Stage-by-Stage Guide to... Painting Skulls.

This week's Stage-by-Stage is my guide to painting skulls.  I like to make my skulls and bones look old and tired, but still retaining a stark highlight.  I haven't gone with Screaming Skull/Ushabti Bone for this, but instead I have used Rakarth Flesh as my base colour, and worked it up to white.

This guide is pretty straightforward, and only uses a small palette of colours, which are shown below.




Let's get painting!
As with my other blogs, I have produced a series of photos to show the stages involved. You can paint these in 5 stages, but I have added a 6th, which is a second Shade in the eye and nose sockets, as well as some of the deeper recesses.



Stage 1: I painted a coat of Rakarth Flesh over the red primer. This was done in one coat, as I wasn't too bothered about the colour being solid, as I was then going to shade the areas.

Stage 2: I painted Agrax Earthshade (matt version) all over the skulls, letting it well in the eye sockets and recesses.

Stage 3: Go back over the raised areas with Rakarth Flesh, making sure you leave some of the shade in the recesses (it looks much lighter on the photos than in real life)

Stage 4: I have a 50/50 mix of Rakarth Flesh and Ceramite White already made, as I have a LOT of skulls to paint in my Khorne Army.

Stage 5: Ceramite White is applied to the extreme edges. For the dome of the skull, I painted 3 thin coats of white so that there were no streaks

Stage 6: I wasn't happy with how dark the eye sockets were, so I loaded my brush with Agrax Earthshade and added it to the sockets, and where all the skulls meet - this just helped hide any untidy areas and make the model look much darker.


What's been happening this week.
Some of you may have noticed that the photos are looking much better this week. I recently bought a Canon PowerShot SX530 HS camera from a very well established computer and appliance store (mentioning no names).

I have used the camera for this blog, as well as to shoot video for a new product I have been working on (more on that in the weeks to come).

Also this week, I decided to make like a little more difficult for myself, and embarked on painting the Orks from Warhammer 40,000 Black Reach. When I say difficult, I mean look at all those checks!

I wanted to make them look like 2nd Ed. 40K, so I dug my old codex out (can't believe I bought it in 1994!) and have been working on my own version of the scheme, as shown below.  More on the Orks in the next few weeks as well.