emphasis on wash

Khurasan Zombies... Tutorial!

I recently painted up the first 8 of my Khurasan miniatures zombies. These are really nice, animated looking zombies in modern clothes. The clothing is nondescript enough that you could use them for pretty much any period without trouble.
In a break from tradition, I remembered to take some pictures as I worked this time, as I was trying a new method of painting again. This was something of an experiment, but I'm happy with the (very fast) results.

Step 1

Undercoat
I used some very cheap light grey hobby acrylic to undercoat these minis. I more commonly use black as an undercoat, and I think that would work well for these figures, but I wanted to try a faster wash based method.

Step 2

Block colors

 I painted on all the color areas at once. The key thing here is Citadel Rotting Flesh for the zombie skin. They don't look like much at this stage. Also note that I used quite light colors in general.

Step 3

Wash 

I hit them all over with Reikland Fleshshade. Ogryn flesh wash would work well also, but I was saving that for the gore areas. Up to this point I'd spent about 2 hours. I left them overnight for the washes to dry properly.

Step 4

Highlights 

I went back and highlighted the zombies with the original colors, then a second highlight with a little bone color mixed in to lighten them. The eyes got a white dot and when dry, a few areas were pin washed with various colors to define edges of clothes and eye sockets. I washed the bases with Nuln oil, then drybrushed it up to the undercoat color before adding some tufts. All in all, this took about another hour and a half.

There were 20 different zombies in the bag, so I still have 12 to go. I think I'll get another batch to the wash stage tonight as I'm too tired for "proper" painting... Although I might prep some survivors. 

I am very impressed with these zombie sculpts... I'd say they are about the best on the market for 15mm at the moment. Now I'll have to strip my old Zeds to match the flesh tone. Grrr.