Painting Gaunt's Ghosts

After spending quite some time in the closet in a box, then some more time assemble while I mulled over basing and color schemes, time to finally paint these boys.

Note that I know that the official Tanith uniform is black, but already most of my Guard is black, so I preferred a more earthy brown/green color scheme here.

Note that I realize that their forest bases heavily diverge from the rest of the Guard's city bases. However, they are already cast with forest-y stuff on their bases (even though in the books they mostly fight in cityscapes) and I did not want to cut apart these lovely models.

Painting the camo cloaks

Prime Wraithbone.

Paint the outer side of the cloaks in Militarum Green. Paint the insides Dark Angels Green.

Start the camo pattern with patches of Ork Flesh and Dark Angels Green.

Add more variation using Heavy Goldbrown.

Tone it down and marry the colors with some 1:1 diluted Agrax Earthshade. This step and the next ones apply on the inside as well.

I wasn't really happy with the look so I drybrushed Dead Flesh.

Even though I tried  to do a very soft drybrush, it came out way to strident and chalky. Tone it down again with 1:1 diluted Athonian Camoshade. 

Cloth, armor and hanging greenery

Basecoat the cloth and armor Militarum Green. Give the cloth a second coat for some differentiation.

Highlight both Dead Flesh. 

I worked on the hanging greenery at the same time, basecoating it in Dead Flesh and coating it Plaguebearer Flesh. On a whim (and to lean into the swampy tree look) I also painted some blobs on the tree itself.

Paint the bottom of the hanging stuff Militarum Green. Again, blob the tree.

Highlight Dead Flesh.

Other details

I painted other details at the same time, with the metallics last.

Bragg's goggles are simply Silver and Blood for the Blood God!

Apply some painting tips for the rest of the details:

• Light skintone
• Light leather (Contrast)
• Dark leather (boots)
• Dark leather boot coverings (Cygor Brown, Dark Fleshtone)
• Dark wood guns and trees
• Painting eyes
  
• Shiny black guns
• Black hair
• Traditional metallic blades
• Dark gold insignia (I remember the part where they dulled their badges for stealth's sake)

Bring up Gaunt to the same level of details at the same time. Again, I know that Commissars dress in all black, but he's already wearing a camo cloak, and I thought that painting his boots/boot coverings the same brown as the men of Tanith would be a nice tie-in.

Finishing Commissar Gaunt

I did this at the same time as Commissar Severina Raine. Reuse:

• Dark red cloth (Contrast)
• Paint the yellow epaulets/chest decoration with Nazdreg Yellow, then highlight with a 1:1 mix of Sun Yellow and Dead White.
• Shiny gold

Skin enhancements

Stubble on Larkin and Bragg. I imagine sexy sly Rawne would be clean shaven, much like regulation-bound Gaunt. I find Black Templar too stark, even diluted, so I tried Basilicanum Grey instead. Looks great.

Now for the blue Tanith tattoos. I tried diluted Heavy Blue last time, but why shouldn't Contrast work? Here's Ultramarines Blue diluted 1:3. Looks faded enough that I didn't even need to glaze over with a skin tone. Transparencies are magnificent.

Larkin and Bragg got simple spirals (inspired by the official paint scheme).

Rawne got his starburst.

With the bearded guys getting some triangular shapes.

Basing

Woodland base with just a couple of extra bells and whistles.

Finished!