're the one of the worst of the horde armies I think. There's really not many "tricks" you can use to speed them up other than just painting them badly

I've managed to get a wash only skin tone that I love. It's pretty easy in batch painting, but requires 3 passes. Primed white, I do gryphon sepia (I assume the new Seraphim Sepia is pretty similar) on all the skin, then when it dries, I do a coat of Athonian Camoshade, let that dry while I'm working other bits and do a second coat of Camoshade. Gives me a really nice olive skin that looks "realistic" for green skin. If I get the time, I'll snap some pics.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Agree to disagree I guess. I think it makes them look quite plain.

Yes, of course it will. But if you're a person who just wants to get the model ready ASAP in order to play, that's not a big problem. And I'd much rather face a painted but plain army across the table than an unpainted army or half painted army.

And probably with a bit of experimentation things could be improved from a black//green/metal scheme to something a bit more complex with a minimum of extra time. Off the top of my head, I think a brown primer coat rather than black would make life easier. A bit of experimenting to see what goes over that in one coat and you could probably have shirt, pants and boots all different colors (or at least different shades of the same color - mostly leathers) and they'd be less plain for very little extra work and your washes can hide any small errors at the borders of the browns, letting you move faster.

Speed painting can get kind of technical, so it might be worth buying a box of Boyz to experiment before committing to a paint job. I think experimenting is worth it for any army you want to paint, especially if there's a lot of troops to be painted. I wouldn't want to tackle a horde army without figuring this sort of thing out first, though I'd probably be okay with 2 hours per model overall to get a bit higher standard than the basic minimum.

Here's that wash-only skin tone.

 John Prins wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Agree to disagree I guess. I think it makes them look quite plain.

Yes, of course it will. But if you're a person who just wants to get the model ready ASAP in order to play, that's not a big problem. And I'd much rather face a painted but plain army across the table than an unpainted army or half painted army.

And probably with a bit of experimentation things could be improved from a black//green/metal scheme to something a bit more complex with a minimum of extra time. Off the top of my head, I think a brown primer coat rather than black would make life easier. A bit of experimenting to see what goes over that in one coat and you could probably have shirt, pants and boots all different colors (or at least different shades of the same color - mostly leathers) and they'd be less plain for very little extra work and your washes can hide any small errors at the borders of the browns, letting you move faster.

Speed painting can get kind of technical, so it might be worth buying a box of Boyz to experiment before committing to a paint job. I think experimenting is worth it for any army you want to paint, especially if there's a lot of troops to be painted. I wouldn't want to tackle a horde army without figuring this sort of thing out first, though I'd probably be okay with 2 hours per model overall to get a bit higher standard than the basic minimum.

We're just kind of going off the topic I was talking about. Of course any model can be speed painted, as I said in my first post on this thread (and this comes from someone who HAS painted a decent sized army of Orcs which are smaller force of Orks)...

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
11 Boyz? If I don't care about how they look, 5.5 hours. I can't paint models faster than half an hour each, that's the limit of my speed painting ability. At that point I'm not highlighting and shading things directly, it's all about the inks and washes, often straight over the primer coat.

If I want them to look decently nice, probably about 3 hours per Boy, so 33 hours.

If I want them to look REALLY nice, about 8 hours per Boy, so 88 hours.

Realistically I'm going to get bored after painting 5 of the bastards and move on to a different army

The point that I took umbrage with wasn't that you could theoretically speed up the process, it was this...

 John Prins wrote:
While this is true for Orks in general, the Ork Boyz unit (specifically) is mostly pretty clean and simple. Almost all the heads have closed mouths, very few straps/buckles.

Ork boyz aren't "pretty clean and simple", like any model you can choose techniques that make them faster to paint, but for the most part that applies to any model from any army Boyz specifically are messy little bastards with lots of details AND you have to paint lots of them to make an army

They only become clean and simple if you choose to not pick out details, but it's not inherently built in to the models to be clean and simple (Tyranids are an army that I'd describe as clean and simple, basic Cadians would also be on my clean and simple list, if you plan to use an airbrush you could add Eldar, Tau or Marines to that list).

I've got the fastest time it seems... maybe my standards are lower for troops. I can paint 18 models in less than 2 hours of total work time not including drying time. I paint using one color at a time, I might do a quick highlight by mixing in a little white.

