North Star Halloween Painting Competition

This is still WiP because I want to rust up the chains a bit and see if there’s a bit more highlighting I can do.

The paint scheme was based on a set of Cultists I painted for Silver Bayonet. Red with runes on the shoulders.

Now I see some paint down it looks like the gold medallion front and back might be a failed attempt to keep them from being resurrected. Or perhaps the tools of a necromancer to animate them?

The red mix is OK.

Khorne Red, thin layer over the primer.

Mephiston Red, heavy highlight.

Mephiston Red and orange contrast, highpoint only highlight.

Once the base colours were down I chose to use an Army Painter shade (Dark Tone) to grubby everything up. Then I highlighted a few bits again. And then came the occasional dob or Blood and some Nurgle’s Rot goop paint. It just felt like they were tramps in glorious red rather than zombies, without the extra blood and ooze to try and knock that back.

Also, being as this is a competition… I never know where to set the grubby look that I want against “does this look like I put too much wash on and got bored and called it done?”.

I used some bowstring pulling right arms because as soon as you take it off of a natural archer pose axis it immediately looks contorted and wrong. Just the type of uncomfortable pose that looks good on zombies.

I kept myself to using only one sprue, just because I like that sort of self inflicted restriction and keeping bits boxes clutter to a minimum.

On just one sprue the zombie heads and limbs start to run low, but the posing will do the heavy lifting and there will be opportunities for the painting to convey the undead side without it all being in the sculpt.

I cut at the puddle bases with clippers but not all the way through, to give me instant dungeon/ ruin pathing slabs to paint up.