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Hey everyone, Have been away for a few months... fatherhood, and broken PC issues :( hehe.
Not had any time to spend on the hobby lately either!
So I'm going to get a project I tried to start a while back underway again

Orks! Bring the Waaagh!

Previously I had stripped the paint off the few orks I have, and broken them down into pieces. Thats how theyve sat in a box stashed away for some months now :(
They need some love!


Thats 57 ork legs/torsoes, 10 nobz and a warboss, and some deffkotpas in the box to the side.
Theres a few burnas, deffguns, rockets and big shootas in the bits aswell as shootas and choppas, unsure how to equip them at this point

I forsee some battlewagons and trukks being added.... unless i change my mind and add dreads and kans with more foot slogging?

Never really played as orks before so don't know whats the done thing

Also dunno how I wish to paint these boyz yet, open to inspirational suggestions from the lovely dakka community.

Looks like a good a start. When I had an ork army I think I painted like 100+ of them.

I'd start with a green primer and go from there....

Good luck.

Using green primer isn't going to be a problem. Theres an airbrush at the back of the desk in that piccy
I'l probably spray them all grey first up, with a rattle can of grey primer I've go in the shed.
And then spray the base colour with the airbrush Cant decide if the clothing colour or the skin colour is the one to spray though.
I have been considering priming them khaki colour, and then drybrushing them all white, and washing brown.
As an undershading layer, and then building up the skin tone in green wash or glaze.

I'd definitely get an Army Painter green spray primer for that.

 Thokt wrote:
I'd definitely get an Army Painter green spray primer for that.

*points at the airbrush at the back of the desk* no problem with coloured sprays here

Orks excel at randomness. Paint groups of boyz similar to each other so you can keep your units apart (trust me on this, when you get to 1000+ games you are going to hate your life if you dont do this) and do whatever to them. Currently all of mine look like this nob and i just have the base edges painted to tell them apart, but i plan to repaint them so i can get some variety in my army instead of just Evil Sunz. Actually intending to paint my Meganob Boss without the "upgraded" bosspole into a Bad Moonz guy.

Other races kinda need to follow one scheme, otherwise it kinda looks weird as usually (unless its a HUGE battle) different regiments or chapters wouldnt be helping each other that often, except maybe a single small group that happened to be in the area. Orks? Group of 30 Deff Skullz saw some fellow Orks battling some 'umies and wanted a piece of the action....bam that explains the random Deff Skullz unit lol

Being as I can't decide on a colour scheme, That sounds like the best option.

I'm trying to split these guys up into units and decide what theyre going to be equiped with and how many boyz in each mob. Natrually I can grow the mobs later, get them trucks or wagons etc.

Theres the AoBR set, so thats 18 that are definatly slugga boyz.
Will see if i have the bitz for it, but I'm looking at 3 mobs of 12 slugga boyz with a power klaw nob and a trukk.... big shoota? or rokkit?
Leaving me 23 (i think) boyz, and 7 nobz to use up. with lots of shoota's and some burnas and deffgunz in the kitty.

Just moved them into groups on the table, and I can get;

5 mobs of 12 boyz, each with a special weapon guy and a nob.

a mob of 5 nobz

The warboss

and 1 left over boy (poor guy)
...
Could split one of those mobs up and make burnas and/or lootas, although id want another box or two to get the numbers up (only have 4 of each weapon currently)

Hello! welcome back!

I shall just start by saying im about 2 steps ahead of you (30 boys down! 30 halfway!- GOD SAVE ME! - ANYONE SAVE ME!!). My first 30 I painted varying colours and styles etc and I must admit I love it, even if it was painstakingly slow. What I did was airbrush prime with vallejo grey primer mixed with Blue/yellow/brown. What this meant was that I had roughly 10 of each in a light blue, yellow and a brown. Then using a technique found on this site (badmoons speed painting guide in the tutorials section - I highly reccommend a peak) I applied two washes of thraka green wash over the three different coloured ork skins, the effect each time is slightly different. Heres an image of some as reference:

I felt this gave my orks a nice varying initial skin colour without having to paint each one individually, it was reasonably quick using just washes and I could vary the amounts of washes and how much I applied to again vary the skin colour. I then by hand painted the rest of the model. I can tell you, individually painted orks will take you sometime, but the effect is worth it. when the whole squad look like a shambles of mis-matched boys they look fantastic. Im not sure if you could speed up the process by using a different colour base, but for my current WIP 30 I am following the bad moons speed painting guide, which is going faster, although Im not sure I like it quite as much as I liked my first 30.

