Painting Ork Kommandos

Way back in 2008 I got back into 40k after a long period of not playing or painting. I still had two armies, Ultramarines and Eldar with figures from Rogue Trader, a small number from second edition, and some from Space Crusade and Advanced Space Crusade, but they were boxed up along with some hardening paints and some half-dead brushes. I flogged all the old marines and picked up Assaulte on Black Reach to get some newer Space Marine miniatures.

What happened next surprised me, but I ended up loving the Orks more. While I wasn’t fond of their koptas, I loved the foot sloggers, and the Warboss was superb. It was then that I knew my Orks were going to get out of hand. As with everything, owning them and painting them are two completely separate beasts and after a decade, there’s probably less than a third painted, so with Orktober now upon us, I decided that it was time to break them out and call up the Waaaagh! The Deff Skullz are here.

Despite being Death Skulls, the first miniature I’m painting up for Brush and Boltgun is an Ork Kommando Nob, Arrrghknee Skragganakka, as he’s the leader of my Ork Kill Team. The post starts with him undercoated with Halfords Black Primer.

Skin

I started off with the skin, taking a change from the old way I used to paint it (A dark green, then Goblin green over the top) and painting it in less gaudy colours.

Highlight 1 –
Ork: Waaagh! Flesh mixed with Warboss Green
Grot: Waaagh! Flesh mixed with Skarsnik Green

Highlight 2 –
Ork: Warboss Green
Grot: Skarsnik Green

I also painted the mouth and dynamite (on his back) with Mephiston Red.

Camouflage trousers and Power Klaw

As a nod to the old Combat 95 camouflage clothing that the British Army used to wear, I decided to do paint up the trousers, power klaw and armour paints in the same camouflage. In order to try and get the right kind of shapes for the camouflage, I pulled up a google image of an old smock, and roughly copied that.

Backpack and pouches

Before the Combat 95 kit came out, the bergans and webbing were just plain old olive drab. So I decided to paint them up with Vallejo Russian Uniform.

At this stage I also painted all the metallics, using Citadel Leadbelcher on the bullets, stikkbombz, grenades, bionic arm and power klaw blades, and Retributor Armour on the bullet casings and pistons. I then watched all the Leadbelcher with Nuln Oil, and the Retributor Armour with Agrax Earthshade.

A few details

After this I started to do a few of the details, painting up the marine helmet to look like it’s from an Imperial Fists space marine (Hi, Mike!) using Averland Sunset, washed with Fuegan Orange and then re coloured using Averland Sunset and Yriel Yellow. I also added some more colour to the dynamite using Mephiston Red, painted the fuses, rope and chords with Vallejo Beige Brown and washed with Agrax Earthshade, and then added some Agrax Earthshade to the grenades, blades, metallics, etc to add some weathering.

The final touch here was to paint his t-shirt using Vallejo Black as I wanted it to look as matt as possible, then highlighted with Vallejo German Grey. The t-shirt skulls were painted using pure white.

Goggles

The goggles’ lenses were painted up using the same technique shown in one of our earlier B&B posts (here). The lenses were painted with Vallejo German Cam Bright Green, and then crescents of lighter shades were added until there was just a spot thin line of white on the bottom left of the lens, and a spot of white on the top right. The lighter shades were made by adding a spot of white to the German Cam Bright Green, then increasing the amount of white in the mix with every crescent.

The cigar was painted using Vallejo Flat Brown, as it’s a nice, tobacco-y colour. The teeth were painted with Rakarth Flesh, washed with Seraphim Sepia, then the Rakarth Flesh reapplied to the top two thirds, and a Rakarth Flesh/White mix for the top quarter or so.

Base and Cigar

As I was painting up the Kommando Nob for Kill-Team, I thought I’d go for a stone/rubble type base. I started off the base by painting up the skull using the same method as the teeth, then painted up the stone under his foot using Mechanicus Standard Grey, then highlighting it with two lighter shades (adding more white to the mix each time). The first highlight was used to generally lighten some of the stone, the second was used to highlight the top edges of every ridge/angle on it.

Once the stone was finished, I added Citadel’s texture paint, Astrogranite Debris, which I then washed with Nuln Oil, and highlighted with Vallejo London Grey.

The cigar I washed with Nuln Oil, then I painted the tip white. I used Yriel Yellow, Fire Dragon Bright and Mephiston Red to build up the colour for the burning ember, then lightly added some Black and Grey over the top to represent the ash.

Finally, I added a few brown stripes to his face, like cam creme, using a few layers of Agrax Earthshade. They’ve come out very subtle, but I like the look of it. With that, Arghknee Skragganakka was complete.

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