Here Comes the WAAAGH!!!

Back when the 7th edition Ork codex came out I did a flurry of additions to my WAAAGH!!!  It was high time to return to my first and only true 40K love: Orks!  I think one of the most critical steps in painting an army are paint tests and experiments to lock in your color scheme.

While I’ve done the odd project here and there (like this guy):

…I haven’t batch painted Orks in a long time, and since all the Citadel paints changed I need to do some tests to determine my new color scheme, primarily for Ork skin.  The rest of it I tend to mish-mash anyway since Orks don’t wear no friggin’ uniforms!

I don’t exclusively use Citadel paints. I use a mix of that, Vallejo, P3, and the odd pot here and there.  Mostly I use Citadel out of habit, unless I find a color I like better in another range, either due to pigment tone or coverage, or both.  For these experiments I’m focusing on the new Citadel greens, because I haven’t worked with them much yet.  If I don’t find a scheme I like I’ll fall back to Vallejo colors, but likely I’ll end up with a mix of both.

Here is one of the first tests I did, following a paint tutorial I found online.  It’s a combo of Waagh Flesh, red and green inks, Skarsnik, and a final highlight of Gauss Blaster Green.  I also did the metal using the new corrosion and rust technical paints.

Overall I think it looks fine, but I don’t care for the color tone of the skin. If you know color theory you know that many mixed colors, like green, can have a warm or cool tone to them.  A green with more blue in it tends to be more of a cool color, whereas a green with more yellow in it tends to be warm.  Overall my Orks have always been dominated by earthy warm tones, as I feel it makes living things feel a bit more real.  This Ork has a cool color tone that I don’t think matches.

This Ork is the same paint scheme, but with a final highlight of Livery Green from the Vallejo line, which is an almost neon yellow-green mix. Very bright.

That final highlight draws the model into a warmer tone.  Also, I like my Orks to be pretty vibrant so they pop off the table.

Here are the experiments next to one another. The outer Orks are the cooler skin tone, and the center Ork is the warmer one. By comparison the outer Orks to me look almost mint-colored, which is not a favorable comparison. The nice thing about Orks is that these few test models won’t really stand out in a crowd, so I can still use them on the table.

It’s also worth noting that the center Ork is using a different metal technique.  You start by painting the gun a darker brown, like Mournfang Brown, and then blotch a darker orange, then drybrush a medium silver, like Chainmail or Ironbreaker, and that’s definitely going to be my metal treatment for the stock and file Boyz.  I love the corrosion/rust effect on the other two, but I think it’s a bit much for regular boys, and so I’m going to reserve it for vehicles and larger models.

BTW, I’ve found it invaluable to keep a log of the colors and techniques I use for my various armies.  Everyone takes a break from time to time, maybe to paint a new army, or possibly go outside?  Relying on your memory to recall how you got that particular shade of red on your cloaks, or a really good leather technique, is not very reliable.  My log is a simple doc with bullet points of colors used, and it has proven very valuable over time.