Four Easy Techniques You Should Try

Transcript*

Intro

Hello there. My name is Paul. I’m back. Uh, I have a question for you. Actually, two questions. Um, but really one answered. First is general. Second, a little bit more specific, but also general. What is the greatest kit of all time? Think about it. And then number two, what is the greatest games workshop kit of all time? Yes, both of those questions have the same answer in my opinion. You might be thinking, “Hey, it’s a recently released Fulgrim.

Very bat-like, very Halloweeny, very gorgeous, but you’ve already built him.” You’re right. But I’m not even talking about Fulgrim, so it’s not him. Uh, number two might be the Norn Emissary, the greatest Tyranid kit of all time. Very alien queen-like, very Halloweeny, but no, not him, guys.

It’s the Games Workshop skulls kit. It’s technically not even a model kit. It’s just an accessory for your mini minis uh dioramas and bases. That’s it. Um though obviously they’re technically still a model kit. You still have to glue them um and you know paint them. They’re plastic. Um so yes uh if you’re talking about technicality and value, this is the greatest kit of all time.

There’s 82 intact human skulls and just intact, too. There’s a lot more. This kit is insane. There’s so many skulls in here. And that’s exactly what we’re going to be talking about today. I’m going to be showing you four ways to do skulls. The first three are just individual skulls and how to paint them uh uh and how to showcase skulls.

The fourth will actually be a pile of skulls, and I’m going to be teaching you how to do that a little bit more aesthetically pleasing. Um because it can get messy real fast. You might be saying, “Paul, painting white is not difficult. Painting skulls is not difficult.” Do you really believe that white is one of the hardest things you can do? And this is not just our opinion.

You can look it up. Is white hard to paint? Yes. Yes, it’s difficult to paint. Uh, white is typically chalkier. It’s thicker. The brighter you go, the thicker the paints get across all brands, but especially with water-based acrylics. Yes, it’s only gotten easier over the years due to self-leveling technology like the Ionic and Atom paint lines.

This is the ionic white. Um, but uh that being said, it’s still difficult, especially out the bottle, which you should never paint out the bottle, especially white. So, uh, first of the three skulls we’ll be discussing today will be what I like to call the ghost face white. Get it? because it’s the mask, the color of the mask for scream of the ghost face.

I’m not very creative, guys.

[Music]

Unboxing

[Music]
Yeah, this kit is so comprehensive, it’s ridiculous. And this is just a human skull section. There’s a lot more from orcs to demons to human skulls, but I already took off a piece. Um, but yeah, human skulls that are shattered to big ones like this, which we will be using in the pile later on. Crazy. This is a turnet skull if you’re not uh aware.

Anyway, so what I’m going to be doing to make it easier for me is I’m going to be taking off a pretty significant section. Uh just so we have redundancy and also ease of use. So when you’re priming it or yeah, when you prime it, uh it’s not too difficult because these are tiny pieces.

A simple burst of a primer will send this flying. To cut off the skulls, I used to me a sharp pointed side cutter 74035. Probably the most reliable side cutter we’ve ever used.

Technique 1 – Priming

All the skulls that we will be painting today will be primed with Vallejo white primer. This is the 18 ml bottle. We recommend applying the white primer thin. Um, but uh depending on how you want the the skull to look and how weathered you want it to look, you can apply the primer as sloppily or as precisely as you want.

Now, the next step would be to apply some sort of uh off white grayish bluish gray contrast paint or you can even thin down the mix yourself, but I recommend contrast paint. In this specific instance, we’ll be using contrast apothecary white by Citadel. You only need one go at it, including the backside.

So what you find is that it pulls uh but you can redirect it with your brush. You don’t have to go for a second round of it. Just put in the back. The brushes I will be using is to me is number three brush 87014 and Army Painter Monster brush.

Dry Brushing

For this next step, we’ll be doing dry brushing. So please grab paper towel and any brush that’s flat. um preferably flat and not round by the way like this one because round brushes like the XL Vallejo dry brush for example is very good but they reinforce a even kind of dry brushing experience. You don’t want that. You want irregularities there because this is going to be sceneries. So grab a flat kind of wideish dry brush. The color we will be dry brushing is white. For this one we’ll be using ionic white. So, just put light paint all over your brush. Remove about 90 to 95% of the paint from set brush using the paper towel.

And once there’s barely any there, you can proceed with the dry brushing. No, don’t forget the back as well. And what dry brushing accomplishes is that it touches upon the surfaces.

That’s where all the pigmentation and the white’s going to go, but leaves a lot of the crevices with the the contrast paint, giving you a very well detailed and weathered miniature, in this case, a skull. The recesses are unaffected by this. Oh, and what you’re left with is an incredibly well painted, well detailed skull with a paint job that accentuates perfectly the sculpt of the plastic.

