FINALLY I’ve begun painting some miniatures for my Chaos army. I got going with the chaos cultist unit, and while things have been progressing fairly well, I have run into some snags. I haven’t done any painting in over a year*, so my skills have become a bit rusty. To add to that issue, I decided to change the skin-tone on my chaos cultists halfway through painting the unit! Actually this last part is a blessing in disguise. I initially viewed this army as one part dark cloth, or metal, with super pale, purple tinted skin. What I’ve just come up with is that having the skin be pale, but with different tones here and there to break up the scheme a bit would be really cool. If I can pull it off in the end, I think it will be very cool.
Some of these shots are pretty blown out thanks to using a flash. This pops the contrast of the paint scheme a great deal, and as that I shot them in RAW, you can really see the paint transitions, so my fades look like hell. They look far better in person. I probably do need to use more light when painting. 😛


This is how I started the paint scheme. It was supposed to be a bluish tinted skin. Instead of a weird Slanneshi look, I ended up with something that looks a bit more undead than anything.

Here I’ve switched to a purple color, and didn’t use washes as much, so the skin looks cleaner. I feel like the highlights need another pass on the skin, and some pronounced shadows. The camera flash really flattens these minis out, and makes the highlights look more drastic than they are.

I was pretty happy with the way that the unit champion turned out. His shading/highlight is about the effect I would like for the whole unit.

“OMG! I love Blueman Group!!!!” Yeah, um – this guy isn’t going to be a Smurf or anything. It is essentially the base coat for the blue ones. The highlight will cause these guys to blend in with the unit a bit more.
On these I’ve painted the blue as a retrofit over the skin-tone. I use quite watered down paint in thin coats which allows me to get away with this kind of thing. Its easy to paint straight out of the bottle, but I don’t recommend it. The extra work that thinning your paint creates is totally worth it to get a smooth finish.
*Not entirely true: I have painted a good deal of Flames of War miniatures, but those I am doing to a lessor level than that of my 28mm+ miniatures, so all those show is that I remember which end of the paintbrush to dip into the paint.