Painting Duergar

My, my, it’s dusty around here. Well, I’m officially back, I’m reopening the Keep and I’m going to kick things off with a quick tutorial on how I painted my new Duergar.

I started off with a base coat of Astronomican Grey, followed with a wash of Badab Black. This is a technique I’ve been using for a while now. The light base coat with a wash allows me to pick out details more easily, also you dont need to work as hard to get colours to be nice and bright if you work over a light base rather than a black one.

Next I mixed up a base for the skin. The Duergar are grey skinned dwarves but I knew early on that I wanted a slight purple tint. To start I mixed Royal Purple and Fortress Grey and then added white until I was happy with the mix. I also added the eyes in white, deciding to not give them pupils, further alienating them from other dwarves in my collection.

Adding more grey and white to the mix I added another layer of skin tones, this time picking out the details and leaving the base in the recesses.

I added some final highlights by adding more white to the mix. Then I added base colours to the rest of the model. Deep Bronze Green for the trousers, Bloodtracker Brown for the armour, chainmail for the metalwork and Battlefield Brown for the belt, shoes and axe haft. Desert Yellow was used for the hair and beard.

The beard was then washed with Gryphonne Sepia, the armour and metal work was washed with Devlan mud and the trousers with Thraka Green.

The beard was then painted with Bleached Bone, then the tips were highlighted with white. The whole thing was then washed with a mix of Bleached Bone and Lahmian Medium. Finally a small amount of Gryphonne Sepia was then washed into the bit where the skin meets the hair. This was softened with more Lahmian Medium. The studs of the armour were picked out in chainmail, followed by Mithril Silver.

The bottom edges of the leather armour were highlighted with Bloodtracker Brown followed by Bootstrap Leather, with more Devlan Mud added at the top edge for shade. The belt buckle, pommel and guard were all picked out in bronze, followed by gold.

And that is pretty much it. The shield was done with boltgun metal, the details picked out with chainmail and then washed with Ogryn Flesh, followed by Devlan mud.

Next week, Gnome Adventurers, until then, have fun gaming.