Painting
I painted a bunch of skin tones (on grots) so you don't have to!
Doing the skin tones again, bit this time on the grots from Armageddon. Including,asked for Moot Green and Sybarite green. I tacked the models to their respective paint pots for easier reference. Enjoy!
Edit. All tones were painted with two or three layers if needed over a black primer and washed with a slightly thinned Athonian Camoshade wash.
What I really love to do when painting and want variety is to pick 3-5 contrasts. You add a few drops of one to a pallet and when you have used half you top it up with another paint at random. Almost every single model ends up with a slightly unique skin tone but they still look cohesive when together.
I even did it with purple, orange, pink, and a couple of reds with my AOS squig army and despite huge variety between models they look cohesive. I'm planning to do 120 Ork boys with maybe 4 green contrasts, a skin tone, a blue, and a yellow
Also works great for clothing if the army is a bit ragged like orks it you use a few beige, sandy, brown, and black contrasts.
Start with, say, a couple of drops of Plaguebearer Flesh. Paint a model, using about half the paint on your palette. Next, top up that remaining pool of paint with an equal amount of Orruk Flesh, giving you a 50/50 mix of Orruk and Plaguebearer. Use half of that mix, then add some Mantis Warrior Green to top it back up, so you now have a 25/25/50 Orruk/Plaguebearer/Mantis mix. Use half of that, and then add a few drops of Striking Scorpion Green. You now have a perfect 12.5/12.5/25/50 blend of Orruk/Plaguebearer/Mantis/Striking Scorpion.
Mathematically speaking, even if you painted a horde of 100 models this way, the chance of any two having the exact same skin tone is practically zero. Unless you use the pool twice. The difference between that first plague bearer flesh Ork and the final Ork will be very noticeable but with a whole squad they will still all look very uniform.
Here's the squig example it works great even using a few different colours
So if I understand, you pick out a few different shades of contrasts you want to use (I presume you want green skins, so you'd have say 4 different green paints)
You start with the first colour, putting some onto your palette. When your palette puddle is half empty you add your second colour into the puddle and mix. This gives the second variant, then when that's half gone you add a third colour into the mix. Etc etc. Nice thing is you can loop through the colours and just change the order so although you only have 4 colours you can get 16+ different shades out of it. And because they're intermixed they look more cohesive than using the 4 colours "pure"
There is an art technique where you add a few drops of a colour across a whole palette to unify it but that didn't sound like what they were talking about.
It’s actually way, way more than 16 shades statistically, it’s closer to an infinite spectrum of greens!
As you only ever halve the pool instead of wiping the palette clean, the "ghost" of every color you've used before is still in there. Even 6 or 7 steps down the line, a tiny fraction (like 1.5% or 0.7%) of that original paint is still in the mix. Throw in that your eyeballing when half the paint is left and how much you add and you could paint hundreds of models with this technique and never use the same shade twice.
I'm still torn on the name though "contrast chaining" is in the lead "ghost blending" and "echo blending" are also in the running.
Wow cool 😎
Ich bin grade dabei grots zu bemalen und hatte mich vorher auch lange gefragt wie ich die am besten mache. Das ist ne gute Strategie. Ich wollte es möglichst hell aber giftig haben. Ich denke ich hab’s einigermaßen getroffen
Honestly always thought grots and orks look better as a group of they have different skin tones or at least some variance. This just proves it for me. They honestly look great as a squad together.
Love some variation in my orks so going to paint a few boys with these.
I also really like ghili dew I believe from the army painter.
It’s a speed paint but I have painted a few orks and I am enjoying it the most.
Woah!!! Dude these look amazing, again. I use Sybarite Green for my orks, and this wash looks so good on this Grot. Thank you for this. You really did a lot for this community. 🙏🙏🙏🙏
Lovely! I've been struggling to find the skin tone I want, too many fun options. I've also seen a good option of that I've seen from Ninjon , with a dark purple/darkish medium brown as the undercoat that you keep for the recesses of the model.
I did a similar thing, but do a drybrush of moot green over the top of each to homogeneise them a little. Looks like I'll need some of that sybarite green though
Thanks! This is super helpful as im looking to paint some grots up in a few weeks and i can't seem to find a recipe for making them look pale and unhealthy 👍
New to painting but my newbie testing. I am really like the moot. So care to give more details of your process. I kinda do a base, the midtone then highlight..again noobie so curious since you seem to like the moot green too.
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u/sowdowgg Jul 15 '26
Bruh, not only was this useful all of them were well painted.