Another tip id say is, mix your painting between your boys (id do around 5 at a time max) and characters, vehicles etc... It can get very mind numbing quickly when your working on 30 boys in one go, it feels like your progress is going no where as the layers take so long to begin to show.
Hope this helped and keep us posted!

They look great!
A varied skin tone across the entire lot is definatly something I'd like to achieve. Using a green wash or glaze does seem like the way to do it.
I've seen a tutorial where they were primed white, and washed in either black, umber, sienna or blue. and then glazed green.
Something That might work well, as doing many washed quickly can lead to a varied effect; it takes time and care to make it consistent, which is the opposite of what im after here

I tend to do my boyz by priming them black then doing all the metal first - there's always a lot of it so it saves time to be sloppy at that stage.

I go warplock bronze first then drybrush boltgun over it. after I give them all their base colours (warboss green, scorched brown & the respective red/blue/yellow) clan colours. then i soak the whole thing in nuln oil before highlighting (i'm comfortable to play games with them at this stage)

Here's a warboss after the wash stage

Usually i do the skin first but thats just me. I like to do the main skin tone first, paint the rest of the model, then do the drybrushing with a lighter green because if i ever spill over onto the skin its always in a spot i was going to paint over again anyway. And especially with fingers on a gun, painting the green for me last is always hard.

Here is a link to the Bad Moon speed painting guide. IMO it highlights how effectively washes can be used to get a good table top quality reasonably quickly
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/374651.page

And this is a video of a technique that I think looks pretty damn good Hes using an airbrush to primer white, ink wash with black for transitions, using a green tint to finish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6yA4IWZNxc

Thanks for all the tips, theres some good tutorials there and some great results.

I think i'l be priming them all grey, and then airbrushing a few different basecoat colours. Perhaps a few yellows, pale blues, khaki / bone, light green etc. Doing some models in each squad with different basecoat colours. This should give me variation in final skin tones among my boyz.

Then using washes, brown, then green. To get the skin tone and shading.



This is how theyre going so far, I've built up 3 mobs of 12 slugga boyz, with a power claw nob in each, 2 groups of 5 to be burnas and lootas (more to get added later I guess)

Which leaves me 14 with a nob, and a group of 6 nobz to equip.

Should I really include some shoota boyz? or is it doable to have all slugga + choppa's and just hope to arrive in melee?

I would recommend shoota boys. 6ed generally works better with shoota boys, as with snap fire they can shoot while riding in trucks or foot slogging it, and then on the charge they are still strong in melee to mess stuff up.

the extra attack in melee just isnt enough to out do the shooting gained with shoota boys.

Keep me updated with your skin tones! really interested to see your results

Thanks for the tip hehe.
Now I'm wondering about the 3 mobs of slugga boyz I already assembled
The AoBR guys have to be slugga guys unless im going to saw off all their arms :/ (im not)

Will be completing the assembly of all of them first and getting the base colours sprayed on them all at once.
Trying to force myself to paint these up before expanding the force too lol! Damn i want some trukks and stuff
When i get to the painting il put up a little step by step for the few skin tones i get (unless ofcourse i hate them and start again lol)

Having a large ork army.. I can relate on how daunting it can be to paint everything.. Excellent work so far cant wait to see how it all comes together..

so I've spent as much time as I could this week, assembling these guys.
There was a lot of mold lines, that were not bothered with last time around. So they took a while :(
I've just been out to the shed and sprayed them all grey, and then maybe 25% (didnt count) of them got sprayed with a Khaki colour that I have a can of.

When thats cured a bit, enough to handle, I'l bring them in and get pic's.

