Fantasy Color Series - Orcs & Goblins Game Color Set

Two greens, two races

Green skin has two settled forms in fantasy and the difference between them is one of color, not of size. An orc is suited by a cooler green with a blue underside, which looks hard and muscular. A goblin tends to be noticeably more yellow, almost toward olive, which makes him look smaller and unhealthy. If both figures are painted in the same tone, they merge into a heap and the scene loses its legibility.

Building the green tone

Green is treacherous in that darkening it with black kills it at once: instead of a shadow a dirty gray arises. The set therefore offers ready positions between which you move by choosing a bottle. The darkest position goes into the folds of the neck and under the ribs, the middle one holds the area and the lightest is left only on the crown of the head, on the knuckles and on the bridge of the nose. To liven it up it helps to add a tiny amount of a warm tone to the lightest position, so that the skin does not look like painted sheet metal.

What belongs with the skin

Green figures rarely wear clean equipment. Damped browns for the leather straps, tarnished steel for axes and a pale bone tone for teeth and claws give the green area a counterweight, and only in comparison with them does it come out how saturated the skin is.

Matte acrylics for a brush in bottles with a dropper, thinnable with water.

Unifying the whole group

With a larger group of figures it pays to keep a single color key and to create the differences between individuals on the equipment instead. The eye then reads the skin as one species, whereas cloaks, shields and scarves of differing colors tell the individual warriors apart. The opposite procedure, that is varied skin and uniform equipment, turns a group into a disjointed mixture in which the main figure is lost. The dropper in the cap meanwhile allows a mixed ratio to be repeated even after a longer break, so a group can be finished in parts.