Painting Rugluds Armoured Orcs: 19 step tutorial

So last time I posted I shared with you my quick 2minute tutorial on how to make Orcy shields with some greenstuff and small beads. It follows that the painting stage comes next. Here's a completed threesome of Rugluds Armoured Orcs on a lovely old-school regimental base:

And here's how I got there.

1. The minis prepped and ready to go:

2. Primed. I always choose a priming colour that will help speed up or improve the process. White enhances the colours and allows for lots of washes, but creates problems when you have to add shadow and black is the opposite; the shadows are already in place but it is harder to get bright colours. With this in mind I went for grey, also because I realised that there was a lot of areas to be metallic on these minis and grey is good for that. I briefly consider going for zenithal priming but stopped as my aim for these is to go simple and quick and I don't feel I get much reward with that technique.

3. Skin basecoat. Slightly diluted Baneblade as per my orcy skin recipe.

4. I like to do the messy technique for the armour next, so any misplaced paint can be covered in the subsequent stages. A very rough undercoat of Leadbelcher for the metallic areas. I wasn't very precise or worried about coverage here, because the grey priming conceals and missed bits and because I will build up layers over the top.

5. The first of such layers is a very dilute covering of Mournfang Brown. This provides an easy wash to create a rusty appearance. Get your paint consistency correct and the leadbelcher will shine through on the more prominent/raised areas of metal and the rust colour will gather in the recesses.

6. Mix some Ryza Rust in with the Mournfang and apply a slightly less-dilute wash in some areas. With layers its always best to leave some of the first layer exposed, hence subsequent layers/washes are applied less liberally.

7. Dab on a few spots of pure Ryza Rust, especially around prominent/raised areas. Thats the ferrous metal areas done.

  

8. Now for the bronzes. Warplock Bronze base.

9. Hashut Copper highlight, leaving the Warplock in the recesses/shadows.

10. When dry apply a diluted wash of Oxide. Done.

11. Back to the skin. A wash of Earthshade with a tiny amount of washing up liquid added to break the surface tension of the paint and allow it to flow readily into the crevices of the skin.

12. When dry, highlight with Baneblade again (I'll probably skip this stage in the future - it made too insignificant a change in appearance for the time it took).

12A. A highlight with Baneblade and Ogryn Camo. The first time in the process that I used a decent brush!

13. Final highlight on the skin by adding some Bleached Bone to your previous colour mixture.

14. Some purple on the lips.

15. A touch of Chainmail to the belt buckles, spikes and some other raised areas of metal.

16. The wooden areas were highlighted with a pale grey in vertical, wavy lines to represent grain. This was on the spear shafts, crossbows and on the back of the flat shields.

17. A quick wash of Seraphim Sepia and Camoshade helps make the wood look weathered with some greeny/browny colours working well alongside the grey. At this stage I drybrushed the shield design white for the bext stage.

18. And back to the shields. These add a bit of variety to the unit so deserve a bit of attention. Over the white drybrush strong, yet dilute, Citadel Inks were applied.

19. Then they were highlighted with a touch of the same ink mixed with white. Two such lighter highlights were applied. I like my shields, can you tell? And finally based:

And here's where I'm up to with the unit thus far: