How I paint an Ork Boyz skin...

This is how I go about painting the skin on my Orks for the most part - the steps change for the Grotz and some of the bigger guys.

This is the colour range I use

I tend to do my skin tones last on Orks although there will always be other little things that need tidying after as I have a slightly shaky hand.

After sorting out all the other bits (metallics, pants, armour etc), over a black base coat I painted the Orkhide Shade foundation and then washed with Thraka Green.

The base coat and first wash

After letting  the wash fully dry I layered on a mix of Dark Angels Green and Snot Green.  This is at roughly 50:50 mix, with a bit of water and Reaper Drying Retarder added to thin it and keep it workable.  We've had a bit of a heat wave the last couple of days (above 40 degrees Celsius) so keeping the paint fluid and workable is a must - particularly where I keep the last colour mixed and add to it for future layers.

The first layer - Dark Angels Green and Snot Green

To the last mix, I added a bit of Goblin Green.  All I'm looking to do is change the colour gradually.  Making sure the mix is still nice and wet/thin, I layer this over the previous layer, keeping the older layers visible in graduations in the recesses.  Ron over at FtW did a nice article about layering with thin layers.  By having nice thin layers, I was able to get cool transitions and not quite even layers.  Skin is not uniform in colour so having slightly darker patches and lighter patches isn't a bad thing, unless the transition is way off.

The second layer - add some Goblin Green

For the next stage I added a touch of Bleached Bone to the last mix and did some streaks down the main muscles, and picked out raised nobs and edges on the face.  I like the streaky look I get on the muscles as it suggests corded muscles, and the face is so characterful its easy to pick out parts (nose, bottom lip, eye brows, ears etc) to highlight.  When I was finishing this up last night I realised that it looks a lot like a Watermelons skin with the streaks and patches.

At this stage I realised my final graduation had gone too far so washed it back with a thinned Thraka Green wash (sorry no picture of the before wash mini).

After a highlight and then wash back

The wash toned down all the previous layers.  I now remixed the last highlight mix, getting a better mix which I again used to streak the muscles and highlight the key facial features.

Skin all finished with highlights and streaks made from previous mix and Bleached Bone

And that's basically it.  This guy is ready (along with the other 3 I was working on to have the final bits done and then bases finished with some grass.  Ron the other day posted about how he paints his bases last and I see a lot of other Bloggers do that too.  My personal preference is to apply the basing material after I have built the miniature, prime all at the same time and then paint the bases first as it is generally rough and ready and dirty.  The only thing I leave to last is the static grass but I'll talk about that in my next post.

All my Orks so far have been done like this, although the Grotz got a variation on the final highlight mix.  They were highlighted after the first layer (Dark Angels and Snot Green) with some Bleached Bone added to that mix.  The Orks get the additional layer with the Goblin Green mixed in before the Bone is added.  Some of the character models have an extreme highlight applied as well plus a final wash to pull it back a bit - just depends on how I see it looking at the time.

And thats it.  I hould get this lot done tonight with luck and have a nother post ready to go in the next day or so.

Happy hobby all.

Cheers,

Pom