Speed Painting Mordor Orcs

Step 1: Prime white, I use Halfords white acrylic primer, it coats well and drys matte in a short time. When it's dry, liberally wash all over with a dark colour, I have used various browns, grey and black, mixed together. Not much of this colour will be visible at the end, this stage is purely to remove the white of the primer. Why not prime brown or grey then? I find the dark wash over the light primer shows all the detail of the figure, a bit like instant blacklining.

Step 2: Most of the base colours are applied in this step. I have chosen a feature colour of P3 Sanguine Base, this is applied to the cloth garments of most of the orcs, though not all as these are not uniformed troops. The rest of the cloth areas are various browns and greys. Leathers are a lighter brown, I tend to mix these up on my palette as I go along. After about an hour or so, this got tedious, so I applied all the metal areas and stopped for the day. The overnight break is always a good idea when metal paints are concerned, the later stage of washing would be disastrous if the metals were not fully dried.

Step 3: Any remaining cloth or leather areas are quickly blocked in before the washes. Incidentally, I am using a nice big number 5 brush to apply all these base coats, it holds a good deal of paint and is fine enough even for these size figures, as long as the point is in good condition. I am also applying these base coats slightly watered down, to give a slightly transparent coat. This allows the under colours to show through a little. In this case, the under colours are basically black and white, so the combined effect is to add a colour that has some shading, rather than a flat colour.

Step 4: I mixed up a wash consisting of black paint and Coat d'arms chestnut wash, roughly equal amounts, to which I added a few drops of matte varnish and matte medium. Then I painted this all over the figures with a rough old brush. When I had completed all fifteen, I went back and quickly redistributed any pooling with a small damp brush, putting into areas that need more shade, or just on to the base sand.

Step 5: The skin is painted with thinned pale green, brown or grey. As with many of my colours I put a little of each on the palette and then randomly mix together for some nice pastel colours. A thin coat over the "undercolour" gives a reasonable effect. Any remaining areas not yet painted are picked out - hair/fur is grey,  pelts are brown, etc. Then a final wash of brown plus black over these last areas if they need it. The last thing to do is add some rust, for this MIG pigments are a good short cut. I use dark mud then standard rust. Each of these is mixed in with a puddle of paint left on my palette and thinned with some matte varnish, then just dabbed on to the metal areas.