Skaven monster skin!

[hughwyeth]

Hey people!

 

I've got a hell pit abomination, Thanquol, Warpgnaw Verminlord and Warlord on Brood Horror to paint. I've previously painted a Jabberslythe and rat ogors (profile pic!) with my usual process for skin of  bugmans glow, wash and then cadian fleshtone/other lighter tones layered on top. This gives a decent mid-tone skin effect. 

However, now I have an airbrush to play with and am thinking of different paint combinations/processes for the massive models. Previously I'd do multiple coats of bugmans to get a nice even tone and then multiple washed-down lighter fleshtones. But with the airbrush, I'm thinking that techniques like zenithall highlighting might open some different combinations for me. Does anyone have alternate colours they use for skaven/monster pale flesh and any example pics? I'd like it paler than my bugmans combination  ideally. 

[Skrattch Skarpaw]

Umm, not sure how helpful this will be but i'll give it a shot.

Basically what i've found with airbrushing is you can get huge, huge contrast very easily that would be ridiculously difficult with a regular brush, i'm sure you're aware of that right now.
A technique you could give a go, that really helps paintjobs pop, especially on big monsters like thanquol, is called pre-shading, it's tough to describe but you basically fill in the shadows and highlights in black & white, then you take a heavily diluted paint, in the case you mentioned would be bugmans glow, probably 5 parts water to 1 part paint, and spray it so thinly over the pre-shading  (called a candy coat), that the highlighting and shading you laid down in black and white shows through and creates a very natural contrast,

If you want help with airbrushing on things like zenithall highlighting, I would 100% suggest you go to Youtube and look up a guy called Next Level Painting and scroll through his videos.

On alternative paint schemes, the obvious one would be a lighter pallid tone, instead of bugmans glow you could swap out for Rakarth flesh, instead of cadian fleshtone use... pallid wych flesh annnnnnd for extreme highlights go up to pure white.
Washing would be reikland fleshshade diluted with medium 2 to 1, gives it a bit of warmth.

Anyway.. check out next level paintings videos for help with pre-shading and zenithal highlighting, he's also ill bet, done a ton of monster videos if you want inspiration.

[hughwyeth]

4 minutes ago, Skrattch Skarpaw said:

Umm, not sure how helpful this will be but i'll give it a shot.

Basically what i've found with airbrushing is you can get huge, huge contrast very easily that would be ridiculously difficult with a regular brush, i'm sure you're aware of that right now.
A technique you could give a go, that really helps paintjobs pop, especially on big monsters like thanquol, is called pre-shading, it's tough to describe but you basically fill in the shadows and highlights in black & white, then you take a heavily diluted paint, in the case you mentioned would be bugmans glow, probably 5 parts water to 1 part paint, and spray it so thinly over the pre-shading  (called a candy coat), that the highlighting and shading you laid down in black and white shows through and creates a very natural contrast,

If you want help with airbrushing on things like zenithall highlighting, I would 100% suggest you go to Youtube and look up a guy called Next Level Painting and scroll through his videos.

On alternative paint schemes, the obvious one would be a lighter pallid tone, instead of bugmans glow you could swap out for Rakarth flesh, instead of cadian fleshtone use... pallid wych flesh annnnnnd for extreme highlights go up to pure white.
Washing would be reikland fleshshade diluted with medium 2 to 1, gives it a bit of warmth.

Anyway.. check out next level paintings videos for help with pre-shading and zenithal highlighting, he's also ill bet, done a ton of monster videos if you want inspiration.

Thanks mate, that's exactly what I was looking for!

[Lucio]

Avoid Zenithal highlighting unless you're making a diorama, it's a technique designed to simulate point source lighting. Great if you're building a lava bridge and want to pick up the glow, useless on tabletop miniatures.

What you can do however is preshade, prime black and then very lightly and from a greater than usual distance, spray on your grey, aiming to coat the raised surfaces.

Then apply your white or off white  (e.g palid wych flesh, ushabiti bone) but even more minimal on the coverage.

From here, wash using Reikland flesh shade for a traditional flesh colour, and then thinned down Agrax for the recesses

[hughwyeth]

1 hour ago, Lucio said:

Avoid Zenithal highlighting unless you're making a diorama, it's a technique designed to simulate point source lighting. Great if you're building a lava bridge and want to pick up the glow, useless on tabletop miniatures.

What you can do however is preshade, prime black and then very lightly and from a greater than usual distance, spray on your grey, aiming to coat the raised surfaces.

Then apply your white or off white  (e.g palid wych flesh, ushabiti bone) but even more minimal on the coverage.

From here, wash using Reikland flesh shade for a traditional flesh colour, and then thinned down Agrax for the recesses

I saw a tutorial where a guy painted a load of skaven with just washes and it looked pretty good. Using pre-shading with washes would work even better, thanks. I'll have to test it out on something first...