How to Paint Talons & Toesies

Scratches on the Helmet

Now I’ve got our bright brass, and since we’ve done these scratches all over the body and it looks so sick, I’m going to carry that same technique onto the helmet. We’ve got this true metallic metal that we spent a ton of time on, and now we’re adding the same scratchy style from the flesh.

This is going to be very subtle. You can see I put some purple in the shadows. After the scratches, I’m cleaning the brush and mixing up Dark Russian Blue—the best dark blue—with some of our thinned purple. Getting it down to wash consistency.

I accidentally dipped my brush in my actual drink cup. First time I’ve done it on the channel while recording. But I think the blue tinge coming through ties the helmet into the rest of the model more. It reads like the metal is dirty, which works perfectly.

Painting the Talons

The paintbrush is pretty dry here—I want this to be thick so I don’t have to do a ton of passes. I’m coming in with our base brown on the talons and hooves. With the toes, I’m getting the paint to a point on the brush, starting at the base of the nail cuticle, and pulling down toward the tip. This creates natural striations from the brush strokes that make the toes look gnarly.

Then a couple of scratches on top in a lighter shade. The orange in the base brown really complements the purple flesh.

White Highlights

For the final highlights, I’m going straight into warm white. Just a few hits on the tips of the talons and raised areas. Done—talons and toesies.

What’s Left

Tomorrow I’ll do the browns and probably the base too. I’ve got to figure out the actual base design—the current color is just whatever the base material happened to be. And the nips—I’ve got to figure out what color to do those. But this dude is looking nasty.

Oh, and if you were curious, I got my full Pillillage warband built. All my Normans, 500 points for Pillillage. Pretty stoked. See you tomorrow.