Halp! McThrall painting = frustration...

[unclebrazzie]

Dearies,

My McThralls are giving me grief. I saw that great great painting tut (was it DeadDogg? Or YoungWolf? I forget...) which showed an easy simple plan to get them nice and grossly fleshy-looking, and I thought "How difficult can it be?".
Turns out, very.

Mind, I'm using PP paints only (only thing I have). No glazes, no inks, just paints. I'm not keen on getting into glazes and inks just yet, but willing to listen to sound advice.

Here's my recipe so far:
White primer.
Basecoat of thrall flesh.
Metals done in Pig Iron. Pipes and tubes Thamar Black.
Heavy wash with a purplish-bruisey mix of Cygnar Blue and Skorne Red.
Drybrush with Midlund Flesh.
Another Drybrush with Thrall Flesh.

Pipes&Tubes need drybrush/highlights with grey. Metal needs a wash of something or other to make them dirty and oily.

Heads&skulls need proper detailing.
As they are right now, I'm not thrilled. They look a bit dull, really, but then again, I might want to add some icky highlights on the wounds and pieces of metal sticking out of them. Overall, they need a little something to make them scream "Yaaaaargh" at the enemy.

Any ideas?

Flickr doesn't seem to like hotlinking, but here they are (http://www.flickr.com/photos/brazzie/sets/72157608128840244/), at the bottom of the set.
Actually, they look better on the pics than in real life, and that's saying something, I guess...

Greetz

UncleBrazzie

[Prismatik]

Good start, there! When you're at the point you are, re-hit the purples in light washes to the bruised areas to really bring them back up. If you have a steady hand and a blue liner pen, try sketching in some veins too and then VERY LIGHTLY washing over it with the skin color you're using to then knock them under the skin.

For some of the more "meaty" parts, try hitting them with some red washes too, so they pop against the fleshy skin sections.

Good luck! :)

[coolwhip1]

Try this for the flesh:
1 - Thrall flesh base coat.
2 - Wash with a very thin mid purple (very watered down purple with a drop or two of thrall flesh) leave this in the recesses for the effect of congealed blood.
3 - Drybrush thrall flesh.
4 - Drybrush a highlight of lightened thrall flesh (mix thrall flesh with a white/off-white).

[unclebrazzie]

Thanks for the advice/pep-talk guys!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't washes accentuate (mostly) the recesses/creases/folds?
Good tip on the blue liner pen, that's one effect I was dying to get (thinks ahead of when his bloat thrall arrives).

Thanks again, I'll update this topic when as the thralls evolve...