Using the 'Shaded Basecoat' Technique to paint Saurus warriors

OK, here is another one of thoe step by step guides I have been promising!  For those of you who are not into Lizardmen, I will try to make the information as clear as possible to understand and translate to other types of miniatures.

Here is a quick images of the "Steps".  Sometimes there are many more steps, sometimes there are less, so don't take the number of images here as something definitive!



As I have often said, I begin with the "middle" tones, roughly halfway between lightest and darkest.  I tend to use larger, flat brushes, like a 4-8 sable.  These are ideal for the very controlled semi-drybrushing that I do in these early stages.

Here is the start.  I lay out some very basic colors, a green and a yellowish orange, and slap those on the figure.  I lighten those colors with an off white, either yellowish, reddish or blueish, depending on the color I need to lighten.  That's where the flat brush comes in!




You can see how much lighter the colors are. I worked very quickly, covering the whole surface at once. This technique is more like painting a 2D surface, as opposed to the usual GW method of painting isolated sections of the miniature.




Step 2 begins the darker shading. It is very important to metion that a glaze is a very controlled wash.  You are not slapping a huge vat of devlan mud on your miniature!  Slightly worn out liner brushes work well for this stage.



As I continue the darker shading, it is vital to note that I am using a very small brush to apply these layers, so that I can do so in a very controlled fashion.  I use mostly GW glazes and washes, but I will also use Vallejo and Reaper versions.  My first glazes are even thinned with water.  They should not be 'runny' at all, but more like regular paint.



As I apply more layers of shading, the glazes and washes are more 'pure', and I even mix the glazing colors together to create darker versions...


Once the darkest darks have been achieved, I go back in to pull out details, add more highlights, and create some color contrasts, such as what was done on the shield.



Here is the finished version:


Again, this is not a hard and fast way to do things... it's just a window into how I work :-)

These images show a  whole unit of saurus in progress using this technique:


You can see that they are all in that drybrushed state, ready for their darker glazes!



The advantage in this method is that I only needed 3 basic colors to start with...a green, the orange, and one yellowish white color to lighten both of them!  All the rest is done with glazes, tinting as needed to match the final colors!