Painting Orc Skin Tones for Middle Earth Gaming.

I was pleased to see my new brush bristle find matches exactly the size of the Ragnarok Goblin spears. The same size but ten times more durable. You know what Goblins are like, they never look after their stuff.

Having decided to paint up a few more Orcs, I cracked open some old stock to mix in with the new Ragnarok sculpts. I found these three old figures made back in 1988. I'm pretty sure they are old Ral Patha sculpts, It will great to get these in the mix.

Another old eBay purchase that was in the draw from years ago, was this old Nick Lund Hobgoblin. I love these figures as I think they make great Uruks. This one had lost his mace in the wars.

After a bit of minor surgery, he became the standard bearer for the new Warband.

I started to play around with new finer brush bristles for other bladed weapons. I found that if crushed too flat, they actually started to split. This is a bit of a set back but one that's easily fixed. I don't crush them so hard and use the scissors to cut out the basic shapes. A knife is then use to refine the edges of the blade. This way some very nasty narrow Orc scimiatars can be created. 

For larger swords, I will go back to using the larger bristles, as they can be flattened more to make great chopping blades .

Blasphemy! An old Mithril miniature gets the chop. I have had this Orc officer since around 1985. I thought it was time to paint him, although, I just couldn't get on with his stylised face. I quickly gave him a taste of his own medicine and lobbed his head off. The replacement head is from Warlord Games and matches the style of the rest of the warband.

 I also noticed a bit of my 15 year old humour still survives on this old figure. It appears a much younger self wrote 'Doc' on his armour. Well, at least my painting has improved since those days.

Playing around with the narrower brush bristles for throwing spears. I also found some finer cotton to give a better scale for the binding.

The warband grows as more old Orcs crawl out of the woodwork.

Looking at the size of this Mithril captain, he is quite large, maybe he can be the leader of this new unit. This might makeup for the fact he had his head hacked off...do Orcs hold grudges, too soon to tell.

Some other old Orcs that have tagged along for the loot are these old Blacktree/Harlequin Sculpts. They too have been styled from the Angus McBride MERP illustrations, so sit very happily amongst the mob. I didn't even use any green stuff on this guy, just super glue. It seems to look fine and saves me more time messing around.

Again, I have had these large Uruk figures for many years. I was always put off by their slotta bases and trying to get them on a painting strip of card.

 Above is my latest idea to give them new plastic bases that should make the whole process easier. Once painted these can just be stuck into the multi bases with the others. It should be a lot simpler than hacking around after the figures are painted.

 These guys are more Blacktree/Harlequin sculpts from the Nineties. They are smaller than the Uruks above and blend in with the Ragnarok Goblins nicely.

Work so far. I tried out a British Khaki uniform colour for the skin of these mid sized Orcs.

 A lot of people often ask me about my Orc skin colours on Facebook. A great place to start is WWII uniform colours. The subtle yellow browns and greenish Grey's can work wonders for Goblin skin. For Middle Earth Orcs I would avoid anything too green, that's more GW than Tolkien. 

My general rule of thumb is to paint smaller Orcs/Goblins slightly lighter colours, yellowish and sallow looking. As they get larger, they become more brownish. Khaki is a good guide for this. Then for large Orcs, a German grey could work well for a skin tone. This comes from looking at the Black Uruks of Mordor from the Peter Jackson films. They were a blueish grey and this was a nice touch rather than going for actual black skin.

 Over these base colours you then have a truck full of different Inks you can use to effect the skin tone futher. Even a watered down green ink can work well on some of the small foe. Putting a flesh tone wash over the browns is a great way of adding a bit of warm to the skin. Technically Orcs are cold blooded in Middle Earth but the flesh wash ink does look great over any colour of skin, even grey.

Make sure you do any warpaint before you add the ink washes, this way the ink will help blend it in. 

Also, sometimes a light dry brushing of light sand can help on the Orc skin. Again do this before any ink washes, it's just a nice highlight that works on all the colours, even the dark Grey's.

I hope this helps people with their Orc warbands. Remember it's important to wash you hands after handling any kind of Goblin, especially the smaller Snaga variety.

 

Here's another update on the Orcs.

An HB pencil being used to highlight armour.

Old, destressed armour and weapons using the sponge technique.

The trick of using a sponge to create old armour.This tip is great for putting silvar dots into rusted areas.

Simply dip an old sponge into some silver paint, dab it a few times so it's not too wet. This then can be sponged on to armour, weapons and shields. This effect will make them look old and battered.