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I'm starting a death guard army and wanting to paint the skin like they're all suffering from cyanosis (blue skin from a lack of oxygen). I was thinking of base coating blue and then adding pink and purple in areas so it looks a bit more realistic. I'm wondering what the best way to do this would be. I'm thinking for things like the bloat drones I could do it through stippling the other colours onto the blue but idk if the blotches would be too big on things like poxwalkers and look out of place. So I thought I'd ask you guys for your opinions.

It might be worth starting with a pale skin tone, then giving it a blue wash, before reapplying some highlights in the original skin tone. If you have a few spare models, I'd recommend trying a few different methods, and see what works best.

 Dark Apostle 666 wrote:
It might be worth starting with a pale skin tone, then giving it a blue wash, before reapplying some highlights in the original skin tone. If you have a few spare models, I'd recommend trying a few different methods, and see what works best.

I feel like that wouldn't work with how severe of a case of it I plan on giving them. I have a reference image of a hand with what I was going for where the vast majority of the hand is light blue. Most of the images I've found otherwise we're pretty mild in comparison and just looked mostly normal but with purple on the fingers.

Cyanosis tends to affect the extremities, doesn't it? Similar to Dark Apostle I would start with a very pale skin tone. Next I would do your usual shadows/highlights before giving everything a blue glaze. Then use the same glaze and build up the blue colour on the extremities. With glazes you can build up the effect until you have it as you like.

WobblyGoblin wrote:
Cyanosis tends to affect the extremities, doesn't it? Similar to Dark Apostle I would start with a very pale skin tone. Next I would do your usual shadows/highlights before giving everything a blue glaze. Then use the same glaze and build up the blue colour on the extremities. With glazes you can build up the effect until you have it as you like.

Don't forget the lips, a wash of dark grey/blue on the mouths should do the trick.

I didn't use blue on my Blight Kings, but started with a pale skin tone and added red, purple and brown washes to give bruised and bloated looking skin. A blue wash, or maybe a glaze, should do the trick OK.