Morannon Orcs

 I painted up the 36 Morannon Orcs from the Pelennor Boxset with the aim of working on my accuracy and speed painting skills - originally I was aiming to spend about 5 minutes per model but I missed that target and spent about 12 minutes each for a total of  just over 7 hours. That's still considerably faster than anything else I've painted to date so I'm pretty pleased with my experiment. I could have saved about an hour by priming with Silver Spray but didn't have any.

I went with a fairly simple scheme and painted the entire army was one large batch, applying each colour to every model in turn. I've always painted in small batches before (maybe 6-8 models) so doing 36 in one go was rather different, but I actually really liked it as I could see the progress being made and everything got finished at the same time.

Broadly, the timings per model worked out at as follows:

• 2 mins to base silver, wash & drybrush
• 2 mins to base red & wash
• 2 mins to base grey, wash & highlight
• 2 mins to base faces, wash & highlight
• 1 min to paint, wash & highlight hair & fur
• 2 mins to paint & highlight straps (fiddly!)
• 1 min to paint & highlight wood areas

The Paint Scheme for future reference was as follows:

• Prime with Abaddon Black Spray

Armour

• Basecoat with Ironbreaker
• Wash with Reikland Fleshshade

Red Cloth

• Basecoat with Memphiston Red (2 coats needed)
• Wash with Druchi Violet

Grey Cloth

• Basecoat with Skavenblight Dinge
• Wash with Nuln Oil
• Highlight with Stormvermin Fur

Skin - Variant 1

• Basecoat with Baneblade Brown
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade
• Highlight with Baneblade Brown

Skin - Variant 2

• Basecoat with Doombull Brown
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade
• Highlight with Skrag Brown

Skin - Variant 3

• Basecoat with Catellan Green
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade
• Hightlight with Elysian Green

Hair

• Basecoat with Eshin Grey
• Wash with Nuln Oil
• Highlight with Dawnstone

Fur

• Basecoat with Mournfang Brown
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade

Wood

• Basecoat with Dryad Bark
• Highlight with Steel Legion Drab

Straps

• Basecoat with Dryad Bark
• Highlight with Gorthor Brown

Basing

• Apply coat of Stirland Mud
• Drybrush Tyrant Skull
• Add Tufts (Warpainter Scrub Grass small / standard tufts)
• Paint Base Rims Steel Legion Drab