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.

Last night, I bought my 2nd mini of 2020 - one of the metal Ork Meganobs

TLDR WARNING - I get really rambly here! I just wanna know your Ork/Orc skin recipes!

Now, this might not sound like much, but for me, it's a little bit of a big deal. Ever since I started in the hobby, orkz were that one 40k army that was...

...when I learn to paint really well, so that I can do them justice, do them the way I see them in my head...

Maybe every hobbyist has one of these armies. Maybe I'm mad. But ever since I wondered into my first GW on that fateful day in 2015, I've dreamed of a great, green waaaaaagh, stompas and rust and chipping and boyz, boyz, boyz.

So taking the plunge here feels very significant.

For a colour scheme, I've more or less decided what I'm going to do. Perhaps contraversially, I'm not really going to throw my lot in with any specific klan too hard. I'll go a little bit goff, but with some leanings towards Evil Sunz. Just 'cos red and black is cool. I'm planning on throwing more colours though. I think I've more or less perfected my recipies for rust, battered metal, various browns, khakis and also I'm probably going to throw in some camo too, because it's quite fun to paint. I've gotten freehanding checks, stripes and flames more or less down, too, and I've tinkered with gore.
Now, considering this is a pretty wide colour palette, I thought back to this article on Warhammer Community - one of my favorites.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/11/21/21st-nov-stephen-cranstons-beasts-of-chaosgw-homepage-post-4/

Originally, I had planned to do the classic ork dark green universally for all of my greenskins. However, skin, particularly faces, is still something I find nerve-wracking. But! Low and behold, GW have blessed us with contrast paints - which seem like they take really well to doing flesh. Which got me thinking about adding a variety of green skin tones to my waaaaagh, to give them the same ragtag feel as Cranston's beastmen, while keeping the colours used in my army nice and consistant.
That said, I'm not totally sold on contrast, so, I thought I'd ask all you Big Boss Nobs out here...

'OW DO YOUS PAINT YA'S GITZ?

(photos super appreciated!)

I use a very basic, standard ork recipe.

Prime black. Base coat of Warboss Green. Layer of WAAAGH Flesh on non-shadowed areas. Wash with Agrax. Touch up WAAAGH Flesh on highlight areas, especially the face.

Highlight color on nose/cheeks/brow, knuckles, and a very light highlight to shoulders and biceps (almost a drybrush). This can be a bright yellow-green, camouflage green, khaki, or human fleshtone. On big characters I'll do a highlight with a yellow green, and then a touch of fleshtone on lips, nose, and ears. But for the troops it's essentially dark green, mid green, wash, yellow-green highlight, done.

Very nice! Thanks for the reply! Sounds like a classic recipe for ork flesh! Thanks for including photos too, Rokkas are always welcome!

I really like painting greenskins – any skin really, but orks and gretchin have lovely large, expressive faces that make painting them easy and fun. I did a step-by-step walkthrough here, if you'd like to have a look, but the short answer is by mixing things up a bit to get some variety. I tend to use quite muted earthy hues; brown-tinged greens, then highlight up with yellows.

Not painted some Orks in a while, but my go to was a base of knarloc green (now known as loren forest), a liberal drybrushing of warboss green then you wash the whole thing in a sepia wash.

Makes the skin look like it belongs to a real creature, rather than being something overly cartoony.

Apologist wrote:I really like painting greenskins – any skin really, but orks and gretchin have lovely large, expressive faces that make painting them easy and fun. I did a step-by-step walkthrough here, if you'd like to have a look, but the short answer is by mixing things up a bit to get some variety. I tend to use quite muted earthy hues; brown-tinged greens, then highlight up with yellows.

Oooh, those boyz are simply beautiful! Great work! Reading your blog now - hopefully it'll help me replicate those results! Excellent. Thanks for the pics!

Grimtuff wrote:Not painted some Orks in a while, but my go to was a base of knarloc green (now known as loren forest), a liberal drybrushing of warboss green then you wash the whole thing in a sepia wash.

Makes the skin look like it belongs to a real creature, rather than being something overly cartoony.

The sepia hadn't occurred to me, but the more I think about it, the better an idea it sounds. While I love me some cartoony orkz, too, I'm gunning for variety, and I bet the "real creature" thing would look very impressive on a nob or a warboss!

Big thanks for the replies, boyz!

I follow the 2 part skin tutorial from Quarter Paint on youtube. Would check out his guides in general for orks.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zVLvFgs7_IUxt1Dq57nzXKixNklOFSpf

Great! Thanks for the reply, and for the ork! Checking the tutorials out now!

Right! Drawing up a shopping list now, and thinking about how to do this. What do people reckon of keeping the base tone, and the first highlight varied, but keeping things consistant with the final highlight, to try to create some sense of cohesion?

I've seen a lot here that suggests mixing paints, which I kind of like, but I think I'd need to master the art of wet pallet, which I'm a bit daunted by. I might give it a shot further down the line, but I find my paints just evaporate too fast.

Big thanks for all the input thus far, really appreciate it!

Side note! My first ork arrived yesterday. I'm super excited, can't wait to get him ready for krumpin'!

I used to feel apprehensive about mixing paint but honestly just go for it. I use rough approximations and never pre-mix batches of paint for my flesh and its fine. Some amount of tonal variety in flesh would be normal anyways.

The easiest method I've found for cohesion and contrast is overhighlighting and knocking it back with a wash. Quarter Paint's method is basically that, start green and work all the way up to bone, then tie it all together with the green wash.

You can use simple measurements like a brush full of color 1 and color 2 (drops from a dropper bottle are good too).

As to wet pallets there are tons of guides to make one easily from household items or just buy an art store one off Amazon to give it a go.

TL;DR - try mixing your paint. It's fun and you'll get better results in my experience.