There are different zombie skintones that we see in places such comics, movies, and TV. Some are bright colored with greens, blues and purples (which I might do a tutorial on at a later time) and there are some zombie skintones with different grays (I.E.- green- gray or purple-gray). In this tutorial, I will be going over purple/ gray zombie skin. One reason, is so that I can explore a different part of the Vallejo- Nocturna Malefic flesh skintone paint set, another reason is because some of us fine folk have zombie games such as Zombicide, with zombies that will need painting. Besides, who doesn't love zombies?! They are super fun to paint!
For this tutorial, I have chosen a zombie mini that I have from Red-Box-Games from their first Kickstarter a few years ago (maybe it was more than a few years ago? I'm old and I forget things) . The zombie was sculpted by Tre Manor.
Here is the miniature, assembled, unpainted, and based with Windsor & Newton Mineral Texture Gel. If you are curious about how the texture gel is used for basing, feel free to check out the tutorial video on the Metalhead Minis YouTube Channel.
Here are the paints that will be used and the zombie is now primed with P3 Spray-on Primer in white, and ready for paint.
Basecoat of Cold Flesh. Three coats were applied. Cold Flesh is a light gray/purple color.
Malefic flesh was thinned down to a wash. Ratio used to thin this to a wash was 1 drop of paint to 4 drops of water. Usually, I do 1 drop of paint to 5 drops of water to a skimmed milk consistency, but since the paint is a little thinner out of the bottle I did less. Two coats were applied. This creates a quick and easy shadow color that pools into the recesses of the skin.
Pale Flesh was used as the highlight color. I made sure to highlight where the light would hit most. Such as the face, shoulders, and chest.
Warpaints Zombie Shader was applied over the skin. Two coats were applied to add depth to the skin on the miniature. It seems that the zombie shader is basically the Army painter Quick Shade in a bottle since it looks like it is about the same color.
Two coats of toxic shader was applied to add more colorful "oomph!" to the skin. Toxic Shader is a great purple wash. Now it looks like the skin is all coming together. Not bad for a quick table top job, right?
To add finishing touches, I went back in with Pale Flesh for the highlights, used "Brainmatter Beige" for the whited out eyes and teeth, and used Citadel Technical's "Blood for the Blood God" for quick blood effects. Of course if you have similar colors of other brands, you can totally use those too. If you use regular red acrylic color for the blood effects, just apply gloss coat over the blood if you want it to look new and wet. Then of course I did the typical neatening up. Once the skin was finished, I spent a few more minutes on the clothes. Doing this paint job was quick, easy, and fun. Also this can easily be accomplished with batch painting (to paint many models at once- typically for gaming). You can also easily create variety, by basecoating a different color, or adding blues and greens by way of applying more washes, etc.
So until next time...
Stay Crispy in Milk!
--Lyn