Painting 5.1 – Ghouls gone wild

I finished this lot on friday night, but I was out most of yesterday so they only got varnished this morning. It took a while to get some good photographs too. I really wish I had a display case or something now – it’s a shame to just put these back into a miniatures box after all the work I’ve done!

From 2 weeks ago – primed and flesh painted… I have a pale flesh tone that came out nicely on these ghouls and I’ve also used it as a base colour for bones on my skeletons. (It’s actually lighter than nearly all of the bone colour on my pre-painted minis.)

I do nearly all my figure painting using an outward plan – I start with flesh, then inner clothes, outer clothes, held items, etc. I painted the ghouls “rags” in pairs – red, blue, green, yellow and brown – then went over them in grey and brown to dirty and wear/fade them back. Most of them carry bone clubs and I used mostly white to make the bones stand out, with touches of brown to weather the bone. [Note: I have a supply of fresh and older bones floating around the back-yard… a result of throwing scraps to my chickens, so I went out and looked at a few for ideas!]

Other weapons were next, done simply and not with as much attention to detail as I could have used, but I did spend extra time on the skull one ghoul holds. I should have re-based my figures after flesh painting them, but I hadn’t decided what to do earlier. Azazel gave me a whole bunch of bases he didn’t want – circular ones that I find much better than the tiny squares most of these came with. I painted over his “grass flock” with a dark brown and got a earth look that I really like and glued the ghouls in.

Final details – white over the eyes, teeth and claws, then a “hull red” paint as a wash over the faces to pick out some of the detail. I also used this on claws too. Then red eyes, tongues and some “blood” on weapons. I’d been going to do a blood-red wash over the flesh, but I’d liked the hull red effect and used that. It picks out ribs and muscles, but also gives a bit of a dried-blood or diseased flesh look.

Most of the 3rd ed D&D images of ghouls have them looking purple-fleshed and the WoC prepainted minis are a greenish-yellow that I don’t think much of. Originally I was going to try a purple wash over the flesh, but playing Kings of War this year (with Azazel’s Undead army) gave me a different idea. His ghouls look more normally coloured but with musculature emphasised almost like they are missing a layer of skin.