Next stage is to mix up some base colours to airbrush some of them with. Pale shades of a variety of colours.
They might look a bit like a pastel rainbow by the time I've done that (hopefully) Then either a drybrushing, or a zenithal spray highlight of white before getting the washes out.
this variation in basecoats is what I'm planning to get the natural variation in skin tones with.
Applying washes over the top to to give the shading and definition, and then to colour it all green.
Pic's will follow as my paint drys hehe.
Airbrushing the other base colours may have to wait until tomorrow as its getting late here, and the noise of the compressor is disturbing to others in my house.

edit; It occurred to me that I may seem strange, spraying primer from cans when I own an airbrush (lol actually 4 airbrushes and 2 hvlp guns)
I do it because of convenience really; cleaning up primer is a right pain! Spray cans of automotive primer are rather cheap and cheerful. My preference is Halfords Grey primer for most hobby jobs. Although I don't think I would actually take one of these cans to a car, they aren't THAT good compared to a tin of primer through the hvlp guns for large areas, but for a 28mm scale mini, theyre just fine

Picture time



Heheh they look a right state at this point

Right, here's whats gone down so far.
All were spryaed grey, and then roughly 25% were sprayed Khaki
Then I got the airbrush out, and using Liquitex Acrylic inks, mixed with Liquitex ultra Matte medium and Airbrush Medium.
I created an array of colours and just went through the models spraying one or 2 then chaning the colour - often just adding another one into the colour cup and mixing it up a bit... nothing consistent, or repeatable here.



These are the products I used so far.

After that I let them dry off for a while, and sat looking at them for a few minutes, realising that some of them had come out far too dark, i grabbed some of the Citadel Edge paints (I had the boxed set of all the colours), mixed them with the ultra matte medium, thinned them a little with flow aid, and proceeded to hand paint some more shades in, over the top of the ones i felt were too dark (this is why theres some with deep purple clothes and another colour face at this point)

The Next stage is to go through them all again, drybrushing them mostly in Citadel Hexos Palesun (I've got a pot that doesnt really get used lol), before washing them all.
Washes will be made from Liquitex Inks, mixed with matte medium and flow aid. I do have a selection of citadels shades, which i might use on a few figures to add even more variety.

The green wash, will be the same wash on everyone, I'l try to mix something up thats akin to the old Thrakka Green, which i have half a pot of to match it to. But il have to be mixing blue and yellow as I do not have a premixed green Liquitex ink.

So here they are, after being drybruhsed all around with Hexos Palesun, and then givn 2 coats of green wash. I mixed my own wash using Liquitex Inks ( 0.5ml Yellow Medium Azo,5drops Yellow Ochre, 4 drops Pthalocyanine Blue,2 drops Carbon Black,5drops Transparent Burnt Umber,2 drops Dioxazine Purple, Matte Medium and water + flow aid added to suit.
The colour I got was a touch darker than Thrakka green, but the wash strength was less intense.

The end effect, I'm reasonably happy with. Ive put in a few hours of work painting the skin tone on approximately 50 orks, and they're all ever so slightly different, some are close and similar, others are more noticeable All the remingin bright colours will likely get painted over with something completely different, Its only an airbrushed layer so is adequately thin to not worry about.

I think il be working on these just a handful at a time now, maybe a squad at most. Each squad hopefully to a different orky clan to give me some more painting variety (can you tell im bored of painting power armour? lol)

Nobz


Slugga Boyz 1


Slugga boyz 2


Slugga Boyz 3


Lootas


Burnas


Shoota Boyz

The first unit is underway Theyre looking a bit less rainbowy now



As you can probably guess, this unit is da Goffs. Not quite done yet so far I've based the black areas in Eshing Grey, and drybrushed them with Dawnstone Grey, then washed twice with Nuln Oil. I'm mid way through basing the metals with warplock Bronze. And still have the leathers to do, and red accent parts.
With some checkers for finishing touches hopefully.

My orks, Though few that they may be, have uniform clothing and non-uniform skintones, the skintones range from goblin green highlights to Gretchen Green tonight knarlocc green. This gives a nice variation and makes it look like there is a degree of randomness to ork genetics, but at the same time unifies them as a clan through the color of their clothes

With these guys I'm working on now. The variation is probably a little less than I was originally thinking. Perhaps too many layers of green wash.
But when you look closely there is definitely some difference from one ork to the next. Because theyve all had the same wash, its more subtle variations of the same green than a bunch of different green shades.

