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Hey,

I've just base-coated my first unit of zombies and I was wondering if anyone had any tips for painting their skin & gorey bits (guts hanging out & wounds etc). Any advice would be very much appreciated. Also, I plan on using GW paints so if you know of any good colours to use please say so. Cheers guys.

Throughout my career war-gaming, more specifically during my time enthralled with the “All Things Zombie” skirmish tabletop game, I have painted many, many zombies. Subsequently, I like to believe I have painted gore in anyway possibly imaginable. Furthermore, as the saying goes, “there’s more the one way to skin a cat”: in this case to gore a zombie.

First, are you trying to paint more decayed gore or fresh gore, the difference being decayed gore is normally painted with more muted tones whilst fresher gore is painted with brighter pallets (and, if you like the “fresh” infected look, lots of varnish).

I’ll assume you are wanting to paint fresh gore with a Games Workshop pallet, in which case I’ll refer you to a GW article that I had saved on my computer a while back detailing how to paint gore on ogres, all though you could more then likely find the very article online if you look hard enough. I’ll quote it here just for your convenience.

"We made a 2:2:1:3 mix of Baal Red, Ogryn Flesh, Badab Black and Red Gore. Before applying it we let it dry for a while - the washes tend to make it quite thin. Once it had thickened up a bit, we applied the paint using a Small Drybrush to give it a splattered effect."

"Apply a second coat of the mix to get a nice thick bloodied look. Once this is dry, we covered it all in Gloss Varnish to make it look wet and sticky. Marvellous!"

"In this picture you can see the effect sprayed on to the Ogre (I call it Impact Blood). To do this, I loaded up the Stippling Brush with the blood mix above and flicked it over the model."

Hope that helped mate! Now go gore some ‘zeds.

Regarding skin, go with pallid colours - pale and slightly green, but don't overdo it. Pale blues could also work. Avoid warm colours like red like the plague the zombies died of.

I want to go for a mixture of fresh gore and old gore to represent old corpses and freshly fallen soldiers that have been re-animated to fight their old comrades.

I saw a nice method for blood and gore posted on Youtube (I forget the posters name to credit them), it involved mixing Tamiya's transparent red with some black, and adding more of the red for subsequent layers.
Looks quite good.

I personally make my zombies greyed out. Differing shades of pallid deathly grey. As for gore I did a darker red with a few green washes for some gross rot and lastly some blood red highlights!

Cheers for the tips guys. I did a search on youtube and found a simple technique that looks good that I'm going to try (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsmVUHPtnrs). When I've finished I'm going to post some pics in my Vampire Counts gallery if anyone wants to check it out (no zombies in there yet, just skeletons and a vamp so far).

I make my zombies look like they have been sitting in the ground for an extended amount of time. I don't know the new paint colours but in the older ones I based the skin with talarn flesh then washed it in thrakka green then devlan then badab black. It gives it a dark greenish-brown look to its skin.

I painted the skin on all of my zombies with a triad of Paynes Grey, Dark Burnt Umber, and Medium Flesh. Using varied amounts this made some look more blue, some more brownish, and others a pallid flesh color. On a few I used a very light grey or bleached bone in the mix where bones were exposed. Many thin layers and being mindful of contrast can really bring out the details on GW zombies.

I generally go with a rotting flesh base coat, then just use weak washes of green and brown, purple and blue to get the tone of the skin right and do all the shadows for me. Highlight in rotting flesh again if you really want to.

Quick and easy for a zombie horde.

I like the dirty green zombie look myself and have a quick method for painting them. There's some pics over in my gallery.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-59981-27869_Vampire%20Counts.html

White sprayed undercoat, heavily watered down Catachan green for the flesh and watered down browns/blues/reds for the clothes and details, a bit of red slapped on for blood and then a dark brown wash of my own creation over the entire model (basically Devlan Mud, but since I didn't want to waste Devlan Mud I mixed my own from 3:5 Agrax:Nuln).

The trick is the watered down catachan green so the white shows through slightly underneath which gives a pale look. You don't want it so watered down that it's like a wash and the white shines through too much, but you want it watered down enough that you get enough showing through so the model looks pale and dead (the same applies to the clothes to make them look faded). You could do the same with pinks/browns/greys and it might give you a different colour rather than green. I have seen some nice shadow grey coloured zombies using a similar method to mine.

When it comes to zombies I think speed is the best policy because you'll inevitably have heaps to paint, so white undercoat then watered down brown/green/purple/red/pink followed by a wash gives a nice quick way of painting them. I painted those 6 in the space of an evening and could probably do the whole regiment in a day if I weren't so lazy.