*+*How to Paint Pelts/Fur Tutorial*+*

[Fytharin]

Greetings Brothers! With E Tenebrae Lux upon us I wanted to do this tutorial to help us dust out our pelts and get us looking less ragged like the drunken lot we are. I had noticed a few comments through out the forum in regards to painting fur and thought I might as well take a few pictures while working on my own vow.

 

Below are two models that both have a different style of fur sculpted on the miniature but are both Vlka Fenryka. The left has less of the carved out fur you see on the right and more of a mottled lumpy texture.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v204/zoogarama/40k%20Mini%20pics/d6b58564-16f3-4bad-abfe-2b44f79bae39_zps7d31011d.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v204/zoogarama/40k%20Mini%20pics/119300d6-9351-4435-a7c8-14339f5215bd_zps7b91d6d2.jpg

 

First thing to do is base color. Choose what color you want your pelt to be overall and pick a dark shade and a slightly lighter shade and trace the lighter shade along the outside for the most part. Try to imagine the fur on the animal and where the lighter colors would be. Solid colors also work just fine like black and white however you tend to miss out on the layered nature wolves have in their fur. Next we ink the whole thing to put some depth into the model.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v204/zoogarama/40k%20Mini%20pics/33114045-989d-4d06-9730-bd129523b012_zpsb25e8918.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v204/zoogarama/40k%20Mini%20pics/e3806abf-3eee-4953-ab37-545270824ca0_zpsd071eace.jpg

 

For the grey I used black ink and brown for the other HOWEVER it is worth noting that on whatever color you choose using brown ink on the model for the shade can be a good choice as it tends to give the fur a dirty look.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v204/zoogarama/40k%20Mini%20pics/81865f82-e706-44ff-91ca-e07fe0c74b9c_zpscbdfbe3f.jpg

 

Make sure you let the ink dry COMPLETELY otherwise the next step will not give you good results. I tend to wait at least 30 minutes if not and hour for all of the ink to dry especially if the fur is deeply sculpted like on our fenrisian wolves. Once it's dry then you start to dry brush. Pick a color that is a lighter shade than both of the colors you've already used. Dip your brush and then wipe away most of the paint onto a paper towel until barely any comes off. Then what you'll do is stroke your brush lightly against the top of the model so that the paint only sticks to the edges of the model. The result should come out to something like this.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v204/zoogarama/40k%20Mini%20pics/08c3f9d8-f6c0-413a-b457-4d794eb73425_zps6c3b12ab.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v204/zoogarama/40k%20Mini%20pics/be6c3307-e8c0-4149-879b-15b8c124a757_zps0eefcdc3.jpg

 

Even try picking a lighter shade to higlight lighter around the edges to add more shadings to the model. It's not easy to see when looking directly at the model but it does make a difference. I lost a lot of the lighter brown in my Njal model I think to heavy inking so I may go back and repaint it but otherwise that's all there is to it! The grey model has a very different look due to the way it has been modeled and is something that needs to be pointed out. You don't run into it so much on SW models but there are some animals I have seen that hardly have any textured fur which makes this technique impossible to implement effectively.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v204/zoogarama/40k%20Mini%20pics/f809ead2-392b-410e-81fb-7c398b4c63a3_zpsf6f4547a.jpg

 

These two are some models I painted for a friend but I put them here so you could see an example of a bad time to use this technique. So much of our painting time gets consumed by trying new things I might as well try and save you some time considering how much time I spent on them. :P The model on the left had some ridges to the fur but the female on the right had practically nothing so I actually had to go in and hand paint the lines to get some appearance of depth. My point here is just make sure you take a good look at your model before painting it because it's going to determine the kind of technique you use.

 

I hope this helped or at least inspired a few people. Let me know if anyone has any questions.

 

Cheers brothers!

[logun]

i will definately be trying this, thanks

[Kasper_Hawser]

Thank you so much for this advice. However, can you recommend what colours to use as the darker shade, lighter shade and later the dry brushing shade for following:

 

1) A mostly Black wolf (haven't done before)

2) A mostly brown wolf (for me, I use Beastly Brown, wash with agrax earthshade, then drybrush with black to darken patches of its fur.)

3) A mostly white wolf. (haven't done before)

 

All of these I aim for my Thunderwolf calvary, but for my cloaks, I mostly use brown fur.

[DobbyKroket]

Thank you so much for this advice. However, can you recommend what colours to use as the darker shade, lighter shade and later the dry brushing shade for following:

 

1) A mostly Black wolf (haven't done before)

2) A mostly brown wolf (for me, I use Beastly Brown, wash with agrax earthshade, then drybrush with black to darken patches of its fur.)

3) A mostly white wolf. (haven't done before)

 

All of these I aim for my Thunderwolf calvary, but for my cloaks, I mostly use brown fur.

 

for a white wolf I can redirect you to my ETLIII WIP (link in signature)

for the black and brown wolves I cant help you.

 

-rps

[Leif Bearclaw]

Haven't tried black, but off the top of my head I'd probably use black base coat, and then mechanicus standard grey, darkened with black, in increasing lighter shades for the drybrushing, then a black wash.

 

For brown I normally go for scorched brown base, then a reasonably heavy bestial brown dry brush, followed by a lighter dry brush of bubonic brown (sorry I don't know what these correspond to in the new GW paint range).

[Fytharin]

Thank you so much for this advice. However, can you recommend what colours to use as the darker shade, lighter shade and later the dry brushing shade for following:

 

1) A mostly Black wolf (haven't done before)

2) A mostly brown wolf (for me, I use Beastly Brown, wash with agrax earthshade, then drybrush with black to darken patches of its fur.)

3) A mostly white wolf. (haven't done before)

 

All of these I aim for my Thunderwolf calvary, but for my cloaks, I mostly use brown fur.

 

Black and white can be tricky sometimes because they both have the same problem where it swallows up detail. For white I actually start with a light grey (Administratum Grey), and lightly ink before dry brushing. You can do black or brown it depends on the look you're going for but you really have to be careful with the amount of ink otherwise you risk losing the overall "whiteness" of the coat.

 

Black is a bit easier however I tend to do just a really dark grey (Mechanicus Standard Grey) normal pelt layout. In order to not make the model look like a giant black hole paint black onto the back and inside of the limbs and then paint a dark grey on the outside to give the fur some layering. You can ink it in black but again not too heavily otherwise you'll lose the layering effect. And then dry brush with a lighter grey (Dawnstone, Administratum Grey) and maybe with some white very sparingly on the back bone and tufts of fur that really stick out and catch the light.

 

For brown wolves I'm going to post this picture of an oldie I did back in the day.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v204/zoogarama/40k%20Mini%20pics/DSC01404.jpg

 

The nice thing about this wolf is all the blending was done without ink. I think I went Mournfang Brown, Balor Brown and Ushabti Bone and next time I would have inked a bit better but this is a pretty straightforward example of what you would be doing. I don't think I had finished the face at this stage however.

[Dantay VI]

Hi Fyth,

 

Thanks for the tutorial, I followed as you suggested, but used an extra brown for the big expanse of fur and used the wash.

 

http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb456/dantay_xv/P1000729.jpg

 

http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb456/dantay_xv/P1000722.jpg

 

Thank you

[Fytharin]

Wow Dantay those look awesome, nicely done!