The clothing, I'm planning to do each unit belonging to a different clan, once I've got the main 6 covered, Il start repeating them or doing some leser known clans.
I hope that by the end they look to be part of a big Waaagh formed up of lots of orks from lots of tribes.
Kind of like the (somewhat huge) ragtag band of different clans that Thrakka had following him on Armageddon.

I started with Goffs purely because they seemed the simplest (except the checkers). I might try to airbrush the checkers by stenciling the pattern with squares of masking tape... just the scale is going to be small and fiddly :(

Anyone got tips for painting the Goff's checker board pattern?

hey looking really good man Loved the shot of them all rainbow coloured! I can definitely see the variations from the yellow coated to the grey, the blue I am finding harder to distinguish. You made a very good point about using only a green wash will simply give you slightly varying shades of that green. So what id recommend is trying a thinned blue wash first, followed by thrakka. That'll give you a nice darker bluey/green skin tone.

In terms of painting checkered patterns you could: Paint the area white and use a thin nib pen to draw on the squares. You could use the transfer sheets with the boy sets? You could make a stencil to spray over with the airbrush but that will be fiddly i imagine

Pens you say?
Sounds interesting.

What kind of pen?
I've got these

the v5 and v7 hi-techpoint ones are liquid ink, the top one is sepia, but is pigment ink.
Somewhere around here I've got a couple of staedler pigment ink pens in black. (Can't find them right now)

Or another option might be a dip pen in acrylic ink, as I have a few nibs around here somewhere.

Whats the 'done thing' with regards to pens? Im not silly enough to think that any pen will do? (or will it?)

Another update on my orks, the Goffs are coming along, still left to do on them is;

Brown leather straps and bits n bobs.
highlighting the red (thats khorne red with a agrax earthshade wash in the pic below; wash is still wet when i took the photo)
pick where the checker boards are going and paint those bits white - then look into these pens or some other method of checkerboarding.
teeth/finer nails and mouths/lips (orks have purple insides of mouths right?)
and the bases (these have been textured with some crap from the bits box, some slate shards (lifted from the front yard and smashed with hammer) and some Windsor and Newton Mineral Texture Medium all prior to priming)

I also might put a glossy black glaze over the boots to make it look different to the black other clothing ; question - If i put glossy black on the boots and leave the trousers as is; and then at the end i spray a matte lacquer to protect them, will the boots maintain a differing sheen to the other bits? or would the matte lacquer cancel that out all together?

Good Lord, they look epic Hairy!

Regarding pens, I shouldn't think the Pilot V5/7 will work, simply because, being liquid ink, it works by absorbing into paper giving you the mark, but on paint, the ink would more likely than not just rub away even once dried. On the subject of boots, I gather that the Matt varnish would cancel out any gloss put on the boots as it's the top layer that's visible, but having never varnished yet don't quote me on it.

They're looking great, keep up the good work!

PS: Did you ever get round to using the Halfords Khaki spray? If so, how did it work out? I've tried Halfords grey like you recommended, but I'm not keen on it, so I'm gonna switch back to Halfords Black.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
Good Lord, they look epic Hairy!

Regarding pens, I shouldn't think the Pilot V5/7 will work, simply because, being liquid ink, it works by absorbing into paper giving you the mark, but on paint, the ink would more likely than not just rub away even once dried. On the subject of boots, I gather that the Matt varnish would cancel out any gloss put on the boots as it's the top layer that's visible, but having never varnished yet don't quote me on it.

They're looking great, keep up the good work!

PS: Did you ever get round to using the Halfords Khaki spray? If so, how did it work out? I've tried Halfords grey like you recommended, but I'm not keen on it, so I'm gonna switch back to Halfords Black.

