Painting Otherworld Slugs

So this month I’m going to show you how I painted my Giant Slug from Otherworld Miniatures.

This guy is a hugely impressive mini, weighing in at 170mm long. I actually had no intention of ever picking one up, but when Richard offered me a damaged copy for just £5, well how could I resist? Of course, subsequently mounting him on a £12 base increased the price a little!

Now, I had already decided against doing the miniature black as I always have trouble highlighting black, it always looks grey, so I went looking for inspiration on the net, which is where I found my colour scheme.

 

So I started out by priming the mini with Khemri Brown

Next I added some washes and tried to emulate the patterning in the image above. To do this I mixed various washed using Bleached Bone for the lightest, Golden Brown for the midtones and Bestial Brown for the darker areas. Next I worked on the hood, adding the stippling effect that would give me the look I wanted. Now for those who have followed this blog for a while you’ll know how I did this. I took a pointed clay shaper (used by sculptors for shaping clay) and with that I applied a layer of Golden Brown dots. This process took me around an hour, it’s tiring and deeply dull but it works. Varying the pressure and amount of paint on the shaper will change the size of the dots.  Next I needed to add shade and highlight to the hood, this was done entirely using washes. Again I used Desert Yellow (mixed with gryphonne sepia) for the highlights and Gryphonne Sepia and Brown Ink for the darker shades.

Getting the balance right here was just a case of looking at the source material and trying to figure out which wash would give the right colour. Next I highlighted the rest of the body. Here I used Golden Brown and Pale Flesh.

With that done  I washed the whole thing with Bleached Bone and Lahmian Medium. My reasoning here was that I wanted to lessen the shadows between the segments. After that I returned to washes, using Gryphonne Sepia on the lower body, adding Golden Brown for the middle and then  moving through Ogryn Flesh to Brown ink for the upper body.  Pale flesh was added to the skirt (technical term, I looked it up!!) Then I added lines of bestial brown running vertically the whole way along. The skirt was then washed with Fortress Grey, followed by Pale Flesh and finally by Skull White (all diluted with Lahmian medium) to give this effect.

The Optic Tentacles (or… eye stalks if you prefer) were painted with Golden Brown, lightened with pale flesh towards the tip, the eyes themselves were simply black, a later edition of gloss varnish with give them all the detail they need. The stalks were then washed with more Gryphonne Sepia and then highlighted using Golden Yellow, only a single line to indicate a semi-translucent material.

The underside of the slug was simply washes of grey and pale flesh and white until I was happy with it. The mouth was washed with Devlan Mud, then teeth were added in Bleached Bone. It was washed again this time with Baal Red, teeth readded in Pale Flesh, one final wash of Baal Red and the teeth readded in white and I was happy. Throughout the entire process washes were added in parts to until I was happy. Other parts like the head were rehighlighted using Golden Brown to more closely match the source material, but in general, that wash how I painted my slug…

To finish I added a coat of gloss vanish to the whole model and left to dry over night before I set to work on the base. Base included the mini took me three days, probably around 10 to 12 hours, but I’m really happy with the result.