Recent news about return of Confrontation miniatures under the new label of Legacy Miniatures reminded me about the tutorial I wrote about painting steeds for drune raiders. Even if it’s nothing new, you may still find it useful if you are looking for ideas how to paint chaos demons or steeds – this method of painting skin may inspire you to do something interesting.

Introduction

As you can see the model I used was a Drune Raider from Confrontation, but the way I wanted to paint his steed was supposed to make it look demonic and unnatural. I feel that this skinned look with well defined muscles can be perfect for painting Chaos creatures.

When I am painting I often forget to take photos in the meantime, so I didn’t make a full step-by-step documentation.

That this skinned look with well defined muscles can be perfect for painting Chaos creatures.

I still hope that what I prepared gives some impression of how I created the effect that may be inspirations for those of you who wonder how to paint chaos models and their skin.

On the very beginning let me explain that the primer was not white. 😀 Don’t tune your display screens. 😉 It’s the grey spray from Maimeri Idea Spray (in my own palette of colors I would call it ‘ash-colored’).

Let’s start!

I started painting with thinning VMC 960 “Violet” heavily.
Remembering about shapes of muscles I applied glazes with a brush. This way I became familiar with the shapes of this model and started creating the next moves.

The next color I used was transparent red-brown – VMC 828 “Woodgrain”.
I used it to define the horse’s muscles more boldly… First I outlined the sinews, and then I added direction to them.

To bind the colors and reduce the contrast, I added glazes in both colors where ever I painted sinews. Don’t try to achieve such an effect in one layer – it was creating by applying more than one layer of paint. The more layers the more saturated your colors will be.

Shading

The next step was applying shadows, which made me use black color. I used ink at this stage, because it adds no texture and allows me to manipulate in recesses and build up protruding muscles… With thin lines I painted transitions from light to shadow on the sinews without losing saturation of colors.

I glazed it with Transparent Blue because Vallejo Black color is not black enough for my concept of such sinister moods

Black looked a bit vulgar on the miniature, so I made it a bit milder by adding some violet and red-brown glazes on the borders of colors.

When I was thinking about the model, I wanted something to tone down the warmth of red colors and I decided to add some green. The drune’s tunic seemed to be a good place for this. To bind the colors of the rider and the horse together, I had to add some green to the whole palette, and so I decided about the area around the eyes, and – omitting the neck – head toward highlights of the lower parts. A color less saturated than reds an violets was supposed to imitate the effect of partial shading. But I found that adding VMC 920 “German Uniform” green made the horse look matt and made it bland and nondescript… and so I found another color 😀

“And in the darkness bind them…”

To bind the green with other colors on the horse I used VMC 938 “Transparent Blue” (as the name suggests it’s a transparent blue paint ;)). It’s most visible on the horse’s face, but you can see it also on the legs, where I used it to cover the green – not only on the edges (as it was done in the upper parts) but also glazed the whole green surfaces with it…

The subject is nearly completely covered now 🙂 To make it more complete I can add that I used VMC 907 “Pale Greyblue” (which is an equivalent of the primer I used) on some parts to highlight the top of sinews, and I covered the deepest shadows with black paint. The dullness of the paint made the black even deeper, and I glazed it with “Transparent Blue” because Vallejo Black color is not black enough for my concept of such sinister moods. 😉

Now you know how to paint Chaos creatures!

If you reached this part of the tutorial, you have enough patience for painting with glazes 😀 I hope you will share your own ideas and methods of painting evil and sinister creatures in comments below.

I wish you good luck.
— Ańa