Orc

 

Some days, you just feel like painting an orc, or at least I do. And I did, a few days ago. I was looking through my collection of orcs and realized I wasn't really happy with them. There was nothing wrong with the models, just my paint jobs. I had painted all my orcs very dark and very grubby. This might be perfectly appropriate for the Tolkien style of orcs I want, but it just doesn't look that great on the tabletop. So, I wanted to paint one using a bit more colour, and more importantly, a bit more contrast to the colours. 

To start, I went with a white undercoat, which I've never used for orcs before. This made a big difference on the brightness of the chainmail, which ended up contrasting very nicely with the black leather breastplate. I then used a dark yellow for the tunic - its not a nice or overly bright colour, but I think it found that happy medium of colour and grunge at the same time. I added a bit of purple, which gives it some more colour, but still keeps it dark overall. Finally, I gave it some real brightness on the shield, drawing a meaningless rune and giving it a little fire effect. I wanted it to sort/kinda/maybe give the impression of the Eye of Sauron without an actual eye.

Yup, very happy with how this guy came out. I might have to slowly replace my old orc force with this new, slightly more colourful variety.