This article is part of a larger series on how to paint the Death Guard. To return to the parent article, click this link.
In Blackstone Fortress: No Respite, you will typically encounter Poxwalkers in small groups and having an easy way to identify them is important. Most zombies find clothes incredibly constricting, so trying to pick them out based on what little tattered rags they wear is difficult. I did some searching around and could not find a whole lot written about how to paint dark-skinned zombies, so I decided to try my hand at it. I also wanted to try some long-dead zombies, where the blood has largely left the body, with a pallid blue hue. Along with your more typical white dude zombies, I figured that’d be enough to help identify which group is which on the tabletop.
Painting the Flesh
The light-skinned zombies got a relatively thin coat of Guilliman Flesh. You want them to still look pale, so keeping it thin is best practice. The darker skinned zombies got basecoated with Cygor Brown. Some contrast paints are more densely pigmented than others, and I’ve not found one thicker than Cygor. You’ll want to thin it with at least 50% Contrast Medium to preserve some of the detail and get the contrast effect we want. On the bluish zombies I used Nighthhaunt Gloom. This is a weird paint. It’s not quite a wash, it’s not really contrast, and it’s not a glaze. To get it to work as a contrast paint, I also mixed this one 50/50 with Contrast Medium. For all of these, you will want to avoid any of the largest boils and sores, as we will make them stand out a little more. I also kept a small halo of primer along the outer edges of the tentacles to make blending easier later.
The rest of these steps are going to be identical for all of the skin colors, to help them be cohesive and look natural with each other. To shade the skin from this point, I used the wash Athonian Camoshade. This is an excellent and versatile color that’s great for making things look grimey in an organic way, and there’s no better organic grime than zombie juice. You’ll want to put a little around the big boils, but try to keep from slopping it onto the boils themselves.
Bones and Horns
Poxwalkers are lousy with horns and bone. There are three schools of thought when it comes to shading them – leaving them pure bone (like antlers), or shading them light to dark, either from the top or bottom to the opposite end. These are all acceptable choices, but I decided to go light base to dark tips as it looks a little more sinister. The horns got an all over coating of Skeleton Horde. Then, while it was still a little damp, coat the two thirds in Wyldwood, then the top third with Black Templar. Contrasts are great for wet blending on the models themselves. The teeth were also hit with Skeleton Horde, but not the rest of the paints, as blending on a 0.1mm tooth is a bit much for zombies.
I also at this point tagged the sores with Plaguebearer Flesh, then when that was dry did a thin glaze of Casandora Yellow to heighten the saturation and make them look more gross.
Tentacles
For the tentacles some of them have, I first put a small ring of the flesh contrast paint around the base of them. I then grabbed Vulpus Pink and blended with the flesh contrast to create a gradient between the zombie itself and whatever demonic thing controls that tentacle. Vulpus Pink is one of my favorite contrast colors and I try to find any use for it I can. You might want to do another thin coat of Vulpus on the upper half of each tentacle to make the color more intense.
Finally, to brighten the zombies up and bring all the colors together, I did a light drybrushing of Screaming Skull. You will want a large soft brush for this – a cheap round makeup brush will do well. Do it very lightly and avoid staying in one spot too long. Drybrish this over the whole model, though I would go a little lighter near the tips of the horns. I am not very skilled at drybrushing and I overbrushed in a few spots, but at the end of the day you can’t cry over zombies too much.
Final Details
The models are finished by painting the clothes and metals in whatever manner you think best suits them. Because these models were going to be used in Blackstone Fortress with the glassy teal basing style, I picked orange for their clothes, mostly done with Gryph Hound Orange with a little Agrax Earthshade. The rusty metals were basecoated Ironbreaker, then shaded in spots with Agrax and Feugan Orange, before doing an edge highlight of Stormhost Silver. The eyes were picked out in Flash Gits then Dorn Yellow. I am really happy with the way these Poxwalkers came out, especially the gnarly blue ones. It really makes me want to start Death Guard, but I know I have far too many armies sitting in the wings before I can even consider that.
This article is part of a larger series on how to paint the Death Guard. To return to the parent article, click this link.
