Orks: Quick and Dirty

Hey guys. Long delay but here's that post about fast but nice table top quality weathering that I promised.

I was putting together some custom Lootas and thought it would be a perfect chance to get some shots for showing off the process.

Now this process uses washes and a couple other techniques that I won't go over in detail as I hope you already know how to do washing. If there is a demand for some basic techniques I might do up a future post on the subject. For now I'm going to gloss over those things generally.

So first off I customized my guys with plasticard and extra bits I had so that they would fit with the other lootas.

When I prime my Orks I like to give it a shot of black from the bottom and then hit it with some Army Painter Leather Brown from the top. It gives it a god brown base to start from and also lightens up the final product a bit on the top while giving the bottom an extra bit of shadow. (it also makes them look like chocolate) ;) If you don't have brown primer it's no big deal. It just means a tiny bit more work on the next step.

After the priming I like to hit the whole model with a big brush and get some warm dark brown all over it to start the rust base. Sometimes you can add a tiny bit of water to help get more coverage easier. If you didn't have a brown primer then at this point you would want to put a bit more work into getting the whole thing browned up. If you did have the brown primer you can half ass it a lot and not worry about full coverage as the primer would just show through.
After the deep brown I would use the same big old brush to lightly splotch on some reddish and browny oranges to give it the look of super rusted metal. You don't need to focus on places that won't be rusted later on like flesh and what not. Though it's nice when it's on clothe and straps and such so later on you could even leave some straps and pants this way and it could look fine with nothing but a wash.

Now we do the chipped paint. This is probably the trickiest part because we want it to look like naturally peeling and rusting paint. I use a regular sized brush and sometimes an older brush that's starting to split and fray a bit. When applying the paint try to get it in the crevasses and deep areas where stuff wouldn't bump into it and scrape it off. if there are rivets and bolts on the model sometimes you can put some paint on it and then use your finger to wipe it off the outer edges. Don't worry about how dirt and grime will collect on the surfaces right now. That's what washes are for. You just want to apply the paint in areas that you don't think it would have rusted or been scraped off yet. I'll also just do a bit of a dry/wet brushing on any bare metal parts that I don't think would be fully rusted yet.

After that we just paint any clothe and straps and what not and give everything a nice liberal brown wash. this will add some shadow and dirt to the plates and clothe and leather. When painting the chipped paint and clothe I try to use a lighter colour so I can just wash it and skip any highlighting. It saves you lots of time on loads of table top quality guys and looks almost as good.

Now we add the metal scratches. The quickest way to do this is to use a fine sponge. Like the ones you used to get in old blister packs or you can get flat pointy ones attached to sticks at a local hobby shop.
When using a sponge I like to dab it straight on the paint and then dab most of it onto a paper towel so you can spread the paint around on the sponge a bit before applying it to the model. Like when using a paintbrush you don't want to much paint on your sponge or you'll end up slapping too much onto the model.
Now you could start with a dull silver first and then do a brighter silver after or to save time you can skip straight to the brighter silver. It just depends on how much time you want to save and how nice you want them to look in the end.
After doing the sponging you can use a brush to hit any hard to reach areas or spots that you think could use more metal scratches.

Here I also did the skin but you can really do that any time you want. If you do it earlier you just have to be careful not to get any silver on it.

And here's the final product after adding some weathering powder to the base and doing the eyes and face paint and base trim. Good enough for the table top and in good time yet without being sloppy and unfinished looking.

Final Thoughts: Now remember that these guys are just table top quality. There's a few things you can do if you want to spend more time to make your models a bit more showy. The only highlights I did was the metal scratches. If you wanted a display piece you could highlight the chipped paint and the leather and clothing before and after the washes. I would put a lot more work into the skin. Their skin just received a single base and wash again like the rest of them. highlights and colour variation on lips and elbows and such would greatly enhance them. You could also do the hairspray technique for the chipped paint but that might be a bit of overkill on rank and files guys.
Well that's it for now. Hope this helps some people. I'd love to hear some feed back and find out what people think and what I could improve so please comment.
Until next time.