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So I've begun collecting a LoN Army, and I've come up with a paint scheme I like as an idea and just wanted some feedback: Would painting the bones a mix of pink and a bone color look alright? And what shade of pink would you recommend to mix with the bone color if so?

Note: I recognize this is a bit out there, but I want my army to stand out from other LoN Armies, so f anyone has an alternative suggestion for a paint scheme I'd be willing to listen as well.

First, welcome to Dakka, and the legions of DEATH.

It’s an unusual theme, but could work. VERY fresh skeletons would still have a touch of pink to them. Like a necromancer just snapped his fingers and a new legion just stepped out of their meat-suits fresh. Decorate your bases with scraps of flesh and chunks of meat and organs fresh. No time to bleach these bones.

Even with that, I’d keep the pink a subdued tint. Bone is still bone.

If you are starting fresh, I might try the new contrast paint. They look to work similar to glazes, which I think is the technique you want

Prime white/off white/cream/bone
Thin down a pink glaze/contrast paint to the right shade
(maybe nulan oil or a darker brown wash to help establish shadows in the recesses, unsure if you need this with the contrast paint, probably still do)
Drybrush/highlight with a bone color. This will tone down the pink some more, but not hide it all the way
Paint swords, armor, etc as normal.

This is just me spitballing ideas. You probably want to do a few test skeletons to find something you like.

You could always go with Red Skeltons, but that’s a joke army...
(and a very dated reference)

In my opinion pink and bone go well together if you keep one thing in mind. The lighter the pink you choose, the more you want to take your bone color up to white to preserve enough contrast.

I don't know what exactly you have in mind when you say you want to mix them, but if you want to actually mix both paints together and use that to paint skeletons - doesn't that just get you a lighter skin tone?

Me, I could see skeletons look interesting that are based a reddish brown, taken up through a darker all the way to a light pink and then have the raised portions of the bones painted bone and highlighted (off-)white. With leather and rusted steel for contrast and either hollow eyes or a red glow.

Hey, if you check in the old Tomb Kings army book, one of the painting suggestions in there includes pink, fleshy skeletons. I'll take a photo for you when I get home if you like.

I've been experimenting with different coloured skeletons myself too.
Mine are based Standard Mechanicus Grey, washed with Drakenhold Nightshade and then drybrushed Terminus Stone.
I really like the deep blue effect and my lore justification is that they are undead from Ulgu so the shadow magic has seeped into their very bones!

 Nevelon wrote:
First, welcome to Dakka, and the legions of DEATH.

It’s an unusual theme, but could work. VERY fresh skeletons would still have a touch of pink to them. Like a necromancer just snapped his fingers and a new legion just stepped out of their meat-suits fresh. Decorate your bases with scraps of flesh and chunks of meat and organs fresh. No time to bleach these bones.

Even with that, I’d keep the pink a subdued tint. Bone is still bone.

If you are starting fresh, I might try the new contrast paint. They look to work similar to glazes, which I think is the technique you want

Prime white/off white/cream/bone
Thin down a pink glaze/contrast paint to the right shade
(maybe nulan oil or a darker brown wash to help establish shadows in the recesses, unsure if you need this with the contrast paint, probably still do)
Drybrush/highlight with a bone color. This will tone down the pink some more, but not hide it all the way
Paint swords, armor, etc as normal.

This is just me spitballing ideas. You probably want to do a few test skeletons to find something you like.

You could always go with Red Skeltons, but that’s a joke army...
(and a very dated reference)

Thank you for the welcome.

I'll buy one of those cheap easy to build sets to use as tests, though I'll want the pink to stand out a bit and be the actual color of the bones. That might end up looking silly though.

 Geifer wrote:
In my opinion pink and bone go well together if you keep one thing in mind. The lighter the pink you choose, the more you want to take your bone color up to white to preserve enough contrast.

I don't know what exactly you have in mind when you say you want to mix them, but if you want to actually mix both paints together and use that to paint skeletons - doesn't that just get you a lighter skin tone?

Me, I could see skeletons look interesting that are based a reddish brown, taken up through a darker all the way to a light pink and then have the raised portions of the bones painted bone and highlighted (off-)white. With leather and rusted steel for contrast and either hollow eyes or a red glow.

That's a rather good idea actually, probably the best I'll be able to do and not seem like a joke army.

For the mixing part, I'm rather new to painting and was just going off a suggestion from a friend with that. It probably would end up looking like a skin tone if I tried it, though as I said my goal is to make pink the primary color of the bones, and I was thinking that it'd require mixing together a pink with a bone color.

 Kroem wrote:
Hey, if you check in the old Tomb Kings army book, one of the painting suggestions in there includes pink, fleshy skeletons. I'll take a photo for you when I get home if you like.

I've been experimenting with different coloured skeletons myself too.
Mine are based Standard Mechanicus Grey, washed with Drakenhold Nightshade and then drybrushed Terminus Stone.
I really like the deep blue effect and my lore justification is that they are undead from Ulgu so the shadow magic has seeped into their very bones!

I would appreciate if you could take a picture of that, and nice sounding army!

Joanna9700 wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
In my opinion pink and bone go well together if you keep one thing in mind. The lighter the pink you choose, the more you want to take your bone color up to white to preserve enough contrast.

I don't know what exactly you have in mind when you say you want to mix them, but if you want to actually mix both paints together and use that to paint skeletons - doesn't that just get you a lighter skin tone?

Me, I could see skeletons look interesting that are based a reddish brown, taken up through a darker all the way to a light pink and then have the raised portions of the bones painted bone and highlighted (off-)white. With leather and rusted steel for contrast and either hollow eyes or a red glow.

