Meet Ugg...

In a shameless rip off of Andy Lawhammer's "Meet Karl", here's my stage by stage painting guide. I'll assume everything's straightforward; any questions (or indeed advice) much appreciated. See you in the comments. ;)

Stage 1 - Undercoat
Because I am not a crazy mentalist, I opted for a black undercoat. Sprayed black: you don't need to see that, so on to...

Stage 2 - Basecoat Flesh
For this I used Waaagh! Flesh. I applied a neat first coat, followed immediately by a second, very quick "wet brush" (like a drybrush but with more paint on the bristles). This ensured a smooth coat, especially on the larger, flatter areas of skin (like the back muscles).

2 - Basecoat of Waaagh! Flesh

Stage 3 - 1st Highlight Flesh
For this, I drybrushed Warboss Green.

3 - Drybrush Warboss Green

Drybrushing, in case you don't know, is when you put paint on the brush, then wipe most off, before flicking the brush over the areas you want to highlight. It is a very quick way of highlighting. It looks great on sharp angular surfaces, but can look dusty if the surface is smoothly curved, like a space marine shoulder pad, or, say, savage orc muscles...

Stage 4 - Shading

As drybrushing can leave a dusty effect, and there's lots of mice musculature detail, I applied a wash with Athonian Camoshade, a very dark green ink wash. This runs into all the crevices, as well as smoothing and deepening the overall colour.

4 - Wash with Athonian Camoshade 

Stage 5 - Finishing the flesh

The final stage of the flesh is a final highlight of Warboss Green. This is a fairly minor highlight, just drawing out major areas that look too dark. The face gets the most attention, so that all the edges are sharply defined as Warboss Green. 

The beauty of savage orcs is their warpaint. Any mistakes made on the skin tone can be covered by a glyph. Lazy? Moi? 

5 - Flesh re-highlighted with Warboss Green

6 - Basecoat Details

I've always found the key to army painting (that is, painting an entire army to look decent together, but primarily to play with, rather than for display) is to limit your palette and choose straightforward colours that are easy to apply. So my bone and leather details use the same colour range, with the leather essentially being one tone darker.

Leather - Gorthor Brown --> Tallarn Sand --> Ushabti Bone

Bone - Tallarn Sand --> Ushabti Bone --> White Scar

So for stage 6, I basecoated the leather Gorthor Brown and the bone Tallarn Sand. I also basecoated the fur Eshin Grey. 

6 - Basecoat the details - Gorthor Brown, Tallarn Sand, Eshin Grey

7 - Shade the details

Again, when army painting, laziness is a virtue. It's all about efficiency, and Agrax Earthshade is very efficient. It's a brown wash, which, conveniently, works on my bone, leather and even fur. What's more, if a little seeps onto the orc skin? It looks fine. 

So, a quick wash over the bone, leather and fur really picks out the sculpted details.

7 - Shade the details with Agrax Earthshade

 8 - Highlight the details
Now it's time to highlight the details - the end is in sight! I use the colours listed above to finish off the various savage orc accoutrements.

Leather gets a highlight in its base layer of Gorthor Brown, before getting a fairly heavy highlight of Tallarn Sand and a final edge highlight of Ushabti Bone (in some places - don't want it looking too pale.

Bone gets a Tallarn Sand highlight, followed by a fairly heavy Ushabti Bone highlight, with White Scar to finish.

Fur gets drybrushed with Fenrisian Grey, then White Scar. I don't rehighlight with the Eshin Grey, as I want a starker contrast on the fur.

8 - Highlight the details

9 - Flint Weapons

I left the flint weapons to last because they're the aspect I'm least happy with. The box art has them painted a bright grey, almost concrete in colour, and I don't like that. I've opted for a darker grey, highlighting black with Eshin Grey and Fenrisian Grey, then washing with Agrax Earthshade. I'm still not 100% sold on it. 

The problem is that there's lots of chipped flint detail, but it's not sharp enough to really require a line highlight. 

I'm reasonably happy with the effect, but I may revisit them before I varnish them.

Highlight the flint weapons - Eshin Grey then Fensrisian Grey, then Agrax Earthshade Wash

10 - Finishing Touches

The finishing touches really make the model - eyes and warpaint (plus any tidying up required). 

The eyes are Screamer Pink, Evil Sunz Scarlet and a tiny dot of Squig Orange. You may think you can't see three colours there, but trust me, if I missed any of those stages out, it would look worse!

The warpaint is Fenrisian Grey, then a White Scar Highlight. I've opted for an arm band on the right arm, and a lightning bolt on the left shoulder, plus some face paint. That's the general theme for the unit, with variations on each orc as the fancy takes me.

10 - The finished Ugg!

Ugg rear view

 Part of the fun of savage orcs is their crudeness (not that way! Although, that being said, also that way!). So my clumsy, childlike attempts at drawing symbols and glyphs look authentically orcy and "in character". Score!

I painted another orc at the same time as Ugg:

The Third Orc

So my little unit is up to three painted orcs, with two more half-done. Here's how my boyz are looking now:

Waaagh!

All in all, I'm feeling pretty damned chuffed. Next post will discuss my plans for the army, as well as my painting set up.

Thanks for reading!