How to sculpt daemon flesh from nothing

[hd3]

So I'm being gifted a very nice forgefiend variant very soon. However it is entirely mechanical which is the one part of the model I dislike. Daemon engines always have patches of flesh growing in the recesses like cancerous growth. I've never sculpted anything like this before so I was wondering if anyone could advise me how to build in some daemon flesh in the recesses.

 

If I can I'd like to sculpt in some daemon flesh on top of the black under armour sections

 Maybe painting the hoses and cabling to look s bit more like intestines too.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Well, I did some demon flesh sculpting as part of my defliler kitbash, though I can't say my technique was much more than "mush it in place, use a rounded tool (the back of my exacto knife) to smooth and shape it, imbed guitar wires where appropriate".

 

For yours, you have the added challenge of wanting to cover parts that are, in places, raised over areas you presumably don't want covered.  That can be difficult, as doesn't leave you as much luxury to just plop the stuff on and shape it, as you will likely have to be careful not to have it get too thick.  So, come grinding or cutting down of the parts you might want to cover might be helpful.

[Xenith]

I've done a bit in my time, I've largely stuck the blob on, then used a tool to 'drag' lines into the mass and away from the centre of the blob to cover the areas I want - I was going for a tortured flesh look on Obliterators:

 

 

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Obliterator

There's a bit on my chaos knight here:

 

 

[hd3]

44 minutes ago, Xenith said:

I've done a bit in my time, I've largely stuck the blob on, then used a tool to 'drag' lines into the mass and away from the centre of the blob to cover the areas I want - I was going for a tortured flesh look on Obliterators:

 

 

#

 

Obliterator

There's a bit on my chaos knight here:

 

 

 

Nice and veiny! Did you use milliput?

[Xenith]

Thanks! That's all just normal green stuff. You can see the difference in my first attempt with the heavy bolter havoc and the knight - the first was many straight lines and i think it looks a bit too regular now, the knight is a bit more random, and I tried to vary drag-spacing, if that makes sense to have bigger bits of un-strtched flesh, and then ragged edges where it's creeping across the surface of the knight. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I think its also helpful to consider what you want the flesh to represent before sculpting it, as that will likely impact what it looks like.  In my mind, I see there as being two types:

 

1.  Actual muscles and "anatomical" flesh.  This is the kind you see on models like the forgefiend.  For that, I would sit down with existing GW models and try to copy what they have done for a particular muscle group, or to find an anatomical reference (a hairless cat, or a skinned animal) and try to replicate that.  Generally, for this kind you want densely packed bundles with a bit of a bulge in the middle, stretching between two elements of the model where one would expect a muscle group to go if it were a real creature.  In this form, you probably want to minimize the grooves and individual strings to have a move coherent mass.

 

2.  "Decorative" or invasive flesh.  This flesh on Xenith's knight is a great example.  Generally, this type will be more "stringy" and chaotic, as it doesn't need to make anatomical sense.