Learning how to paint Orc skin doesn’t have to be hard, check out this awesome tutorial on how to get the skin looking awesome!
Galharen has some amazing hobby content and if you need some sweet tips, you should follow him to get up on all your painting and conversion techniques!
With it being Orktober, you should get to painting up all those new minis you’ve bought, as this will work for either AoS or 40k. Let’s get into the tutorial!
How to Paint Orc Skin: Galharen Tutorial
These are the minis we’ll be painting up today, but the concepts in this can be used for any Ork or Orc out there! Let’s get into it.
Priming
He primes the models through the airbrush first with Vallejo Black mixed with Hexed Lichen. Then he does a zenithal highlight with a pure white. If you don’t know how to do this type of airbrushing highlight, check out the tutorial here.
Base Coats
For this stage, he takes Moss Green Ink from Green Stuff World and thins it with the Airbrush Thinner. He does two coats and just covers all of the skin with it.
Highlights
Now it’s time to break out the brush. The colors he’ll be putting into his wet palette for this stage are Caliban Green, Sick Green, and Scorpy Green. He puts all three onto his palette and starts with the darkest colors, slowly moving up as he does more and more highlights.
Just be sure to mix the colors to get a consistent fade. This is a very time-consuming portion of the paint job. Take your time and build the colors up so it looks very smooth.
Blending the Colors Together
Here, you want to mix Hexed Lichen and Dark Red and dilute it heavily. Then, he applies this to the recesses of things like the muscles. Once that is on, he comes back with the green and blends it once more.
Final Highlights
Mix Flash Gits Yellow and Scorpy Green for your final highlights. Then, just pick out the very tops of the skin and places that would be hit by light. This will add saturation and make the skin much more interesting.
Finished Minis
Obviously, he went through and painted everything else, but you can see just how awesome the skin looks!
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About the Author: Travis Pasch
Travis Pasch
Job Title: Head Writer & Editor
Socials: @paschbass
About Travis Pasch: Travis has been a Warhammer 40k hobbyist since the 1990s, playing the game since Third Edition. Through extensive traveling, he’s seen a lot of the miniatures hobby from across the world, giving him a unique perspective on the latest gaming topics and trends.
Travis’s brother even owns a commission painting studio, where he’s picked up a lot of good advice and techniques for painting Warhammer and tabletop miniatures over the years, as well. Travis joined the Spikey Bits team in 2019 and has been the lead writer since 2020.
Currently, he’s working on converting all his 40k Adeptus Mechanicus models and becoming a true tech enjoyer, complete with both sad and happy robot noises!
