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Depends on how you define acceptable really? Alot of horde armies follow the technique you stated, and ultimately what is acceptable or considered "good" will change depending on the player. Personally I have about 60 boys looking at me atm unpainted but I'll still go through a highlight, shade, blend etc on each of them just to have an army I like at the end of it.

Paint shotgun.

 Zuul wrote:
Paint shotgun.

I was thinking more along the lines of Army Painter Color Sprays. LOL

The technique I'm talking about is displayed here http://admin.thearmypainter.com/files//downloads/Ork-Army-48h-article.pdf

Was in the same predicament painting Imperial Guard / Astra Militarium to take on Orks BTW.

Good time to learn using air brush and block paint with it.
Just the paint / time savings for painting graveled bases is worth it. It gives fast beautiful results and makes you more happy to have a go at the details.

If I only had to do brush: I would still find a good colored primer / spray-on paint can (Liquidex?) to match my main color (green maybe?). Pick the mid-tone green so the wash stands out more and dry-brush / edge highlighting as well.

Good luck!

Crying in a corner every now and then really helps...
I alternate between a few different armies to keep it up

The only hard and fast rule I'd stick with is to have the discipline to clean every model. You can always go back and repaint if you find you have more time and you're unhappy with the result, but cleaning the models of mold lines and drilling holes is a lot tougher as soon as you start priming and painting. You'll be glad you did it later.

Two or three tips:
Paint before assembly. Glue 10 left arms to a stick, 10 right arms, 10 shootas, etc.
Painting things like this in isolation is much quicker. Scraping off a little paint to expose the plastic for gluing is a small penalty in comparison.

Find a batch size that works for you. Maybe it's 10, 20 or 5. Finish them before starting more. The sense of not getting anywhere can be soul crushing. The accomplishment of finishing a squad really helps with motivation.

Choose a simple color scheme. And you don't have to paint every bit of gear. Picking out a few of the details can work really well.

And like Evertras said... you can't go back and clean up mold lines later.

My method is to do one step across all of them.

Whether its 20 Gargoyles or 10 Daemonettes or whatever mass paintjob, I do each step of the process one after the other.

I dont cut corners for the large numbers, these models are too expensive to just splash paint on.

I will say the best method for painting a large amount is assembly line.

Aseemble and prime everything. Don't paint them in parts it will take ages longer that way, besides if you cant reach it with a brush then its likely not going to be seen. With horde armies its all about saving time and making less work, not more!

Use washes is one option...

White base, painted the metal, black wash all over, green wash for the skin, gryphonne sepia on the trousers, devlan mud on the boots and straps, random splodges of purple, blue green and red on the metal to make it look oily, dheneb stone on the eyes and teeth, blood red over the eyes.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/129948-.html?m=2

I highly recommend testing and TIMING any scheme you come you come up with. I made this mistake with my first Orc (WHFB) army. I painted a few models, dark basecoat for shade, mid tone, highlight, edge highlight. Painting the test models didn't "feel" like it took that long... but when it came to painting a full army I got through about 40 models before I decided it was just too insanely time consuming. Made the same mistake with my 'nids, came up with a scheme that I thought was simple, after a month of working on them each day after work I only had 10 gargoyles painted... ended up changing the scheme to something more realistic for me to actually get the army finished.

I now go out of my way to time how long it actually takes me to paint the test models for any given army. The difference between a 30 minute paint job and an hour long paint can be the difference between me being able to find the time to paint an army and the army sitting on the shelf because I lost interest before I got through them.

FWIW, now that I've changed my Orc scheme, it takes me a bit over 20 minutes to paint an Orc (I doubt an Ork would be much different). If you include assembly and basing, it's a bit over 30 minutes. My guardsmen are similar. That's white undercoat, block painting in the colours and then use of washes to create shading.

I don't think there's many models I can go from raw sprues to finished based model in less than 30 minutes per model.

EDIT: Oh, and when you're timing yourself, DON'T include the time it takes the paint to dry, as that time goes away when you start batch painting.

 BadMoonMek wrote:
Paint before assembly... Painting things like this in isolation is much quicker. Scraping off a little paint to expose the plastic for gluing is a small penalty in comparison.

Agreed. I paint even open sculpts in pieces (thinking of my AoBR slugga boys), as every little bit helps, in terms of increasing ease of access and/or ability to simply spray a color. You can also avoid a lot of scraping by using poster putty (blu-tac and the like) as a mask. It's cheap, it's widely available, it removes cleanly and easily, and it's reusable for quite some time.

Find a batch size that works for you. Maybe it's 10, 20 or 5. Finish them before starting more. The sense of not getting anywhere can be soul crushing. The accomplishment of finishing a squad really helps with motivation.

