Cult of the Great Burrower
Ive recently finished my first genestealer cult minis from Overkill game.
Painting those guys gave me more fun than i thought. I really like the concept of this hard sci-fi space miners mixed with alien horror. Old genestealer cults where interesting already but adding that 'miners’ touch really put them into new level. I can imagine theyve got some small inspiration from Dead Space games too.
Magus is still in progress.
Here is how ive painted different parts:
Armour:
Start with Bestial brown
Gold yellow was used to brighten up pieces of armour, especially on those leg plates. Ive applied it only to the middle areas.
Shadows were made with adding bestial brown to the mix. Reikland wash can also be applied to darken some areas down and give them more dirty/rusty look.
Some thined down dark brown paint can also be applied to recesses.
Then ive brighten everything up again with some golden yellow. Orange also work nicely if thinned down properly to add some more rusty feeling to bigger surfaces (but not for recesses).
edges were done with adding white into mix.
Genestealer skin:
Base color is a mix of vallejo flesh tan + pale flesh
Red and violet washes were then applied on the skin in different proportions depending how dark the given area i wanted to be. Darker the area is the more violet should be in the mix
highlighting is done with tan flesh and pale flesh. Pale flesh is added more and more into the mix depending how ligh given part of the skin we want.
On some parts you can add washed down pale flesh to make whole area even lighter. The later generation the hybrid is the lighter its skin tone i wanted to be. I need to revisit my space hulk genestealers to keep this coherent.
Genestealer Carapace:
Purple base
Mix Purple with turquise
Turquoise used for highlights
turquise with white mixed in for painting edges
Robes with cult color (turquise)
Ive painted robes using two colors from new Vallejo mecha range. I have to say i really like this range so far. It has intensive colors that are covering areas very nicely. Here ive started with turquise as a base and then mixed it with green blue. Brighter areas painted with increased amounts of green blue in the mix. In final stages ive also added bleached bone to it.
Ive painted all this with playing Kill Tam in mind. Hopefully it will eventually grow into a full 40k army. We will see. For the moment ive also played Overkill with my group and i have to say it was more fun than i thought. Even non-wargamers seems to enjoy it so it might really have been a nice introductory game. I would call it a simpler and more bloody version of spacehulk.
Now i need to think of the cult name and iconography.
For big finish of the Bakka campaign i needed something big. Obvious choice was the very creature my genestealer cult was worshipping. The Great Burrower.
Ive started with black undercoat followed by light white highlight by airbrush from the top. You can also do it with white undercoat is spray.
Model is mainly composed of two large areas – skin and scales/armour.
For skin ive started with ScaleColor Kalahari Orange followed by highlights with ScaleColor Pink Flesh and some vallejo game air Carne Flesh. You can use drybrushing to do this.
After all the highlights done ive washed it with GW Reikland Flesh, thining it down for some areas. Finally ive again done some thin higlights with Carne Flesh and some mix of white and Carne Flesh on the edges.
For armour base color ive used ScaleColor Black Leather. I wanted the Scales to look more dirty and uneven. So i didnt want to make typical highlighting but instead used sponge to apply few different colors onto it in random fasion. Ive used some vallejo burned umber and P3 Sanguine base and also some grey colors mixed with ScaleColor Black Leather. After that comes most boring part of work – painting stripes on all scales. Ive used bone color mixed with just a bit of P3 Sanguine base and made stripes over all the armour parts, coming from edges. Dont go over entire plate, just a bit from the edge into the middle of the scale or so. Finally ive added some white into this and highlighted the edges.
Scythes were done with ScaleColor Black Leather as base and then highliths with Vallejo Mecha color Green Blue. Ive added more and more progresively to the mix and at the end added white to pure Green Blue. Finally ive done some edges with mostly white.
Thats about it. I never imagined i will paint Tyranids in such colors but it somehow came out naturally. I was going to do only the Trygon but now i think i will add some more creatures in the future. Maybe even start a small army at some point.