It’s been awhile again since I finished any Orks, with the last batch of Assault on Black Reach Nobz completed waaaay back in April. So to celebrate Orktober, I got into my backlog of models on “the tray” and forged on with getting a dozen plastic “Rescue” Orks finished. By “Rescue Orks” I mean these were secondhand models that were at least partially assmbled that I cleaned up, added whatever bits needed to them to make the models whole again and primed, based and started in on again.

Unlike several of the other tranches of Orks I’ve painted in the past, these ones aren’t wearing camouflage patterns directly based off real-world military ones, but instead much more general “blotchfests” and squiggles with a vague nod to flecktarn and woodland patterns, though in verious brown/tan/desert shades as I feel that they work well on greenskins. I’m not willing to go so far as to convert every model to look much more like Human/Imperial military-inspired, but my Blood Axe-ish Clan is represented through the paint on these Boyz’ gear and clothing.

I also like to keep a bit of wear and tear on their metal accessories, and while they’re not as carefully detailed as what you’ll find on Mcmatilla’s Orkwork, they work well for me in that in-between space of spending way too much time on individual Orks and far too much time on these horde, cannon fodder models. 😉

It’d also be nice to get as many Orks painted as fellow greenskin enthusiasts, Wudugast and IRO, but I’m afraid their typical production schedule of Da Boyz seems to outweigh my own meagre efforts at the best of times!

When painting units or groups of models, whether it’s something like Orks or regular humans of whatever kind, I tend to break them up into smaller sub-groups to get certain elements finished. When it comes to models like Orks or Humans I like to paint he flesh in smaller sub-batches because I actually don’t want the skin tones to be completely uniform – even in monocultural groups, you’ll find a bit of variation in skin tone from the usual genetic diversity and even just time spent in the sun.

By not having a single uniform way that I paint any particular kind of skin tones and doing them in small batches using a variety of methods and paints, when they’re all mixed in together you get that natural looking variation in a group as opposed to the 100% uniform look that you see in most official publications. It’s the same rationale I’ve used for years when painting the orange-red hair of Dwarven Slayers. If you’ve ever known anyone with dyed hair, aside from dark roots, you’ll have seen how different batches of dye and simply how fresh the dye job will affect the current result.

Regardless of all that, these are the last of my (known) Rescue Orks that I need to worry about – the next set of Orks I’ll be working on (and indeed, I’ve started!) are some proppa old-skool boyz in metal! With a bit of luck I’ll even have some finished before the end of 2023! These were all actually finished in the first half of the month, and in a normal situation I’d have posted them in probably 2-3 posts as I completed them, but with my procedure looming at the time I really wasn’t feeling up to blogging, and then a bit of time for recovery, they’ve all been put together in one, final, end-of-Orktober post here!

I dunno. I really do like the standard style of GW Ork sculpts. I’ve always had a soft spot for the greenskins from the Kev Adams days through to Brian Nelson’s work. I like the Perrys’ work overall, but their Orks left me cold, as did a few of the other in-between sculptors over the years. The weird thing is that they’re so cheap in terms of in-game points compared to other forces, and so you need so many of them, yet they’re packed with all this exquisite detail that just begs to be painted. Sure, it’d be a lot quicker to skip over a lot of it, and not bother with the concept of a hige variation of desert camo schemes, but they’re the things that make my Orks appeal to me as a long-term project. I may never finish it, but I’ll have fun painting (almost) every one of them, and while they may not all be unique conversions as with the three Madmen noted above, they’ll still all be unique in some way due to their paint shemes if nothing else. (And to be fair, probably at least a weapon or head swap if I notice they look the same as another!)

Perhaps I should aim for something like getting forces for a Battle at the Farm on both sides as a project, even if the paint and models vary a bit from the originals… If only I knew exactly what was needed, and what I’ve already got painted… 😮