Saturday, June 12, 2010

Painting Plague Monks - Washes

Unclean, unkempt and certainly unhealthy (to their foes...) your Skaven Plague Monks want to end up being looking pretty dirty and diseased on the tabletop. The models themselves offer lots of opportunities to get this effect due to the detail on the excellent new plastic models. Bandages, torn robes, boils, buboes and bulbous growths are all really well modeled.

Although I haven't completed my first Plague Monk unit yet, I have made some progress and thought I would put up some photos of some experiments I did with Games Workshop washes to give you and idea of the difference they can make to the overall look of a model.

For my base colour, I used a 1:1 mix of Codex Grey and Knarloc Green, which gave me a "Seasick Green" (Not an official colour!). It looks like this:

Onto the edges of this, I applied a lighter line of the same colours, (2:1 Codex Grey/ Knarloc Green) - no picture available sadly - and then I had to decide what wash to use to add depth and shadows. As my paint collection is quite small, I only have Thraka Green and Devlan Mud at the moment. First, here is what happens when a coat of Thraka Green is liberally applied...

It looks pretty green! In fact, this fellow wouldn't look out of place in Sherwood Forest...not quite what I had in mind. Now let's look at a model where only Devlan Mud is used...

A much muddier effect (obviously), but the underlying colour now looks quite washed out. That isn't necessarily bad as the robes looks older and dirty, fitting in well with the Plague Monks theme and with an army in the field (or that has just come of their tunnels under the earth...)

To make the difference even clearer, here are a couple of samples side by side:
Quite a difference!

I'm undecided which I like better at the moment...
...any comments or preferences?

5 comments:

  1. Perfect. I posted on Underempire asking whether to use Thrakka Green or Devlan Mud, this has just answered my question.

    They do look too green with the thraka wash, devlan mud it is.

    By the way your blog is amazing, I have just started painting skaven and this is proving to be a great help, thanks.

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  2. Glad to be of service! Please let me know how you get on with your plague monks and do share any tips our tricks you pick up here in the comments. Thanks for coming by the Chattering Horde!
    Cheers,
    Squeek.

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  3. Will be ordering plague monks at the end of the month, I'm painting clanrats and stormvermin at the moment, but I'm giving them green robes/cloaks so this was very useful.

    And I am using your clanrat guide, again very useful.

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  4. What about applying both washes? Did you consider this?

    I dont really think just one wash on these guys looks that good, the thraka green does end up looking a bit to green and the delvan mud looks to washed out. A thraka wash over the cloth followed by a liberal wash of delvan mud might look better than just one or the other.

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    Replies
    1. I didn't actually think about applying both washes but it would be interesting to do... I just finished another small batch of PMs so it may have to wait awhile. Has anyone else here tried that?
      (Thanks for coming by the blog and commenting by the way!)

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