How to paint your Zombies

[Santawraith]

I have begun a series of how to paint guides much like the showcase of showing off your masterpieces this is to show off how you paint your undead. Do not be bashful feel free to share so we can catalog a good variety and mix of wonderful undead tutorials. Please leave the holy water and stakes at home.

Carpe Noctem's How to paint thread index

 

[Reaper]

Undercoat the model with black(if you have Goblin green primer, you can use that insted of this and next point)

Skin:
Paint the model with Goblin green
Medium to strong wash with flesh wash
Light to medium wash with black ink
Drybrush with goblin green
Drybrush with camo green

(Tip: I usually paint and shade the clothing first, then I paint the skin, wash the whole model and drybrush even over some parts of clothing, so it looks like the clothing is rotted too)

Finished result:

 

[redox1118]

Prime black
Basecoat liche purple
Layer with camo green, keeping the purple in the recessed areas
Drybrush rotting flesh

For bone, either
Basecoat with graveyard earth
Layer commando khaki
Layer bleached bone
Or
Basecoat vermin brown
Layer with snakebite leather
Layer bleached bone

 

[Cameron]

This is at the request of Santawraith.
I should have had this posted last night, but I was meeting more of my girlfriends family who are in town this week.

Right now, I'll only be covering how to paint the flesh as that's all I have had time to do today.

Anyway, here's what I do. I use a white primer. Just a 99 cent primer you can find at Wal-Mart. Comes in a blue can. Doesn't even have a brand name on it. Just says Quick Dry Spray Paint.
This is the primer I've been using for years and has given me great results.

Next up, I applied a slightly watered down Citadel Dark Flesh to all of the exposed body parts. Skin, flesh, eyes, teeth. Everything.

Don't worry about getting paint on the clothing. It can be painted over with another color.

Now I'm going to scale it down to one model. Lastly I add a slightly watered down Citadel Dwarf Flesh.
When applying the Dwarf Flesh, use very little in each brush stroke. Mine is almost like a water color it's so thin. And you do not need to fill everything. I paint around the cuts and recesses because it adds to the mutilated look of the zombie.

This is how I paint my zombie flesh. Of coarse I will continue the model to show more details like sores, bleeding, and inflamed skin around wounds. But this is just to get you an idea of how to achieve a simple and great looking zombie hoard.
I hope this has helped some of you find what you need in order to achieve the look you want for your army.

 

[Santawraith]

Nice tutorial I merged the thread where I was meaning for it to be. I should post links next time.

 

[sploitz]

Here is how i do it:

1. White Primer

2.
Skin: Ink Baal Red and a bit of Asurmen Blue (let it even mix doesnt matter)
Cloth: Devlan Mud

3. Mix a bit Vermin brown with space wovles grey, and do the first laser of skin, let it look pale and let some of the ink shine through on some places.

Cloth: 2nd Layer Devlan Mud

4.
Skin: Highlight even more as you would do on other models
Paint the face
Clothes:
Depends on your style: drybrush with Bleached Bone or talaran sand or deneb stone

5. skin: depends on the style ink again in red or ogryn flesh or pink or whatsoever
Cloth: Devlan Mud again followed by a lighter color drybrushed than step 4.

6 Do the base

7. get a beer



This is how it looks like after step 4

 

[Santawraith]

I should do a tutorial on the grey skin. Im still dabbling with it but here is a good idea of what I’m doing.
I laid down a base coat of celestra grey.

Now I drybrush it with etherium blue.

Now wash with ogryn flesh (the new name is reikland fleshshade)

Here he is washed with a watered down black wash.

 

[WalkerInDarkness]

The only zombies I've painted are the mantic ones. Below is a run down of how I did 10 of them. My goal is to do them in different ways and stages of death (I.e. freshly dead, burnt alive) I've begun looking for depictions of victims of the black plague to try to paint zombies like it.

1. Before 12, grab a strong cup of coffee. After 12, strong crown and coke.

2. Prime white

3. Base coat with dead flesh

4. Heavy dry brush of pale flesh

5. Watered down blue wash

6. Full bodied drying blood wash

7. Pants, hair, eyes

 

[Raizi]

A step by step tutorial on how I did my frozen zombies can be found in my painting thread: a direct link is here. (just scroll down, it's all there)

This is the finished look of my frozen zombies:

And the whole unit, along with a necromancer:

 

[Velmates]

I was asked to share my Zombie painting job in this thread and here they go. First of all, a pic of them. For more pics of the unit and individual models, check out my painting log. You can find the link in my signature.

Waht can I say about the painting technically? I am a Med Student and I wanted to achieve a pale brownish skin colour since most of the bodies I saw in the dissection classes had a similar appearance. Anyway, a body coming freshly out of the grave looks much different; in fact each single body looks different from each other but since this should be a Warhammer UNIT I wanted to keep some kind of strange uniform look on the main parts of the models. So I went for one skin colour and just bring in a slight variety with different inks and shades. And the clothing, of course.

I started with a black primer. Since I don't wanted a white skin I had to pint it anyway, so I took the black one. Then the skin got a base with Rakarth Flesh (old Denheb Stone).
I like to work with shades so I used plenty of them. First I applied a layer of Reikland Earthshade to create shades and recesses in the skin and also to give the whole model a fleshy tone of colour (since the base pretty much looks like a dirty white).
To bring in a slight greenish tone to simulate moss and rot as well I applied Athonian Camoshade. I didn't use a whole layer but let it flow into named recesses and around bumps, dents and bruises.
The next step were the open wounds, the intestinal loops, the eyes and the mouth. On this parts I used Leviathan purple (don't know the new name of this shade). To create the impression of more blood I used black. I never use red (as colour or shade) for this because these guys are dead! Dried blood never ever looks red especially not on Zombies that dug their way out of a grave! I think this looks not real.

As for the rest: I used some kind of heraldry look on some clothes to provide a military look, but the most got dark brown or black clothing.

I wanted to achieve a wooden look on the … erm, wood. Some would argue it is not worth an a low point core choice but I say what the hell. It's the hobby! So I panted Scorched Brown streaks on the shafts of scythes and that like that I highlighted with Graveyard Earth and Kommando Khaki.

If you've got any questions, feel free to ask. Cheers.

 

[Santawraith]

So today we shall talk about, pirates. Especially the zombie pirate kind. This is how I shall be doing them.



I wanted a bloated decayed look as if they had been soaked in the sea. So in the end I settled upon a base coat of nurgling green.



I added a drybrush of under hive ash, oh how I miss rotted flesh.



As we wash the entire model now its time to do the rest before the final wash.

Onto his bone weapon for this I used screaming skull. I did this as some of the models will have bone faces and such. Was showing how the wash shall look on then latter.



As the cloths do not matter as I will alternate them being pirates and all. So here he is washed. I added all the remaining details first.