All because you applied a primer, a contrast paint, and dry brushed on white. You can accomplish this in 5 minutes minus the drying time. So, really, what? 20 minutes. Yeah. So, this one is gray and that one’s just white with apothecary white. So, it’s already been applied. All that needs to be done is dry brushing, but I’l just dry brush the gray one as well. Dry brushing complete. And I bet you can’t even tell which one was the gray one earlier. Um, it’s the one at the top.

Now, if you look at it like this, you can tell that the one that was previously gray or primed with gray rather than white had a has a softer look to them, whereas the one that was primed white applied with a apothecary white and then dry brushed white is more sharp.

Softer versus sharper. Um, it just depends on which one you want. I personally like the the white one more, but I can see some people liking the gray one better. But ultimately, you arrived at basically the exact same point. Ghostfaced white skulls is complete. That’s one skull down.

Technique 2

Number two will is what I’d like to call the sun bleach skull. You’re basically replacing the bluish white contrast paint with a brown wash like a uh like a earth shade or any brown wash or even flash wash which is a a a brownish red tint. So long as you bring back the white or a little bit of it with dry brushing, whatever wash you use doesn’t matter.

So long as it has a little bit of brown in it, um it will give it that yellowish u that’s been left outside the road. Right. So, that’s what we’re going for today. It’s a little easier because you’re not dealing with a whole blob and mess of just white.

Applying Wash

Give your brown wash a very good shake. And you can just paint directly from the pot. You don’t have to thin this down. Give it a a good concentrated dose of the wash here. Yeah, just go direct from the bottle, concentrated, and just spread the love around and be scared.

To be honest with you, uh we can just leave it here. um a dirty dirty skull and it looks incredible already with just the brown wash, but we will be dry brushing some of the white back again with the same method and with the same paint, the ionic white. There we go.

This took me about 10 minutes to do, which does include the drying time of the wash. And this is just a griier, slightly griier version of the ghost face one from earlier. You can, in fact, just leave it alone. Um, you don’t even have to dry brush it.

Just applying the black wash or the brown wash, sorry, on top of the the white primer is sufficient for you to have a very grimy finish. But, you know, I got to keep it consistent. Skull numero two is completed.

Technique 3

Skull number three. Do you like ghosts? Uh if you do and you like your floating skulls with a bluish tone to them, that is what skull number three is. And I’ll show you what I mean. Cuz a lot of um models when it comes to miniatures, they have their ghosts, but then they have ghosts with skulls. There’s quite a lot of them, especially when it comes to DND and Warhammer.

You like that ghost sound? That’s my ghost sound. This is going to be the skull demonstrator. I sloppily applied white primer, valia white on top of it. Um, so you know, it gives some sort of illusion to the depth of the painting. Uh, if you don’t know what I mean, look at this. This I painted the entire base with black.

Then I sloppily applied white thinly at that on top of it. When I painted the blue, which is thinned to the absolute thinnest with medium, it looked like there’s some sort of depth, like an ocean sort of depth to it. Um, that’s also how you paint ice miniatures. And that’s also how you paint ghosts, that kind of fake depth illusion.

Glaze Medium Application

For this step, I will be using sentient turquoise from two thin coats, extremely thin down with glaze medium. I’m talking one drop of turquoise to like five drops of glaze medium with this thinned out mix and only a little bit on your brush. Start applying and just spread the love around.

Second Layer

When that first layer of turquoise is dried, you put on uh the same ratio but with witching hour blue or any blue that you want on top of that and uh turquoise.

There we go. Two thin layers will start to kind of just layer on top of the other, adding their effects on top of one another. giving you this nice sort of hue. It’s a mix of both colors.

Dry Brushing

Once the blue layer is dry, apply like I’m doing now, a heavy, heavy layer of white dry brush like we usually do, but heavier than normal. even the back. And don’t forget the five head as well.

And what you’re left with is an ethereal looking skull. And if that’s a little bit too icy, too blue for you, you can add a teensy tiny bit of turquoise wash in places. If you found that previous version a little too icy, then this one with a little bit more turquoise on top of the dry brush layer should be extra ghastly instead of extra icy.

Technique 4

Finally, to recreate the fourth and final piece that we’re going to be doing today, the pile of skulls and bones, we will need a base. So, I will be using AK’s 1104 50mm base.

I have also pre- primed a little bit of skulls here and there as I went along that I’m going to be using on top of the base, not to mention all the other ones that I could apply that were previously painted throughout this video.

Placing Skulls on Base

When it comes to the pile of bones, the hardest part will of course be visualizing how that pile will look. But I think it’s best to start off with the foundation, i.e. the biggest bones.

[Music]
Okay. Once you’re satisfied, I’m not. I’m going to apply a bit more, but once you’re satisfied, um, what we’re going to be doing is priming and then painting the base with red.

