Painting Ork Shootas and Sluggas for Warhammer 40K

Orks are one of your quintessential horde armies. As such, you'll probably want to find a way to move through them pretty quickly. I initially wrote this after my first box of Boyz, updated it after buying the Ork Battleforce, and then again while painting 77 AOBR Boyz, Nobz, and a Warboss. Each time I've adjusted my process a little bit.

Step-by-Step

  1. Clean and prepare the pieces.
  2. Assemble your figures as you see fit. After three rounds of painting, I think that it's easiest if you leave the heads and bases off.
  3. Whatever you decide not to glue on, apply a small drop of white glue to the ends of each connection point and the corresponding part on the torso. Once this dries, you can pop it off very quickly to expose the base plastic for easy gluing.
  4. Prime black.
  5. Apply your basecoats.
    • Flesh: Citadel Orkhide Shade (Foundation) with a highlight coat of Citadel Gnarloc Green (Foundation).
    • Weapons and armor: VMC Gunmetal.
    • Pants: Citadel Bestial Brown.
    • Straps and belts: Citadel Tau Sept Ochre (Foundation).
    • Arm bands, top knots, and selected pieces of armor: Citadel Mechrite Red (Foundation).
    • For all of the other little pieces, you can basecoat these in a number of different colors. For example, I used Citadel Ultramarine Blue to paint the facial tattoos

  6. Wash with Paynes Grey.

  7. Highlight the skin with Citadel Camo Green.
  8. Drybrush the weapons Gunmetal and again with a little VMC Silver mixed in.
  9. Basecoat any brass parts in VMC Brassy Brass.
  10. Basecoat the wrappings on the guns Dheneb Stone.
  11. Paint the tongues with VMC Brown Rose.
  12. Paint the teeth and nails in Bleached Bone and finish with Skull White.
  13. Wash brass parts with Devlan Mud and the wrappings in Gryphonne Sepia.

  14. Base.
  15. Seal.

Post Mortem

The first batch of 10 Orks were completely assembled before priming. I think I'm going to go with a partial assembly for the next set of 20. As it turns out, for the AOBR Orks, I went with full assembly again and I think I should have assembled everything but the heads and bases.

Notes

Last updated1/18/09
AuthorMichael Kan
Pre-requisites None
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