Definitely this. Some people can crank out maxed boys squads as a batch. I prefer batches of 3-5, since I paint sporadically. Being able to complete a step across all models in a single, short sitting means I never feel like I haven't accomplished anything (also helps with consistency). Since I also know that any given step only has to be repeated a few times, I'm more likely to eke one more pass out of any given session.

I would also add that a lot of people find themselves struggling at certain times and "in a groove" at others. Milk those grooves for all they're worth, but don't be afraid to take breaks or switch projects to avoid total burnout. That said, it is sometimes worth just forcing yourself to start something. I find that putting the basecoats on a small batch is one of the shorter/simpler steps, but has the single biggest impact on a model's visible transition from primed to finished. If I can will myself to start, it only gets easier to finish. YMMV, of course.

With batch painting I find I just like batches that allow me to not have to wait for paint to dry. I've never found batch painting to increase the speed with which I move my brush (that is, it doesn't improve the "painting" time, it just improves the drying time).

One squad at a time

I actually disagree with painting before assembly. It's a lot easier to stick something together and get it on a base, then paint it in one go. Different parts are going to be fiddly and annoying to match up color-wise. Much easier to do it after assembly, in general. Some exceptions depending on complex models.

 Evertras wrote:
I actually disagree with painting before assembly. It's a lot easier to stick something together and get it on a base, then paint it in one go. Different parts are going to be fiddly and annoying to match up color-wise. Much easier to do it after assembly, in general. Some exceptions depending on complex models.

It really depends on the model. Orks which have green arms, you can paint those green arms a lot faster when they're separate from the bodies which are typically leather colour. You can use a bigger brush and more aggressive strokes to get them painted faster. I find my Tyranids, as long as the limbs aren't obscuring detail, it's much faster to glue the arms on before painting, as you just spray the whole thing one colour and then highlight/shade and pick out the carapace after, due to the way the carapace is on the models there's no real benefit in gluing them together after painting.

Then you have models which hold a gun across their chest and it obscures detail, which tends to slow you down as you have to take time to wiggle the brush in to the hidden crevice. For models like those I like to glue the left arm on but leave the right arm off for painting.

With Orks, if you are using coloured sprays or an airbrush, it can open up more possibilities for time saving if you don't glue them together. You can spray the torsos one colour for the leather, spray the legs a different colour for the pants, spray the head and arms green and you've saved yourself a lot of time hairy brush painting those areas.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Evertras wrote:
I actually disagree with painting before assembly. It's a lot easier to stick something together and get it on a base, then paint it in one go. Different parts are going to be fiddly and annoying to match up color-wise. Much easier to do it after assembly, in general. Some exceptions depending on complex models.

It really depends on the model. Orks which have green arms, you can paint those green arms a lot faster when they're separate from the bodies which are typically leather colour. You can use a bigger brush and more aggressive strokes to get them painted faster. I find my Tyranids, as long as the limbs aren't obscuring detail, it's much faster to glue the arms on before painting, as you just spray the whole thing one colour and then highlight/shade and pick out the carapace after, due to the way the carapace is on the models there's no real benefit in gluing them together after painting.

Then you have models which hold a gun across their chest and it obscures detail, which tends to slow you down as you have to take time to wiggle the brush in to the hidden crevice. For models like those I like to glue the left arm on but leave the right arm off for painting.

With Orks, if you are using coloured sprays or an airbrush, it can open up more possibilities for time saving if you don't glue them together. You can spray the torsos one colour for the leather, spray the legs a different colour for the pants, spray the head and arms green and you've saved yourself a lot of time hairy brush painting those areas.

Fair enough, if each piece is a different color I could definitely see doing it in parts. Especially mass spraying. Definitely one of the exceptions then, just one I didn't expect.

My own personal approach is to alternate. My son plays orks and I have a massive backlog of painting to do for him (seriously. Its about 3000pts). So for every unit I paint for him, I get a new unit for my iron warriors or reneguard armies. It was working well, until I bought a warhound titan. Lolz.


Failing that, hide them where no one can see them.

I've often thought about the benefit of painting before assembly for orks, in particular. Whether good or bad, I'm beyond the point where this matters... but I would certainly consider that option moving forward, as the different parts are substantially different colors and could be handled as such.

Either way... I fully understand the pain that is painting orks and I hope whatever way you settle upon that it works out for the best!

having helped my son paint his entire ork army, that pdf file linked above is revolutionary. It's a very table top acceptable look, and you could easily knock out 4k points in a week of "after school modeling".


I wish we would have seen that before we started.

I've never really understood the "spray on sprue" thing. When you clip it off you'll be removing paint and if you have any desire to remove mould lines you'll be removing a lot of paint that needs to be reapplied.

The only thing I liked spraying on the sprue was the Battle for Skull Pass Night Goblins, as they were nicely laid out on the sprue and you could trim off any excess bits and clean mould lines while they were still attached to the sprue via their slotta tab.