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Hi

Doing a Seraphon army at the moment and I want to have the big monsters look like the smaller Skinks have daubed them with warpaint.

Essentially I want to paint something on the back of this Bastiladon in Averland Sunset (yellow) to give it some pop.



But how do you make what you paint look like it was hastily painted by the little dudes? Can't decide what technique might make it look realistic. I feel like just painting it on would look weird.

Any tips?

Thanks.

Maybe I have the wrong impression since I don't like warpaint, but if I were to describe it, I'd say it's flat, mono-color (or sectioned into several discrete colors) and generally in stark contrast to the surrounding area. Translated to a miniature that you painstakingly try to give depth, I'm not sure why you would deliberately undermine that with flat warpaint.

If you want hastily applied single color, I think the way to go about it is to layer the paint to have largely solid yellow with some frayed edges where the paint didn't hold or perhaps there are depressions in the skin the paint didn't reach into, along with the occasional patch where the Bastiladon's natural color peaks through, aka where the little guys ran out of paint and had to pick up more to continue - there is some opportunity here to make part of the warpaint look smeared because of a lack of paint on the hands or whatever your Skinks use to apply it.

Yeah your fear of it just looking like flat colour is the reason I'm nervous of doing it. I think I need it to have rough edges and some of the carapace showing through in patches.

Interesting you mention hands... I wonder if I could craft a little skink hand stamp, mount it to a cocktail stick and stamp handprints along the edges.

Sounds fiddly though.

I wonder if a kind of drybrush but with more paint on technique might work to create the streaky effect.

Hmmmmmmm

The plastic Skink priest (the feathery one) has an open palm that might give you a good starting point for a hand stamp, if you have one lying around. No idea how proficient you are with green stuff or if you happen to have instant mold around, but it certainly seems like a good and viable idea to me.

Consider that acrylic paint doesn't harden very quickly and it's easy to take away paint again with the tip of a knife (perhaps not the sharpest one you have, though). If the base layer is fully dried and you're just painting on the warpaint, getting streaks into it with a knife may just give you the effect you want.

Dont thin they paint that way it leaves imperfections and streaks to make it look like it was painted on.

Do it freehand with thick paint. I do all my checkered dags for orks by hand because I highly doubt they paint perfect squares like the transfers.

Another idea I just had is paint it in the same vein as WW2 whitewash that is faded by rain and has (potentially discolored) streaks running down the side. If, yo know, a worn, messy look fits with the rest of the army.

That's a great idea. Even if it's not weathered but the streaks are just trying to show that the paint was applied thickly and ran slightly before it dries, that would look very effective.

Thanks!