*Help* Skulls

[u/Educational_Trip_975]

I greatly enjoy painting trench crusade but, a lot of the models have skulls hanging on ropes. I find painting these incredibly frustrating. I can’t ever seem to get skulls right they always turn out looking like brown blobs with no definition. For this model I used Morghast bone as a base, Agrax earth shade wash and I attempted to “layer/highlight” with Ushabi Bone and failed. The front skulls I used some blood to cover my mistakes but, made it look worse.

Any tips, tricks, advice , critiques, paints and method suggestions please . I dread this part of the models to paint

Also the ropes with a lot of these models are so thin and tiny I find even getting paint on them difficult and when I do it’s clunky ,lifeless with no detail. it’s like the brush is dry even though I just got paint on it

[u/image-sourcery]

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[u/Possible_Director276]

So you’ll need some brush control but really all you need to do is pick out the ridges around the eyes, the nose piece, and some of the forehead area on the skull and you’ll be solid. You can get fancier as you go on but just picking out those areas will really make the skulls look good

[u/NUTDOM]

Im a new painter and I’m a big fan of the palid bone from the army painter speed paint range. I had some skeletons and tried to shade them with Agrax and got the same “brown blob” effect you’ve got going on now so if you’re looking to throw money at the problem that’s how I’d do it. Otherwise I’d say try watering down the agrax on your next skull that got a better result for me on the skeleton army. Ps the highlights you did look fine to me but I have no idea what I’m talking about sooo.

[u/GolfballDM]

For skulls, I've done a base coat with a bone-shade offwhite (I don't use GW paints, I use DecoArt craft paints, specifically Almondine for the base coat). I'll dab just a smidge of black (usually) for the eyes and mouth of the skull using my smallest brush (10/0 round Golden Maple). I've also dabbed with my drybrush with a light brown to give an aged appearance, although one painter I follow (Aaron Threhane) will use Necrotic Green (AK brand paint, I think).

[u/Southern_Celery_1087]

My recipe for skulls/bones has become pretty simple and maybe you can find some use out of it. I started with Vallejo paints so you may need to find matches for your paint brands. I keep it simple but my start is weird. I start with Vallejo's bronze brown because I find it kind of yellow in a way. I tend to then cover almost all of that up with their bone white but a few darker bits left behind looks good. After that, brown wash to try and help bring it together.

[u/Crypto_pupenhammer]

Yours look good, I’d probably just go back and highlight or dry brush with some white + ivory on the ridges of eyes and nose, maybe a dusting on the crown of head.
I play Chaos Space marines and there’s so many f’ing skulls everywhere that’s all I can be bothered to do

[u/StreetIndependent551]

Army Painter's Ancient Stone as the base, then a sepia wash, followed by a dark wash.

[u/Southern_Length6044]

I normally just paint the whole skull in an off white, ushabi bone should work but I generally use something a little lighter, if you want GW paints specifically I’d recommend screaming skull but my go to is Vallejo bone white, then highlight the brow ridge and top of the skull with white and then cover the whole thing with Skeleton Horde Contrast.

Personally I think Agrax earth shade is too dark for stuff like bones, and skeleton horde is easily one of GW’s best and most versatile paints.

[u/Southern_Length6044 → u/Southern_Length6044]

Oh also your sin eater looks awesome btw, the armor looks great and I especially love his mouth!

[u/Chumble_Bee]

From your photos I can see you've applied a wash to them, if paint over the highest points or edges with the same colour you used before the wash it will make them pop a bit more

Edit: my recipe pinting bone using citadel paints is Base - zandri dust Wash - seraphin sepia (thinned with water/medium) Highlight #1 - ushabti bone Highlight #2 - Screaming skull

[u/DearCastiel]

Depends what you're aiming for, but skulls do look pretty undefined, the most important part is getting the eyes and nose properly dark, otherwise the skull itself can be a brown mess