Goblin Skin Technique.

Hi all,

After my last couple of posts on the Goblin Wolf Riders I've had a couple of people ask me about the recipe I've been using to achieve the Green skin....so I pulled together this post while I was in the process of painting up the next bunch of riders. 

I took photos of each step of the process for the skin...so lets take a look!!

Here is the subject of the work today...a Marauder MM30 Goblin infantry figure that I've removed the tab from and will be mounting on wolf.  He is pictured here next to the base color for the Skin tone...Vallejo Game Color (VGC) 72.145 Heavy Grey ...which is actually Green...? Ok whatever...its a nice Grey...I mean Green!

...and here you can see a close up of this base layer.

One thing I learned from the first batch of Goblin was that I should really paint the eyes and teeth BEFORE I paint the rest of the model...that may seem obvious to most of you...but apparently I like to do things the hard way and have usually saved them for last in the past.  But I've learned!  So those were the first things done.

You can also see that I use a very dark grey primer (matte auto primer to be exact)...I forget to take a pic of the model with just the prime coat ...but you get the idea here from his spear.

...anyway...Step two had me adding a little bit of VGC 72.063 Desert Yellow to my Heavy Grey (sic) base color.

Here are the closeups...

Its already starting to look pretty good to me!

Here is a good place to say that I always due at least two coats of each of these different layers...this makes a huge difference in how smooth the transition are between colors

Do a second coat before moving onto the next color...you won't regret the extra few minutes it takes to do it.

For step three more Desert Yellow is added to the mix.

Close ups...

With Step 4 we add in a new color lighter color...namely VGC 72.034 Bonewhite.  This is where things really start to pop!

Oh yeah!  Thats nice....but one more highlight and we will be there!

Layer five requires a little more Bonewhite and should be applied to only the highest points on the model where light would "collect."

Final Close ups...

That looks good to my eye! I think I will stop there.  Next I will move onto the spear shaft and his...umm..."loin cloth" (shudder).

Here are the individual colors on my wet pallet

 
...and here are all the steps side-by-side

 I would like to point out that I didn't come up with this "triad" of colors for Orc/Goblin skin myself...I nicked the idea from Stone Cold Lead who deployed it in his magical way on some Pig Faced Orcs that he posted on Instagram...his results are way more impressive than my own using the same paints.  But I feel like this is a VAST improvement over my previous method of painting Goblin Skin and I'm really enjoying applying it to these classic Marauder Sculpts. 

Cheers for now!

Blue