Prime Black or Grey
Paint Skin
Paint Primary Armor
Paint Secondary Armor
Paint Metal Bits
Paint Random stuff teef, pouches, and wot nots + touch ups if need be

Then the secret.... Dip them in either Army Painter or Wood Varnish
If your frisky matte varnish

 docdoom77 wrote:
My old method would probably take me 12 hours for 11 boys, but now that I use progressive washes I'd say half that. So about 6 hours for 10-11 boyz (though it would exhaust me, I prefer batches of 5).

I use this guy's tutorial and modified the colors for to fit my army style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaUnjzL9HHI

Just wanted to chip in and say thank you for this link,

I have now started following this technique and can confirm it is a very speedy method that can get you to a very presentable tts in no time, and the beauty is you can go back in time and add the little details.

The problem I've always had (especially with Orks) is knowing when to call it done.

Cheers
CW

This is my table top standard

 Celtic Warrior wrote:

 docdoom77 wrote:
My old method would probably take me 12 hours for 11 boys, but now that I use progressive washes I'd say half that. So about 6 hours for 10-11 boyz (though it would exhaust me, I prefer batches of 5).

I use this guy's tutorial and modified the colors for to fit my army style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaUnjzL9HHI

Just wanted to chip in and say thank you for this link,

I have now started following this technique and can confirm it is a very speedy method that can get you to a very presentable tts in no time, and the beauty is you can go back in time and add the little details.

The problem I've always had (especially with Orks) is knowing when to call it done.

Cheers
CW

Great! I've been really pleased with it as well and really enjoy the videos.

i have 2 methods:

1 ) day 1 mold line removal and all prep work done for the models primed etc then do 1 model a day if i want to take it slow

2 ) day 1 same as above then do a percentage of each model for all of them so if i need to do 10 things i will do 1 a day for all of them wtc

Gut reaction post without thinking too much; about seven working days.

Typically the process for me goes

1 evening to assemble, including filler on the base
1 evening to prime, more time spent arguing with the airbrush than using it, Blood Axes get a Dunkelgelb primer (yellow/green)
1 evening to paint the cloth in brown sand and add the camo, plus add the yellow to the armour, brown for leather then wash sepia
1 evening to drybrush the yellow armour, leather brown the straps
1 evening to paint the skin black green then drybrush flat green, mouth in red, metals in silver, then black wash metals and red
1 evening to drybrush the metals, teeth & claws, horns etc, other bone bits
1 evening to play with details and paint the bases, left to dry fully
1 evening to finish, a light bone colour drybrush over the lot

about 8 evenings, typically two of which get combined to a single day so about a week for a box of boyz, then dup like this:



currently doing some Goff Stormboyz who are quite a bit faster as there is no camo to paint and the details are simpler so far

I try not to do too much each time otherwise it feels overwhelming. I have 70 ork boyz left to do....

Build - prime black

1st session - Base the skin green then green wash. (start off easy)

2nd session - Weapons +metal pieces silver, and leather straps - brown

3rd session - Wash the model minus skin brown. 1st highlight skin then second highlight skin.

4th session - Teeth + teeth highlights, and dot the eyes red.

Feels like I spend too much time.


Something I learned recently after coming back from a 6 year break. Use the right brush for the right job. I was ausing a medium brush for everything!. Then I bought a large brush and the skin and weapons for the first steps went by sooooo much faster

About five nights of 4 hours. Batches of 2 and 3 otherwise I get paint fatigue.

But, I do go a couple of levels over a std. tabletop finish. Usually 3 highlight layers after washes. But, if I'm pushed for time, I leave the metal highlights, as boltgun metal with a brown wash looks pretty good on its own.

Base coating is usually a bind, but with ork boyz it's actually not that bad. I can't stand half finished models, so getting that base coat on is my hill to climb, after that, I feel a hell of a lot better.

Also, anyone else have the need to paint a complete fieldable unit syndrome before moving on? Can't have the odd boy here or meganob there... So i'll look to complete the unit in a short space of time.

ORK boys in an evening easily. Maybe longer for a death skull cos I like to go for it with warpaint and that is slower but not long. I tend to leave most the boyz in Black trousers and boots, so bottom half is painted with a dry brush. Very now and then il, do some in brown trousers or clan colours but mostly black for most clans. Speeds it up a lot. Top half is skin, shirt, armour straps and weapons. All earthshade wash. Highlight. Last is always teeth and gob.

Not that anyone really care how I paint my ORK boyz in detail.

I can average about 2 boys per 1.5 hours. I rarely paint an entire 11 in one sitting, but I could easily do that in an evening.

I'm about to paint 64 of these guys:

It's a 7-step batch process. I'll let you know how long it takes. Lol.

Well, technically 63. I finished one for a reference: