Painting Black Goat

This is the fourth faction I painted for Cthulhu Wars. I stepped up my ambitions for it and had fun too. The models needed a lot of prep because of warping, but the designs are very nice.

All of the faction’s models on top of their box, before painting began.

All of the faction’s models on top of their box, for comparison with the unpainted version.

I had primed the previous three factions in neutral greys and white. Black Goat was primed with Pro Acryl Black Brown for a warmer tone, followed by the usual medium grey and white airbrushed highlights. Bases were then drybrushed white to complete the foundation for the pure red that would follow.

The faction colour is VGC 72.010 “Bloody Red”. That paint is more saturated than the colour of the plastic, so the bases were basecoated with a mixture of Bloody Red, a drop of white to reduce saturation, and Citadel/GW Contrast Medium. They were washed with red and black inks in Les Bursley’s recipe, soaking up the ink along the edges. Then the edges were drybrushed white, and finally the white was painted over with a medium-thin coat of Bloody Red.

Acolytes

The complete set of individual models of this type.

This is a detail of my paint job on one particular figure, photographed to its advantage, not for ease of comparison to other figures.

Black Goat and Windwalker are the only two factions for which I painted the hoods of the Acolytes in something other than the faction colour, and in this case it’s obvious. I wanted to do something with the “black” in the faction’s name, not leaving it as an apparent contradiction.

The greyish, almost green colour on the hoods is just Pro Acryl Black Brown with Contrast Medium, and it’s the same paint on the skirts. The daggers and face masks are VGC 72.057 “Bright Bronze”. The light green complementary colour is VMC 70.827 “Lime Green” with a “US Dark Green” shade.

The krises and masks are gold.

The red robes are based in VGC 72.011 “Gory Red” with Contrast Medium. That step failed. The pigments separated, so I later used extra Bloody Red in the final highlighting process to make the robes look red and not purple. This was in spite of my choice of Lime Green to complement the purple.

Ghouls

The skin is VMC 70.815 “Basic Skintone”. The fur is thin Terracotta. Various washes and highlights to separate these models visually from the similar-sized Acolytes.

Fungi from Yuggoth

The small variations on each figure are consistent between the Fungi.

The base is VGC 72.148 “Heavy Warmgrey”. This is meant to correspond to Lovecraft’s description of the local fungi as pink in “The Whisperer in Darkness”, while the grey is meant to suggest the Greys of UFO lore.

Various improvised washes for the brains, shells and bee-hive stomachs. VMC 70.926 “Red” with Contrast Medium for the bundles the fungi are carrying, then cold grey on the sides of those bundles. The face tentacles, the sides of the brains, the faces of the wings and various softer-looking parts were glazed with progressively thinner layers of VMC 70.893 “US Dark Green”. The figures were then washed with a mild purple-black Les Bursley ink mix and lightly drybrushed with pure white.

This shows both a stolen brain and an example of how I reinforced some bent bases with stiffer plastic.

This image shows the bottom of a warped base that I straightend out by grinding away a lot of the material and printing an attachment in stiff green PLA.

Dark Young

The colour scheme on Shub-Niggurath and her Dark Young is meant to remind you of deciduous trees in autumn, and rotting flesh, while also giving a reddish overall impression.

The initial plan was to use VGC 72.154 “Heavy Siena” (sic) as the brown base, but after a quick test I switched to:

VMC 70.985 “Hull Red”, which was used to basecoat the legs and still dominates them in the finished paintjob.
VGC 72.065 “Terracotta”. This bifurcates off the red-yellow axis into VGC 72.140 “Heavy Skintone” for the more skinlike patches.
VMC 70.819 “Iraqui Sand” to highlight the skinlike patches.
Bloody Red, the faction colour.
VGC 72.009 “Hot Orange” and VGC 72.008 “Orange Fire”. These were used sparingly in the final product.
VGC 72.006 “Sun Yellow”. This was the base colour on the zenthal’d upper bodies of Shub and the Young, but the strong yellow tone got covered up with glazes of Heavy Skintone.

The colours are muted where they wouldn’t catch the light. — Different lighting shows the Hull Red

Shub-Niggurath

The insides of the Dark Young’s mouths, Shub’s anterior sacs and Shub’s central tongue/tentacle are all purple.

The anterior sacs are weakly gem-shaded to preserve some ambiguity about whether they’re eyes or eggs.

Retrospective

I am satisfied with this faction.