Incredible Saurus with no edge highlights? Sign us up! In his latest invaluable guide, Tyler Mengel shows you how to paint your Seraphon to perfection.
Tyler: The Seraphon has always been a faction that interested me. Back in the world-that-was, under the guise of the Lizardmen, I was always tempted to start an army. Now, with their updated book, I figured I would give them a proper try. The Coalesced seem the coolest to me – I love the idea of them living in their temple cities amongst the sweltering jungles of the Mortal Realms, just like Lustria of old.
As soon as the Contrast paints came out, I knew they were a perfect match for the Seraphon range. The scales and other textures covering the majority of the models are a match made in Azyr with the new paint range. My goal here was to paint this model using only Contrast paints (outside of the metallics) and with no edge highlights.
Step 1
I primed the model with Grey Seer.
Step 2
The skin was then painted with a solid coat of Aethermatic Blue. You just want to make sure you hit all of it with this colour, and get the scales too.
Step 3
I painted the scales with a 1:1 mix of Contrast Medium and Akhelian Green. I did two coats of this so that I could control how dark it got. At this point, I also picked out a few areas on the skin to make it darker, mostly the eyes and between the fingers.
Step 4
After this, go back with Grey Seer and clean up all of the areas that are going to be another colour besides the gold.
Step 5
The red areas were then painted with Blood Angels Red. On this model, that’s his eyes and the scales on the shield.
Step 6
All of the bone areas were painted with Skeleton Horde with just a little bit of Contrast Medium mixed in. Once the first coat was dry, I went back and picked out areas I wanted to be darker, such as the eye sockets.
Step 7
This model happened to have a severed head on the shield. I painted this with a 1:1 mix of Contrast Medium and Guilliman Flesh. I thinned it down to make the skin more pallid.
Step 8
I painted the hair with a 1:1 mix of Contrast Medium and Wyldwood. I actually did two coats of this, but again, this was to make it easier to control how dark it went.
Step 9
The weapon haft, the blocky part of the weapon, and any leather straps were painted with Black Templar. On the weapon I went back over it with a second coat to get a nice, solid colour.
Step 10
The last colour to do is the gold, which is basecoated with Retributor Armour. This step takes the longest but just take your time with it and be careful.
Step 11
Lastly, all of the gold was shaded with a 1:1 mix of Reikland Fleshshade and Reikland Fleshshade Gloss. This gives it a nice sheen and lets it flow into the recesses more without being overly shiny.
That’s it, you’re done! I realised at this stage that I had missed some of the spines on his back that were actually supposed to be gold, so I went back and corrected that.
I also used a bit of Agrax Earthshade to pick out shadows on the bone a bit more and did a dab of Druchii Violet on the severed head’s eyes as well as some Flesh Tearers Red for the blood, but that’s all down to personal taste.
I wanted the basing to have a bit of jungle feel, and I may go back and add some Bracken to it later to really emphasise the theme. This model painted up really fast and, if you’re batch painting a whole unit or even army of them, I imagine you could get through them pretty quickly!
Thanks, Tyler! Test this scheme for yourself – grab a set of Saurus Guard today!