Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game 25mm Orcs

My favourite models from the whole range of Games Workshop LOTR / Hobbit miniatures are the Mordor orcs.  Not only are they wonderful Perry sculpts, both metal and plastic, but they offer easily the widest range of options when it comes to painting.  With almost everything else in the range, you have to make a choice between painting exactly as per the movies (as I do with my character models), or else making a conscious deviation (as with my Uruks and Elves).  With the orcs, however, you have much more free rein as a painter - because even the movies contain so much variety.

I kept mostly to a greys / browns palette, using the same dark red for the 'eye' badges, and for the odd full shield or garment.  The orcs are a pretty tatty bunch, with very little uniformity, so it doesn't take much in the way of colour changes to make them look different.  I'd gone with tan skin for the uruks, and greenish for the goblins (see later posts), but plumped for two basic greys for the orcs - a plain mid-grey, and a slightly brownish grey.

The weapon variety on these models is good too, with polearms including naginata-style spears, and tridents like the chap on the right has.  

The paintwork all follows the same steps, which helps to maintain cohesion.  I generally prime the miniatures in red oxide for two reasons - it shows slightly through grey skin, and makes the orcs look less dead; and it shows clearly where you've painted and where you haven't.  Grey primer is not so good for this when painting mostly grey models!

Once primed, I generally pick 3-6 models to paint in a batch.  In the case of the chaps above, I was keen to see how they looked in paint because they're slightly converted.  I purchased some very cheap damaged models from eBay, and repaired them with spares from the box.  Pretty much anything goes, so the chap in mostly metal armour received a spare sword from unknown sources, but which fitted nicely where the original weapon had snapped off.  The chap to his right had a broken two-handed weapon - which is a trickier fix - so I gave him a spare shield from the Wargames Factory orcs, and a cut-down halberd from the Perry European Mercenaries set.  He probably scavenged it from some hacked-up Gondorian soldier.

Next stage is to paint-in the metal areas.  I use GW Boltgun Metal for this, then wash it with thinned brown ink after drying.  Next, I paint in the exposed skin.  After that, it's a case of choosing a main colour (say, blue-grey) and applying it to different areas of each miniature I move along the line.  So, from left to right, chap #1 gets sleeves, chap #2 gets a hood, chap #3 gets sleeves, and chap #4 gets none.  Clean the brush, swap to dark red, and #1 gets a hood, #2 gets a robe, and so on.

Early on, I reserve a couple of colours for equipment - typically this is a light brown / tan for polearm hafts, and a mid brown or red-brown for packs / belts / gubbins.  Once reserved, I don't use these colours anywhere else on the model (very rarely anyway, there are exceptions).

Once all the colours are blocked-in, and the equipment painted (and hair, here and there, which I usually paint black), I put some limited highlights on colours and areas which look too 'flat'.  This is rarely needed with bold colours like the blood red or the dark yellow, but the blue-grey needed a 'lift', and so did the light grey (in the examples above).  Highlights are usually the base colour with white or neutral grey added - nothing which will change the tone.  If your base colour is prussian blue, and you highlight with ultramarine (or eggshell, or teal, or whatever) the highlights - to me - just look painted-on.  Even if you do a top-notch blending job, there's no getting away from the obvious tone-change.  This can be useful if you're after that sort of shimmering 'multi-tonal' look, but plain cloth doesn't do that.  It fades unevenly, and catches / reflects the light differently here and there, but at some point it was all one colour, and presumably the garment (apart from stains) has been subjected to the same environmental stresses.  An obvious exception is black - which fades to green, purple, blue... any number of shades - so if you're highlighting black, pick one and stick with it, is my advice.

When the highlights are dry, it's time to wash.  This is not a simple 'dip and dry' operation, but careful brush-application of successive washes of a basic brown which is sometimes lightened or darkened depending on what look good on the subject.  The wash serves two basic purposes; it shades the model, and it tones down the colours.  I usually paint brighter than the end result is going to be, and shade down; rather than start off dark and highlight-up, or start in the middle and work both ways.  I find this reduces eye-effort, as the colours are easier to follow - though it doesn't work with black!

I like a bit of gleaming metal, so I don't usually wash over the metal areas (the earlier ink wash takes care of the shading).  I don't normally add dirt either - this is a subtle thing to suggest, and is far too easy to overdo.  Thankfully, the brownish washes do a fine job of suggesting dirt and wear, especially since gravity sends more pigment to the trailing edges of cloth, or to the boots / shoes.

Where the 'eye' badges are painted onto metal, this is done last so it doesn't get ink and go shiny.  I've used a darker colour on the spear hafts here, as I'd used lighter browns on the miniatures, and wanted the contrast.

I used the darker brown for bows too (except where the impractical-looking blades go...).  As with all non-shield-bearing miniatures, it's hard to know where to put things like 'eye' symbols; so some end up on armour or helmets, some on clothing, and some on quivers or bow cases.

In some cases, as with these archers, the space is too tight really.  So painting an area (or object, or piece of clothing) in the same dark red is my attempt to tie the unit together even without the 'eye' badges.

More archers, two of which are doubles of pictures further up.  Even with my 'vary the clothing item and colour' approach, you can still end up with near-identical miniatures  The archer with the 'Batman' helmet (2nd from left, above) only differs from his twin by the colour of his hood really.

Couple of attempts made at small 'eye' symbols here - the other two have to make do with dark red quivers.