Painting Basics: Bone

This post appears to have lost its pictures! I’ll be re-uploading them, or redoing the post in the next couple of weeks! Apologies!

Hello there. In this post, I’m going to be showing two slightly different ways of painting bone on miniatures, one is really quick and easy, the other is slightly longer, but also pretty easy.

Firstly, the very easy method. For both versions, the only paints you’ll need are:
Citadel Rakarth Flesh, Citadel Ushabti Bone, Vallejo White (a Citadel white will work just as well), Citadel Seraphim Sepia (or Vallejo Sepia Shade) and a black to undercoat, in this case, it’s Citadel Abaddon Black Base again.

The first method I’m using on the base of Roboute Guilliman to demonstrate it, and you can see more work on the base in the weekly April Hobby Challenge Posts.

The initial stage is to undercoat the skulls black. I always undercoat in black, just because it’s more forgiving if you miss a bit, and doesn’t stand out as much as white. Once undercoated, give the bone, in this case the skulls a coat of Rakarth Flesh.

Next, add a Seraphim Sepia Wash to the skulls.

Third step, paint Rakarth Flesh back onto the skull, being sure to leave the Sepia showing through.

Finally, highlight the skulls with Ushabti Bone, and finally, add a little white to the Ushabti Bone, and do paint on a few extreme highlights.

While it may not look incredible, it is a very quick and easy way to get a reasonable result. The second method is much the same, but involves watering down the paints, and working u the bone colours in many thin layers. For this I’m using one of the Frostgrave Forgotten Pacts treasure tokens, the dragon’s skull.

As always, undercoat using black (in this case, Abaddon Black)

Step two, give it a nice even coat of Rakarth Flesh.

Step three, give it a Sepia Wash.

Here’s where the method varies. Add some water to the spot of Rakarth Flesh on your wet palette (post about making a cheap wet palette can be found here), then carefully apply it to the model, leaving the Sepia showing through, and building up many thin layers until the lightest parts are more or less just Rakarth Flesh. The great thing about this method, is that it makes the colours of the bone blend together a lot better than if you’re just painting plain Rakarth Flesh onto the miniature.

The next step is to add water down some Ushabti Bone, and start applying that, until you have the lighter areas blended in. I clearly had the lamp a little closer below, so the whole thing looks lighter, but you can see the lighter highlights once again.

Finally, mix some white with the Ushabti/water mix, add a little more water to keep it thin, and apply that to the extreme highlights.

And that, is my quick and easy methods to paint bone.

If you’re doing a lot of this colour on your armies, you can mix up the colours a little for variation by using different washes and shades, which adds variety without stopping them from being bone coloured. You can also use other shades to add depth, black shade for the very deepest parts of any recesses, green wash in small areas where it may hold damp. The picture below is from the top of one of my Red Corsair Chaos Space Marines, where the skeleton has been painted as above, but without the highlights. I then used washes to discolour the bone, a method that is worth having a play about with.

That’s the end for this post, but as usual, if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

Thanks for reading.

Rob.