Thanks Warpig.
Yeah I've enjoyed the Khaki spray, its not strictly primer, much like the Halfords Matt Black. But does as good a job, just in a different colour. Roughly 25% of these orks have been sprayed khaki, the rest were Halfords Grey Primer. Also used it to base my Colonel Schaffers Last Chancers, but they're still half done

If you like the Matt Black from Halfords, Id expect similar results from the Khaki (there's another 3 camouflage colours too) The only issue I see with it is the price, only 300ml cans, for approx £7-8 iirc. Army painter probably do a khaki spray primer with better value? That aside, I liked it, probably get another can, as Halfords is round the corner. I found it gave me a slightly warmer tone than the grey primer when painting colours over it ; that might be useful in its own right for certain projects.

I'l have a looksy in town for a pigment liner type pen in black I can recall hearing 'Sakura micron' being the one to use.. but not expecting to find that in my town center there's a WHSmiths, Rymans Stationers and an arts/crafts store that have potential for me surely they will have something suitable. If anyone could tell me brands/names of pens to look out for as being suitable that would be really helpful I forsee a lot of Pilot, Staedler maybe Parker, Uni-ball brand products being on the shelves.

Might try an experiment with the boots; I used Nuln Oil over Eshin Grey drybrushed with Dawnstone grey for the blacks, I could mix up my own wash using Liquitex Carbon Black Ink (the blickest blick ive ever had!!!)
Its glossy and incredibly strongly pigmented. Hopefully would provide distinction between the boots and trousers. If not I could always put some satin (I only have matte and gloss... custom mixing here we go)on them after my matte lacquer


Edit; A tip for anyone using spray cans (pretty much any spray can) is to heat the can up some under the hot tap. For a god minute or two is what I do, shaking it a little as the hot water runs over the can. It needs to be warm enough that shaking the can doesnt just dissipate the heat in seconds. But not so hot you cant hold it (it explodes after its too hot too hold anyway).
The paint being warm reduces its viscosity, and increases the pressure inside the can, helps it atomize,and brings it closer to ambient temps than the really cold temps it has upon depressurising. This difference in temp between the paint and ambient causes a lot of paint defects. A large part of why hvlp guns and airbrushes are better in the spray industry (the paint isnt pressurised with those and so doesnt go cold)

HairySticks.

I am here, just to say that I am jealous.

Jealous about that time, ideas and workshop you have.

You just made me think about my greenskins again.

Keep it up. More pic please and good luck.

Cheers

 boredbeard wrote:
HairySticks.

I am here, just to say that I am jealous.

Jealous about that time, ideas and workshop you have.

You just made me think about my greenskins again.

Keep it up. More pic please and good luck.

Cheers

Thanks boredbeard.
The desk full of stuff is rather handy, its tucked away in the corner, by a window. The clutter looks kinda untidy but merh it doesn't bother me all that much lol!
Its not supposed to be just a modelling desk; I airbrush canvases and well most anything that can be airbrushed. But lately its been taken over with modelling work. I have that habbit that we all have of buying far more models than you will ever paint So really trying to put a dent in that while I've got 2 weeks off work with not much else planned. If I can get 2 squads of these orks all finished up before I'm back in work I'l call that a win! (I'm not exactly a speed painter).
The orks a nice change of pace though, just above that desk is a shelf full of purple space marines (who have a queue of to be painted/assembled too), some of those I feel need stripping and repainting, but with all the unpainted guys, it seems wrong to strip them at this point. Maybe when I'm getting low on projects lol. (Totally sure I'm not alone with this problem of too many hobby projects on the go)

HairySticks wrote:I have that habbit that we all have of buying far more models than you will ever paint

Haha, speak for yourself! I've never enough money to get what I want! On the plus side, it gives me plenty of time to make a good job of what I have got, so I can't complain.

The problem I had with the Grey Primer is that I when I can't get into a particularly tight spot to paint, it leaves a really obvious grey section. This becomes rather irksome considering that I have a good deal of GS'ed cloaks and tabards so it's hard to get into the back. To be honest, to date I've only ever painted one model with Grey Primer, a Landspeeder, but I found that because the flying stand was snapped (eBay model), I had to hold it by the model itself - so the paint rubbed away on the edges. Normally on black primer it wouldn't be a big problem to fix, but the Halfords grey was very hard to apply touch ups to. Hence, I'm Back in Black...