Painting daemons and monsters - help with a shopping list

[Warpmiss]

Hello everyone,

 

I am looking to expand my list of paints to get better results painting not just my Death Guard but also some monster models from Scibor and HiTech. It's colors for the flesh/skin that I am thinking the most about as I'd like to get different effects: rotting, flayed, bruised, ulcers, warts, sores, eczemas, etc (at this point I'm just writing whatever skin-related anomaly comes to mind but you probably get the idea).

 

So far I have been painting my Plague Marines and poxwalkers with Vallejo's Non-death Chaos set of paints http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/m/en_US/non-death-chaos-_by-angel-giraldez_-(8-game-color)/family/18/157 and some other extra colors here and there (but they are mostly basic ones so I don't think a comprehensive list of those is needed).

 

 

I was thinking about getting Vallejo's Special Effects Set http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/m/en_US/special-effects-set---8-game-effects-with-painting-guide-by-angel-giraldez./family/18/154 since it seems it can be great for the flesh effects but I'd like to hear some opinions about it first if possible. Or see what other possibilities from Vallejo or Citadel are out there.

 

Thank you beforehand!

[battle captain corpus]

Personally I've always found having a solid range of washes to compliment your paints is a wise choice.

 

The GW washes have gone through many incarnations and the current set isn't too bad. Used sparingly and in the right way they will boost the effects you're trying to achieve with little to no effort.

 

Without going too graphic , dead flesh comes in many hues and colours so I would also experiment with a wide range of flesh tones and washes to see how it pans out. Maybe get a generic human miniature with plenty of flesh on display and use this as a tester for different schemes?

 

BCC

[DuskRaider]

A corpse will usually be pale due to blood no longer circulating (obviously since the heart is no longer pumping blood due to being uhh.. dead), while blood itself will settle in various parts of the body and flow to whatever side of the corpse is on the ground thanks to gravity. Those areas will be purple or dark red since the now congealing blood is just under the surface. This is the same reason infections and the sort are red or purple... blood pooling around the area, mainly due to white blood cells attempt to combat the infection, hence pus being whitish. 

 

The flesh itself, like I said, will usually be pale but depending on what the state of decay is can be any hue including the aforementioned red & purple along with blue, yellow and even green. While not for the squeamish, you could always Google images to get a good idea of what to do. Alternatively, you could always go with a theme like blue as a tribute to the original Dawn of the Dead or something like that.

[Warpmiss]

battle captain corpus

 

I keep forgetting washes are a thing, haha Now I remember that some months ago I was thinking about buying some washes and in the end I never did.

 

These specific sets for Vallejo usually include an ink or two to help adding details but it's complicated to get many effects with just one!

 

DuskRaider

 

Using pics for reference shouldn't be a problem. Nor would it be the first time as I've done it before for references while drawing. My problem would be translating that into the range of base and layer paints, washes, inks, etc available since I'm still very ignorant of those. Haha

Edited January 23, 2018 by Warpmiss

[DuskRaider]

Have you seen my Death Guard, especially my Poxwalkers? I use a lot of washes to achieve my corpse flesh over a base skintone (Pallid Wych Flesh). Here's a great tutorial for similar steps to mine:

 

http://wilhelminiatures.blogspot.com/2016/12/tutorial-step-by-step-pestigor.html

 

Truthfully, I think Wilhelm's are nicer than mine but I do mine my own way that I feel comfortable with and what gives me the best visual I can achieve from my head to the model. 

[Warpmiss]

I hadn't, actually. Those are some nice models you have! Thanks for the tutorial too!

 

From what I have seen so far, aside from the Pallid Wych Flesh, I might have to switch from Chaos Black to Corax White for the models that show more skin (like the poxwalkers).  

[Major_Gilbear]

It's a pretty big topic to cover in just one post!

 

A few things I thought might be relevant:

 

Angel Giraldez was contracted by Vallejo to produce a few of the tutorial pamphlets for their paint sets (including the Special Effects set you mentioned). Angel is fairly active on Facebook, and is super-helpful in answering questions or posting examples. If you have any specific questions, or are struggling with a technique, I highly recommend contacting him and asking for advice.

 

Washes and glazes over a white or ivory undercoat are a nice quick and simple way of getting a variety of dead and unhealthy-looking flesh tones. These can be painted in stages, and/or painted over each other whilst wet to produce some nice intermingled colour effects. An example of painting a model with washes can be found here by Tyler Mengel - whilst it may not save you much time on one model, it's a much more efficient way of painting a big squad (like a unit of Poxwalkers for example).

 

Citadel produce a wide variety of both washes and glazes, which are well worth your time looking into. If you have a local GW store, I'd recommend stopping by and asking if you can try them out at the store's painting area - that way you can see what they're like and buy the ones you want. Additionally, Army Painter produce a range of economically-priced washes that I have found to be very good. Using these with the Citadel products should give you a huge range of colours, not to mention that you can mix them together to get even more colours as well.

 

If you have any specific effects that you're looking to acheive, feel free to ask here - I'm sure that we can give you more specific advice. :)

[Warpmiss]

Thanks, Major_Gilbear! I wanted to reply after taking a good look at those tutorials. I think I have a good idea of what I want to try to do right now and a list of the paints I would need (and a list of their Vallejo equivalents for those I've been able to find) but I will probably pester my local GW employees for help anyway. hahaha

[Warpmiss]

So, guys, how would one paint Rotigus in his official colors? I haven't purchased the model yet but I want to use that scheme in other models and my Google-fu is not helping me much, I either run into 'pure' GUO tutorials or airbrushing tutorials (and I'm not yet ready to get an airbrush!!).