So, dark for most of it and then in the middle it’s going to be red. Uh it’s going to be a river of blood. Um and on top of that, once that’s dried, it’s going to be Vallejo still water, a gel like substance to uh give the illusion of water.

Priming and Wash

This is probably the best acrylic white primer out there, at least in spray form. It’s been primed, looking good. Next step will be to apply a bunch of apothecary white to it um to give it some definition. Then obviously I’ll dry brush it with white again.

But I removed one of the skulls there to make it look like the blood is coming out from underneath the skull. So that part will be a bright river of red. And then once it spreads out amongst the base, it will be darker to give that illusion of depth. The red I will be using is Sangun Scarlet from Two Thin Coats.

Painting the Actual Base

I will be using it gradually uh layer by layer. Initially just a thin one across the entire mini uh or sorry the base and then I I’ll layer them on until gradually and fully it will be kind of a bright red but just in the middle.

Paul’s Mistake

I am filming this live and you saw there right there the importance of the primer, the color specifically of it. The white made a very deep red the sanguin uh scarlet I believe. Yeah, sanguin scarlet look incredibly bright. Now it’s not the end of the world.

We can improvise. used the noggin. What I’m doing now is mixing sanguin scarlet with another two thin coats spade paint demon red which is a brighter uh red with a little bit of a hint of an orange. So I’m mixing that in the middle.

Base Painting Continued

And then finally to finish it off I’m going to be mixing the two plus a little bit of white. Just a tiny bit of strip in the middle. But then the opposite is true for the outside ring of the base. I’m going to be taking sanguin scarlet and mixing with whatever black I have on hand.

Most likely, uh, apothecary, oh, not apothecary, uh, corvvis black or abdon black is probably my best bet. But really, any black you have on hand should do the trick. It won’t matter at the end. Uh, the primary thing is you blend it nicely.

I am layering on the orange red mix and it’s already taking some sort of effect where the brighter uh spot is now the innermost part of the base near where the skulls are or at the skulls actually. And don’t worry about the skulls themselves. They have blood on them.

That’s the point. It’s all good. On the outer ring of the base, I will be using Abidon Black and Sanguin Scarlet. Go like this. If you want to bend uh sorry, blend the wet layers. It’s called wet blending for a more seamless transition within paint.

Just a little bit of a stippling action. Same thing with the lightest paint, the orange and red. just stippling action to mix them along but on the inner part of it. Now with just pure demon red, the brighter red, I’ll be just making a tiny strip down the middle that’s essentially just a line. And I’ll also be using that and maybe a mix of sanguin. nose what I feel like down where the eye sockets are of the bigger skulls to make it look like it’s also crying blood. But before I do the tears of blood, I’ll dry brush the tops of the skulls as very lightly, very lightly just to bring up some of the white back.

But otherwise, yeah, that’s the plan. It’s just a subtle effect this last part to give it one final brightness in like the seams and the corners and such to make it look like that’s where the blood is flowing.

Dry Brushing

So for the dry brushing, I’m using Vallejo’s XL dry brush. uh bringing back uh the ionic white as well. And I’m using this one uh because the formation of skulls are a bit more in a circular kind of pattern. They’re more grouped, so it’s easier and faster. Uh I know I’m kind of contradicting my earlier point in the video about dry brushing irregularly for things that are left outside, but uh well, it ultimately depends on the situation at hand.

Just a little bit. Just a little bit. So pure demon red from the eye sockets and then just flowing in one direction. Just do that for all the eye sockets, especially the larger skulls. This looks incredibly gross, but something you can maybe swim in it.

Applying Vallejo Still Water Effect

But to complete the illusion, we’re going to go diorama effects Vallejo still water. This is an acrylic gel clear like substance where you just lather it on and apply. to give the illusion of liquidity. Don’t forget to also apply it to the eye sockets where the blood is supposedly dripping from to complete the illusion.

Final Product

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Now it’s partially dried and it looks nastier than it’s ever looked. That’s insane.

Paul’s Conclusion

Cinema. Absolute cinema. Uh, it worked. The improve worked. Um, that was live. You can’t really fake that. Uh, but we improvised and it worked out to perfection. Actually, probably even better than what I had initially envisioned. Um, that being said, hopefully you learned something today.

Thank you guys so much for watching. Um, and again, we hit 10K recently. Thank you. Woohoo. Um, and we’re very active on our other socials as well. So, please like and subscribe.

Click the links down below for our socials and our website. And until next time, bye-bye.

About the Author:

Paul Catindig As someone who’s been building model kits since he was 8 years old, Paul is very knowledgeable and adept at model kit building! When he’s not building or painting kits, he spends his free time cooking, playing video games with friends, or at a restaurant patio somewhere. Hopes to make his very own movie one day.

*Video by Paul Catindig
Video Edited by Daniela Castellano
Transcript generated by youtube
Edited by Angelo Castellano