Painting Bone

Several people requested a bone tutorial in the summer when I posted my Otherworld Skeletons, so 8 months later I have finally obliged. Sorry guys!

So, my bone technique is really rather simple. It’s also hyper highlighted, I’ll give some tips on creating a dulled down version too towards the end. So first off I undercoat with a light base, I think I’m using Rakarth Flesh and that’s washed with army painter Strong Tone (dropper bottle not dip). I actually just hold the dropper bottle over the models chest and drop a blob on there and then just spread it around with my brush.

Once that’s dry I break out the bleached bone and give the whole model a base coat, being as neat as possible but not worrying too much if I step outside the lines as the upcoming washes will fix any mistakes.

Next I mix up Tallarn Sand with Lahmian Medium and create a thin wash to cover the whole model. Note I do all this without attaching the arms, so I can still get at the ribcage. Also, you could play with the mix here to shade your bones with a darker hue, or perhaps add blue, green or black to get a totally different effect than the aged bones style I’ve gone for.

Next I washed in some Seraphim Sepia, rehighlighted the bones with bleached bone and added in the other details. Ideally you want to paint the bones so that some of the Tallarn Sand coat is still visible, meaning that by this stage your bones have three shades of colour on them. The original base coat also means you dont have to get into all those hard to reach places a second time, the base and washes took card of them.

Finally I added a layer of Pale Flesh highlights. Here I’m looking to hit the edges of the bones to make the straight lines stand out. For a more subtle effect you could mix some white with bleached bone. What I was looking to do is put a noticeable highlight next to dark recesses to really emphasise the details of the bones. A good example can be see on this skull:

Obviously you can adapt the recipe to suit your needs, using blacker washes and whiter highlights for more traditional skeletons or mixing in more yellows and khakis for more aged looking ones. Finally I glued the arms in position and followed the exact same steps.

And here is the final result.

With this set of miniatures I’ve been trying several new things. Firstly I plumped for a black and white colour scheme, because it fits with the fiction I’m writing at the moment and because I need more practice with black and white. And secondly the metallics, which are a combination of my matt metallics and actual metallics in an attempt to create a deeper less splogy look. If anyone is interested I have a tutorial prepped using the shield above as an example. Just let me know in the comments below.