Rune's Slaughterpriests

[RuneBrush]

I started my Slaughtepriests September time last year, but popped them to one side to do a few different projects.  I'm needing to sort out getting my Bloodbound army up to the 2k mark for June, so thought it made sense to finish them off before I started with anything else - as much as I enjoy having more than one project on the go, having multiple for one army is just a tad silly.

So here's the first one got to an "almost finished" state.  He still needs his mouth done and the pendant that hangs from his neck, but otherwise I'm relatively happy with him.  The base will be sorted when I've got a dozen or so to do as it's easier to crack out a load of them at once.

I'm hoping to get the other Slaughterpriest to a similar state tonight

 

[Uruk_Guy]

Really like the pale skin!  Planning on doing some blood splatters on him?  

[Carnelian]

What paints and techniques did you use for the skin? Its very ghostly looking. 

[RuneBrush]

14 hours ago, Uruk_Guy said:

Really like the pale skin!  Planning on doing some blood splatters on him?  

Cheers.  Yup, he'll get some blood and bits applied when I do the base.  I tend to look at this as one of those "final" stages and knock out a dozen or so models with the same technique (which is pretty messy)

33 minutes ago, Carnelian said:

What paints and techniques did you use for the skin? Its very ghostly looking. 

Lots of very thin washes   Here's how I did it - it's significantly more detailed than any of my other models as I wanted something that really popped on the tabletop, plus I was itching to paint some models that weren't "tabletop" standard.

First off I applied a base layer of Rakarth flesh over a black undercoat.  I was trying to tie this into the rest of my Bloodbound and felt a white undercoat would make it a bit too pale in comparison, but it means you need an undercoat colour first.  You could easily use different colours which would change the overall finish.

I then mixed up a pot of flesh colour using a mix of Vallejo Air Grey White with a tiny touch of Mephiston Red and a tiny touch of Bugmans Glow.  And I mean tiny drop - basically use a cocktail stick to add it in.  You're looking for a colour that has the slightest hint of warmth in it.  This was airbrushed over the model (if you want to brush it on, just use the non-airbrush paint instead else it'll take you days to get solid coverage).  I then added a bit of white to the mix and did a zenithal highlight (which you could skip).  I always find the pale Vallejo Air colours takes a while to cure so I left this overnight.

Shading was started off with two washes of Drakenhof Nightshade thinned with Lahmian Medium at a 1:10 ratio.  This is basically tinted water, and you want to apply it carefully over the entire model, don't let it pool and leave it at least 20 minutes to dry.  Then Drakenhof again, but thinned 1:6 and apply this broadly to the shadows - use your brush to push it into the recesses rather than how you would normally shade.  Repeat this until the shadows have some depth to them - try to add a bit of variety, under the arms and pecks should be darker than round his abs for example.

To add a bit of warmth, I mixed up Drakenhof Nightshade, Reikland Fleshade and thinned with Lahmian Medium in a 1:1:8 ratio.  Very carefully apply this to the shadows.  The brown will add warmth to the unnaturally cold looking flesh, which in this case makes the model look human rather than like a frozen corpse.  You could equally add in purple or green if you were painting a vampire or other non-mortal model.

Once the shadow was dry I went back to the 1:6 Drakenhof mix and pushed the shadows further.  This tempers down the warm brown too - giving the impression of warmth emanating from the body rather than warm shadows.  You can also push any shadows you're not happy with.

Sore patches and hooks were simply done with thinned down Carronberg Crimson and the cuts with a Mephiston Red and Khorne Red mix.

Final step is to go back to the base flesh colour (hence mixing up a pot) and redefine the muscles.  A highlight of Palid Wych Flesh was enough to finish it off!

Now that sounds a lot more complicated than it actually was.  I knocked out the flesh of the two Slaughterpriests over two or three evenings and wouldn't have said that I pushed myself hard to do that - I could have done a unit of five in the same sort of time if I'm honest.  The trick is to apply the washes as a glaze rather than slathering them all over.  If it's not dark enough apply it again rather than put on a thicker coat.

I took photos of them once I'd finished off the skin: [ Link to Front ] [ Link to Back ]

[Carnelian]

I'm impressed! I'm thinking of doing a whole bloodbound army with pale skin and black trousers and gold trim so that they can be visually unified as part of a non specific chaos God army

But I think I might take a few shortcuts!

[RuneBrush]

1 hour ago, Carnelian said:

I'm impressed! I'm thinking of doing a whole bloodbound army with pale skin and black trousers and gold trim so that they can be visually unified as part of a non specific chaos God army

But I think I might take a few shortcuts!

Cheers.  It was mostly experimentation in truth.

I'm sure that with a bit of thought, you could probably simplify my process down by a huge margin.  To a certain extent you could do one or two washes and then just touch up with the base colour plus a highlight!  I'd say the key part is to ensure the base colour doesn't have too much pink/flesh colour in to achieve that pale ghostly effect.