If you read my last few posts you’ll know I’m preparing to play in a map based campaign set in the Border Princes with some friends. For this campaign I’m fielding a Dwarf army and a Vampire counts army. After painting some of the Dwarfs last time around I decided to switch over to my Vampire Counts to keep things fun. The zombies seemed like a good place to start so I painted up a nice big batch of them. All up there’s “35” zombies there (32 really but the ogre counts as 4!), giving me enough for a unit of 20 and 15 summons.
I actually built these models a long time ago, during the 8th edition of Warhammer, so somewhere around 10 years ago. They were built by mashing together a zombie box and a Bretonnian men-at-arms set, as well as the addition of a spare ogre from my Ogre Kingdoms army. It’s about time these got some paint on them!
Painting wise I knew I wanted to go fast, the goal being to paint the 32 models in the time it would normally take me to paint a unit of 10 models. That meant leaning heavily on contrast paints, aiming for as many parts as possible to be done in single coats of contrast paints.
The skin was done with a 50/50 mix of Plaguebearer Flesh contrast and Fyreslayer Flesh contrast. I tried to mix these somewhat unevenly to get a bit of variation when applying the paint. The skin then got a patchy application of Carroburg Crimson wash to add a bit of red to some sections for even more variation.
The cloth, leather, and bone areas were done with a variety of contrasts including Flesh Tearers Red, Cygor Brown, Wyldwood, Black Templar, Aggaros Dunes, Skeleton Horde, and Snakebite Leather. These non flesh areas then got an all over wash of brown enamel (MIG Brown Panel Wash) for an easy dirtying.
The metal areas were painted with Scale 75 Black Metal, then covered in Khimera Red Oxide and Khimera Orange patchily and wiped away somewhat messily to get a worn rusty look.
The blood you see on the models was done after my usual coat of Matte Varnish to retain the glossy look. The blood was done using an old technique I picked up from one of the more successful Australian display painters back in the day. The technique makes use of Tamiya Clear Red acrylic paint mixed with some regular black acrylic (in this case I used Vallejo). The clear red is alcohol based and dries very quickly into a pretty tacky substance that can be applied to models in a quite realistic way, giving some nice texture as well as colour for the blood effect. By varying the amount of black mixed in you can go from a nice fresh blood all the way to coagulated blood. Lots of fun!
These were tremendous fun to paint. Much like Nurgle models they are very freeing in that it’s possible to go a bit crazy with washes and get something reasonable looking at the other end. They won’t win me any awards, but they look nice and icky and grimy and I don’t think I can ask more of zombies!
Lair of the Lagomorph 
These are great, Nic! 🙂 Quite a gruesome bunch! Would never have guessed you’d gone for a quick paint job and the blood looks all too real!
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Thanks John! Glad to hear they don’t look too rushed!
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They certainly don’t look rushed! 🙂 I’m surprised you commented so quickly – I thought it was the middle of the night in your part of the world! Hope you’re OK!
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It’s late but not too bad (depending on how late you like to go to bed!)
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Those look tremendous! I appreciate the paint recipe, as I will definitely be trying to achieve that skin effect.
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Thanks a lot!
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Oh, I forgot to ask … what was the basecoat color you used? White or gray, or something else?
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These are undercoated with a really light grey. Looks white until you see white next to it basically. Vallejo Surface Primer Grey is the paint.
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These are some classic sculpts, Nic! I haven’t painted any zombies but I did get and paint skeletons that were out around the same time many editions ago. In fact, I’m pretty sure some people grew tired of these zombies being the only option and complained about them at some point but its all water under the bridge now since Cursed City came out.
I love the Ogre conversion and am a big fan of the ogres in general. They’re versatile sculpts. That is one thing that was cool about Warhammer fantasy as well. Conversions and interesting looking units like this were heavily encouraged.
And finally, the blood came out great! These zombies really look the part.
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Thanks a lot! I really don’t mind these sculpts, lots of nostalgia there! They do look a bit goofy and yes were well in need of a refresh however! I do like the new zombies, interesting to see if they rank up nicely or not.
Completely agree about the ogres! The models are such a great blank canvas, so easy to take one and make it fit in your army as a mercenary or otherwise!
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Agreed on all accounts. I wouldn’t mind having a go at the new zombies either though I’d probably only paint one or two since I don’t play AoS.
As far as ogres go, I’d love to paint some of them too. I should probably try and pick up a mini or two and put it away for when I have some time and want to paint something fun like you have here!
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This is an excellent block, some lovely conversions glad the campaign has encouraged you to paint them after so long!
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Thanks a lot!
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