That's a rather good idea actually, probably the best I'll be able to do and not seem like a joke army.

For the mixing part, I'm rather new to painting and was just going off a suggestion from a friend with that. It probably would end up looking like a skin tone if I tried it, though as I said my goal is to make pink the primary color of the bones, and I was thinking that it'd require mixing together a pink with a bone color.

As someone who likes the consistency of using paints straight from the pot, if you're new I'd advise picking colors you like and starting with them. It makes things easier when you try to paint larger armies as you won't have to worry about mix ratios whenever your current batch of paint runs out. To each their own, of course. It's why I like the extensive GW range of paints. They have various small variations of the same color, which makes it easier for people like me who just can't be bothered with mixing paints to pick the right tone.

The advantages of the two different approaches as I see them are as follows:

If you mix pink and bone, you'll add red to an otherwise brown color and give it a warmer feel, as well as a little more presence. You are trying to preserve the expected color of bone by just tinting it a little. It's overall very subtle.

If you paint on the two colors separately, you stray from expectations, which can make it harder to convincingly get across the color scheme. You do get something striking, however.

There's nothing wrong with either approach. Obviously the latter is the one you worry about when you say silly and joke army. That's a concern, of course, but the difference between striking and silly is in the execution, really, and there are certain ways to mitigate an unconventional choice of colors. The two obvious ones are embedding the pink, which is not typically associated with bone, in an array of different colors that convey a more conventional feel of the finished model. It's basically what I would do with the color choices I posted before. If you make the rest of the model look serious, the pink parts will also be considered serious by association. Depth, especially consistently applied across the various colors, can help with that. Blending as well as introducing splashes of different colors to break up large single color areas can help as well.

The other thing, which works especially well with undead and post-apocalyptic stuff, is weathering. It doesn't even have to be heavily applied, but as above just getting the idea across that you are serious with the entire model helps bring in line the parts that might in isolation be considered silly.

Well, that's my take anyway. Be sure to post one of those test skeletons when it's painted.

one more and more common way is to paint the skellys regular bone colour, but do all cloth parts in pink.
that makes them stand out witout looking too silly.

personly i did my skellys as mentioned above, grey basecoat, drakenhold shade wash. i`ll see if i can take a pic of one later today.

Hey so I took the photo, he's kinda pink!
https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/1014129-Tomb%20King%20paint%20advice.html

Frozen Dwarf, great minds and all that! Here's some of my blue skeletons as well;
https://www.dakkadakka.com/core/gallery-viewimage.jsp?i=1014130
https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/1014131-Blue%20unarmoured%20skellies.html

I too would recommend very thin glazes of a pale pink.

Thank you for the suggestions Geifer. I was intending to go serious with the paint on the rest of the model anyway, hopefully it'll help the pink turn out alright.

I'll use the DnD skeleton model as a test once I have time to paint.

Oh and Kroem thank you for the pictures! The suggestions for blue and flesh look rather nice, and if the pink idea doesn't work out I'll try one of those instead.

Having, unfortunately, seen plenty of fresh corpses/bones, they do indeed have a pink hue to them (and are more flexible than you'd imagine). However, I don't know that it'd look amaze-balls actually painting them like that. Maybe some light glazing around the joints or very sporadically?

I agree with Elbows, not all over, but just in the reces's etc would look nice actually.

So, I went down to my FLGS yesterday, got help from one of the employees in painting. He was a huge help and allowed me to test out the blue-ish scheme from Tomb Kings, and my idea of pink. I went with the pink, just all in on it. Today I was able to finish up on the spear and shield, gave it a rusty look. Last thing I'll need to do is the banner/cloth on the spear. I'm thinking of going the same color as the eyes for it.







Any comments welcome of course, I'm still rather new to painting and would appreciate any tips.

Overall, what is your color vision for the army? Besides pink skeletons. What color robes are your vampires/necromancers/etc going to wear? Do you have secondary/tertiary/accent colors in mind? What are you doing for bases? You might want to break out a color wheel, but even with that there are a number of different philosophies.

You want your army to look cohesive. Even if each unit has a different scheme, things like bases and ribbons can help tie things together.

I would not go with the same color as the eyes. If you just keep hitting the same color notes the details can get lost in a sea of color. I’d take the opportunity to add a bit of spot color with the ribbon. What color to use depends on what else you have in your army, and the color of the base.

From a practical POV if you have an army list in mind, that spot color can also be used to distinguish units.

 Nevelon wrote:
Overall, what is your color vision for the army? Besides pink skeletons. What color robes are your vampires/necromancers/etc going to wear? Do you have secondary/tertiary/accent colors in mind? What are you doing for bases? You might want to break out a color wheel, but even with that there are a number of different philosophies.

You want your army to look cohesive. Even if each unit has a different scheme, things like bases and ribbons can help tie things together.

I would not go with the same color as the eyes. If you just keep hitting the same color notes the details can get lost in a sea of color. I’d take the opportunity to add a bit of spot color with the ribbon. What color to use depends on what else you have in your army, and the color of the base.

From a practical POV if you have an army list in mind, that spot color can also be used to distinguish units.

For the overall vision I was going to go off the base paint scheme GW recommends for most units, just with pink bone. Also, I've honestly not thought much on bases given that I'm more worried about even acquiring the base paints for the actual skeletons I have so far.

I'm planning my list to have two Necromancers, and I was thinking of matching their robes with the ribbons on each unit of 40 skeleton warriors. I want to show each Necromancer having command over one unit of skeletons. Given that I'm planning on two units of 40 each I believe that works.

Nice work on the colour scheme, it looks really cool.

It's always best to keep it clean and simple on models that you need to paint a lot of!