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Altho' I'm a regular painter of devotees to the Dark Gods I've recently been painting up an ork warboss as a birthday present for a friend and one thing's struck me:

According to the fluff behind orks (and their Warhammer counterparts) they are a plant/fungi based lifeform, hence the green skin through chlorophyll an' such, in which case, why do most people paint the gums and tongues on their boyz red/pink?

I can understand it from an aesthetic point of view (Stands out amongst the overall green and draws the eye to that point of the model) but surely from a physical point they should be a lighter shade of green than the rest of the figure?

 

 

Or maybe dark green/black? I get your point, and I've always painted mine red as well - but that's probably because I think the whole organic/fungus thing is a bunch of crap.

Perhaps their tongues are rose petals?

Or maybe a venus fly trap.

Why should chlorophyll in the tounge? It is only in the upper skin where algae are to make the skin more resistant to chops and blows. Don't forget that 40k Orcs also have red blood and blood shines through skin a bodypart with less chlorophyll like the tounge would be brown than.

there would be no point to have green inside the mouth. Chlorophyll is used to make energy for plants from the sun or other ambient light sources. The mouth rarely sees any sun light, or not enough to make any chlorophyll there worth it.
also, when not exposed to oxygen, human blood is blue right, i mean just look at your wrists.So therefore ork mouths are blueish? No, i think they just have red mouths.

Fungi don't contain chlorophyll. They aren't plants.

Plants aren't all green. Some are red, yellow, brown or black. Same for algae, there are different colours.

There are lizards with green skin and blue tongues.

Finished off the figure last night and gave it a look when I got in this evening. All I could think was "It need's more....red! Dammit!"
So logic be dammned (which as evidenced by a few posters here, doesn't actually apply in the first place, thanks guys. :~) ), I'm going to go with the paintbrush wielding herd and break out the red gore/blood red combo.

Course, I blame all this on peer pressure. Heh.

Orks just really like cherry popcicles.

Maybe the "WAAAGH!" is louder if you paint your tongue red?

It's definately faster. It's a proven fact that the red ones always are.

I think they talked about this one time in a WD article. They just said "it's one of those things". Orks should have green blood/green tongues but that just wouldn't look right, so they don't!

Simple as that. Fluff is often warped to fit simple coolness, and this is one such case.

yeah, I read that too. Orks with green blood would look like Orks im mint-sauce

its the same thing about the bolter shells flying out of the gun.while the weapon itself is 'caseless'.

it just looks cool.
Its one of the GW things that you just accustomed to and forget.then start asking questions