"The Mottled Skin of Uruk-Hais?" Topic

I know that many have painted them this way:
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However, how can I duplicate THIS mottled look on 28mm figures?
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Is it possible?

Thanks.

CC

I did mine with white prime, and a 3:2 (Oh, heck, a wet sloppy brush) mix of GW Dark Flesh and water.
Prime it right, and it comes out anturally.

Naturally, too!

You could try using the splatter technique with a toothbrush. Before you apply the highlights to your skin tone, use a color slightly darker than the base skin color. Put it on the end of the toothbrush and pull back the bristles to splatter it on the fig. Then paint your normal highlight over the whole thing splats and all. Don't try to highlight the blotches and non-blotched skin separately. That will make the blotches blend in a little better and look less polkadot-ish. Just be sure to start with subtle color changes.
As for the facepaint, that's always difficult to pull off in 28mm.
Years ago I tried this with a collection of the old Ral Partha Orcs! line. I wanted them to look really nasty and vile. Man I wish I still had those figs!

Thanks.

The white wash face paint is not a problem.
My biggest concern is the mottled and uneven look of the skin itself.

CC

I think that a thick, unevenly applied wash should do the trick. I use Magic Wash on my figures (the Future Floor wax, water and paint wash), and if I don't use enough Future/Water solution, the wash gets thick and pools, making the surface look splotchy. Normally, I dont' like it, but I think you could use it to your advantage here.

Highlight the skin up and then apply several carefully placed black washes. Seemed to work well for me.

To do a CC, here is my example. The leg shows what I am talking about. It is a fairly subtle effect.
coolminiornot.com/112171

I primed mine white, while the paint was still wet applied small sploches of black and redish brown, since the base coat was wet the edges of the sploches whould blend. Then I painted the skin color using a mix of windsor and newton white and burnt sienna. By controling the amount of water in the skin color the underling blotches show through.
William

I have always looked at Uruks and said to myself "mostly reddish skin, covered with dirt and filth." So I painted mine a darkish red and then washed, drybrushed, spattered and otherwise messed up their skin with black paint.

The beautiful thing about Uruks is that you really can't screw them up too badly. They're varied, messy, and irregular to the extreme. They almost reward sloppy painting.

I've gotten a good effect from these ( link ) the one or two times I've done any mottling.

I basically used it to do a sort of drybrush. I squezzed most of the paint out of the sponge and softly dabbed it on.

I would suggest you lay down the base coat (color not primer. periming should already be done) then select the mottling tone. I would suggest a transparent color (i,e, not labled as opaque)
lay down some swatches on a test surface. Then take an oil painters bright brush (stiff boar hair brush) and spread a thin coat of the motling color down and dip the tip of the brite brush into the paint and with a near dry brush stipple the mottling color on your test surface, let it dry and see if that is the effect you want. It too intense add some painting medium to your mottling tone mix well and try it again until y ou achieve your desired effect—it will work

I primed mine white, and basecoated with dark flesh, then put splotches of a pale pinkish skintone on it, then used a thin ink wash (brown/black combo). They came out great, but unfortunately I don't have any pics, as I sold them all about 2 years ago.

I will have to give these suggestions a try. Thanks.

CC

I've mixed paint in my slightly watered ink. Don't stir it all in, leave it a little "un-mixed". Just swish it togeather and go. Also just painted thin watery spots before wash.

So many choices:

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CC

This is interesting:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golfimbul

CC

I really, REALLY like the way these guys look too!

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CC

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CC

CC,

What you are trying to model is a condition known as Vitelligo.

The "Spatter" technique could work if your "Cavas" was larger, but it isn't… It is a few sq. mm.

So, you need to get just a few areas that are either WAY lighter, or WAY darker.

Vitelligo also tends to crawl across areas as if a bug or octopus has crawled across your skin and left a track where it went.

Generally, on a small area like the Uruk-Hai, who do not have much flesh showing anyway, it will show up more on the legs and arms.

I have done mine so that only one or two limbs at most have the really visible mottling, and the others will just have some mild dis-colorations.

Instead of the "Spatter" technique, I will paint the figure with the usual base-coat for the flesh (in the case of the Uruk-Hai, it is blue for the Mordor Uruks and Violet for the Isengard Uruk-Hai. Then, I will dot some areas of either white or black in a random splotch/slash across the limb, with one area that is slightly larger than the others, surrounded by some smaller dots and blotches.

Then, I do the wash as usual (which in the case of the Mordor Uruks is an almost black-brown, and in the case of the Isengard Uruk-Hai, it will be a very dark red (almost black, usually with a slight amount of blue in it, which gives it a strange violet-brown cast).

Dry-Brush time, Mordor Uruks get a cool brown, and the Isengrad Uruk-Hai
get a more red-brown dry-brush.

Then, I will pick out the white areas again, but this time with a more cream color.

If I am feeling very obsessed about it, I will make sure that any vitelligo that crosses any folds in the skin, creases or deep areas get a shading with a peach color.

Then, just because Vitelligo is rarely JUST light areas that are blotchy on dark skin, I will do some very small dots and blotches of blue-black that surround the areas of white slightly at an orthogonal.

On the Berserkers you have a much larger area to go with. The Faces of Lurtz and the other Uruk-Hai personalities also give you some room to play. Be careful that you keep these areas small. It is easy to go overboard.

Also… ALL of the Orcs in LotR had Vitelligo. The Moria "Goblins" had very pale skin (white in some cases) that had dark patches. Some of them had a greenish tint to their flesh tones (more from the lighting than actually having green skin. I have seen the offending Orcs in natural light and in the set-lighting, and in natural light, they are very albino with grey and blue vitelligo (it can be blue as well, but think blue as in blood veins under your skin… break those, and you have a bruised skin that gradually assumes the blue color if it doesn't heal properly, or if vein formation is disrupted).

The Mordor Orcs come in a variety of colors, supposedly (according to the Weta design team) to reflect the different areas of Mordor and Clans they belong to. Obviously, because of how orcs are harvested/farmed (and I do mean farmed) you may get some mixing in the crops, or if an orc actually find someone (thing) to "Breed" with, it may establish some sort of genetic markers that can be traced through skin tone. All of a "crop (if they are "Bred" in the normal manner) will have the same general cast to their skin, and considering that certain offspring are seen as better "seed" crop than others, you will tend towards several dominant skin colorations.

In the Movie, this was reflected in a yellow, orangish, grey-blue/green (again, not really "green", but a skillful mix of blue and grey will get you a "Greenish" look that really isn't green), black, and white skin colorations.

The "Vitelligo" on each skin coloration is best a highly contrasting coloration. Black on white, white on black, orange on blue, blue on orange, and so on…

As soon as I get moved, I will finally be able to get the pictures of the first of my LotR figures on photobucket. The Mordor orcs and Uruk-Hai all have some pretty good examples of vitelligo on them.

Mmmm . . .

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CC

Mottled skin makes me think of dermatlogical disease and the old pictures in the medical Library books when I was working in nursing.

Shudder! Yeah, that would add to the scariness!

Gracias,

Glenn

Anyone else had success doing this on a miniature (28mm or smaller)?

Thanks.

Dan

Warbeads,

The post two above yours had the name of the disease in question: Vitteligo.

I've used similar techniques on a couple of figures with mixed results. I think that I was trying to get too many of the smaller blotches, when they don't really show up at that scale unless you have a microscope or something.

I found that just painting the larger splotches tends to work better. Oh, and it was on a GW LOTR Uruk-Hai