How to Paint Trench Pilgrims Fast

The Setup

Starting these Ecclesiastical Prisoners for Trench Pilgrims with just four paints. One gets the oil paint method, one gets streaking grime—showing you two options.

I don’t even have a cup of water this time. Got to use condensation to clean my brush off.

The Base Coats

Battleship Gray from Army Painter Speed Paint for the clothes. Then a mix of Army Painter Flesh Wash and Bony Matter on all the flesh—feet, hands, chest.

Oil Paint Method

Modified Zorn palette—mixing burnt umber and black. Using the back of the brush to put in drops of mineral spirits.

The whole point of showing you how janky my process is: it’s just about getting stuff done. This brush is pretty ragged. I forgot my water cup. I’m using an envelope from mail that was on my desk as a palette. It doesn’t have to be too hard, guys.

Slather the oil on. Clean your brush off in the lid of the cup (since I forgot any responsible solutions).

Wiping Off

After it sat a bit, come in with the makeup sponge removing the bulk. Getting that brown-black mix into the shadows. Focus on the top of the clothes, leaving a lot of that brown in the cracks and on the underside of the pants and feet.

Flesh Tones

Yellow ochre, small amount of burnt umber, dash of red, dash of white. Just mixing different flesh tones right on the envelope palette. There isn’t really a process—just jam out with the Zorn palette. However you mix it, it’s going to work and look good.

Hit the chest, hands, and feet. Put it on with one brush, then come back with a filbert brush to blend it in.

The Mistake

I came in with gray on the bottom of the pants. In retrospect, I should have kept it that brown color. It kind of washed together and I lost the high contrast. Don’t do the bottom of the pants as crazy as I did.

Streaking Grime Method

Grime time, baby. This is back to the one we painted with just acrylics. Lathering them up in streaking grime—the magic sauce for painting grim dark.

Let it sit, then with the makeup sponge go left to right across the model (up and down might break it). Work those upper surfaces.

The acrylic one turned out better just because by this point I knew to keep more of the brown in the shadows.

Mixing Methods

I put streaking grime right on the still-wet oils. It mixed together, so I cleaned my brush, put a little flick on the model, and just dabbed it off. Didn’t want to make a huge mess, just wanted shadows back.

The Results

15-minute Trench Pilgrim Ecclesiastical Prisoners. You’re not going to win a Golden Demon, but these are going to look amazing on the tabletop.

These guys’ role is to die on my Anchorite Shrine’s wheel or run up, score an objective, and then die. I don’t want to spend a huge amount of time on them.

Final Touch

Quick dry brush of metallic silver on the helmets and chains.

You could come back and paint edge highlights on the ruffled clothes or add more texture. I’m going to paint cross tattoos on the chest in blood—I’ll show that in the next video.