How to paint Fury Road Orks’ Skin

Hello,

I must admit that I wanted to paint Fury Road Ork Warboys since the day I went to the cinema. It took me quite some time, but here’s a recipe for their skin.

List of used paints:

• • Vallejo Model Color 169. Black 70950
  • Andrea Color Pinky Flesh XNAC-45
  • Andrea Color Flat White XNAC-01
  • Scale Color Indian Shadow SC-23
  • Scale Color Blood Red SC-36

The Idea

It’s a really simple thing we’ll need to paint pale skin tone and then just add black and white makeup. It should look rough and messy.
As usual with the simples ideas, the trickiest part is the execution, that’s why I made a video to make it even more clear.

The Video

The Base Layer

Before we can start with the skin tone we’ll need to paint the whole model black. Even if you use the black spray as a primer you should at least airbrush the model with your regular black paint. It makes a difference, trust me on this.

The next step is to paint some kind of pale skin tone as a base for the white makeup. I used my usual Pinky Flesh with a mix of black, you can use any kind you want as long as it is fairly pale. I airbrushed mine, but you can paint it with a regular brush, just make sure to paint fairly even the base layer.

The White Makeup

I want to paint it with a little bit of texture, so it looks smeared over the skin. I’m using plain white color and I want to position it as regular highlights. It means forehead, chin, cheekbones, nose, ears, etc.

The difference is in applying the white paint, I’m doing a lot of dots instead of smooth layers. Use medium dilution to make them visible but not too strong. If you want you can practice on the arms first and if the texture looks too rough, you can glaze it with a little bit of white.

The Black Makeup

Time to add a little bit of character to the face. The black makeup around the eyes is pretty obvious, although the nose makeup makes more sense when you have a nose and the teeth when you don’t have big fans already, we’ll make it work anyway.

In this step, I’m using pure black. I used thicker paint at the main part of the makeup and glazed a little over the edges. Don’t worry if it looks a little bit rough, you can polish it later.

I painted the whole model black again, just to know what I’m looking at. In terms of actual make-up, I added grey highlights at the bottom of the nose and on the cheekbones. I used a shade of grey just a bit darker than the skin.
Try to be conservative with the highlights, it’s really easy to overpower black with grey on such a small area. Other than that I painted the eyeballs in plain white.

Face Scar and Minor Details

I feel like I’m adding too many steps to this rather simple process. I hope it won’t get too convoluted for you.
It’s time to add a little bit of color to his scar. Half of it is covered in make-up, but I still need to work with the upper part.

Every time you paint such subtle details glazing should be your best friend. I started with a mix of Blood Red and black and then just added a hint of pure Blood Red. I wanted it to look old and almost healed up.

The two final steps felt a little bit unnecessary, but I still did them. I mixed Indian Shadow with black to enhance the shadows. I used pretty diluted paint to make them appear darker and after that, I added even more white highlights, including the fangs. The overall scheme should look pretty flat, but if I can add a little bit more contrast it’s almost always a good idea.

That’s all folks! I hope you like the idea and you’ll use it for yourself.

You can reach me via Patreon Message or mail: paintcademy@gmail.com
There’s always the option to hire us for painting your miniatures at Studio Jolly Roger.

Cheers
Mateusz