How to Paint Dethskull Orks

A quick word before we start...

A few years back, I tried to start an Ork army...2 mobs of boyz later and I was sick of painting them. I admit, my painting ability wasn't as good as it is now (subjectively speaking), but I was still trying to paint them to the best of my ability. This may be fine when painting a small, elite force like Marines or an Aspect Warrior heavy Eldar force, but with a horde force, you're gonna get bored sooner or later.

So, this tutorial is my attempt at coming up with a quick and simple paint scheme that still looks pretty good on the table top.



Paints you'll need: Old to New Citadel paint chart
Chaos Black and Skull White
Graveyard Earth
Caliban Green
Knarloc Green
Rotting Flesh
Chainmail
Scorched Brown
Dhenab Stone
Gryphonne Sepia
Devlan Mud
Mithril Silver
Necron Abyss
Caledor Sky
Ice Blue
Waywatcher Green
Blood Red

1. Prime your model. I suggest a light primer such as white. However, I used Vallejo grey primer.

2. Paint all clothing and cloth with Graveyard Earth.

I used an airbrush to apply on my mini, but you can just as easily use a normal brush. I'm just being lazy. It's the only time I used an airbrush on this mini.

















3. Paint the Skin using Caliban Green

This will help us when painting the skin. It's an instant layer of shading, and Ork skin is very easy to paint as it is, what with those big muscles on display. Try to be a bit neater than I was...


















4.Paint all the upper areas of skin using Knarloc Green.

Try to make your brush strokes follow the direction of the muscle, leaving the Caliban Green in all the recessed areas. We make this look better later on, I promise...


















5. Hit all the upper areas of skin with a 50:50 mix of rotting flesh and Knarloc Green.

6. Paint all metal areas with Chainmail.

Keep your paint nice and thin here, bush stokes look particularly ugly on metalwork.



















7. Paint any straps and wraps, plus teeth (teef?) with Scorched Brown.

8. Paint the boots with Chaos Black.

This was as much as I painted the boots because a) they're the very bottom of the model and not that important and b) a little bit of dusting while basing hides any detail anyway.










9. Paint the teeth with Dhenab Stone.

Normally, a feature such as this would be given more work, it's a focus of the face...but this is our quick version, and the wash we'll apply later will just give this enough zing for a forgettable foot soldier...









10. Highlight all clothing, cloth and straps with Dhenab Stone.

On some of the areas, this may not look quite right. However, the next step will sort this out. Using such a light colour will give us the illusion of bright highlights without having to work up through the various grades.











11. Cover EVERYTHING but the skin in Gryphonne Sepia.

You can do this straight from the bottle. No need to thin the wash as the main idea here is to stain everything. It makes the metal areas dirtier and stains all those Dhenab Stone highlights brown.


















12. Cover all metal in Devlan Mud.

This makes the metal look even dirtier. Orks aren't known for their cleanliness...



















13. Add Devlan mud to all the recesses (except the skin).

This is easy shading, just dip your brush into the Devlan mud, removing the excess, and run it around any recesses. Go around the metal, clothes and straps and even a little around the teeth.


















14. Drybrush all metal with Chainmail.

Then, edge highlight the metal with Mithril Silver. For those who don't know, keep your paint nice and thin, load up your detail brush with paint, remove the excess and the draw the side of your brush over the edge of the detail. This should leave a thin line along the area you want highlighting. Remember, THIN AND EDGE.
















15. I forgot to take a picture of this next step, but you'll see it's results in the next step. Go over the skin using a glaze of Waywatcher Green. This will blend all the different greens on the skin together and make the highlights look smoother.

16. Paint any areas that you want blue using Necro Abyss.

I then highlighted these using Caledor Blue.














17. Highlight the blue using Ice Blue.

Then, paint the eyes with Blood Red. Usually, a bit more work goes into painting eyes. But these guys are to be thrown against the enemy in their droves. If the enemy can't see the whites of their eyes, they won't know when to open fire...












18. Base the mini and there you are. I based mine using green stuff to build up texture, and then painted it with textured paint. A basecoat of Graveyard Earth followed by a drybrush of Dhenab Stone makes a nice bare, sandy looking wasteland.