Painting Bane Step-By-Step

Super Hero sculpts often have exaggerated musculature so the way I approach painting them is by breaking down each muscle into a separate area with its own highlight, mid tone and shadow. I’ll start off with a full coverage of the mid tone. I’ll apply the shadows by placing the brush around the middle of the muscle mass and pull the pigment downwards to the bottom of the muscle. For highlights it will be in the opposite direction i.e. towards the top of the muscle mass. The thigh muscles are slightly different as the raised areas are towards the centre of the muscle and you’ll also have to bear in mind zenithal lighting so the top part of each muscle mass should be lighter too.

1.  I started off with the zenithal priming method, for those that don’t know it basically priming with black to the underneath of the miniature. Grey primer is then applied at an angle of around forty-five degrees and finally primed with white from directly above the miniature. For me it gives me clear guidance on where to place the highlights and shadows and if you apply your paint in thin coats the highlights and shadows should still show through.

2.  Base coat for the skin is Citadel’s Cadian Flesh mixed with equal parts of water.

3.  A second coat of Cadian Flesh is applied but just keeping to the top two thirds of each muscle.

4.  Remembering that you already have shadows and highlights from the zenithal priming, it will save time if your paint is applied in thin layers. My method involves mixing paint with water and flow improver in a 1:1:1 ratio. This keeps the layers quite thin and you are able to keep the good work of the priming. I started off with the trousers with a thin coat of Vallejo’s German Grey to the deeper areas of the muscles of the leg. I used the same colour for the gloves, boots and mask in stage 5.

5.  A second coat of the thinned German Grey. There’s no need to be particularly careful here as you’ll be going over the previous layer too, and the previous coat below will end up a much darker colour. Once dried you should still be able to see the lighter raised areas in the musculature.

6.  The green pipes were given a couple of coats of Scale 75’s Irati Green

7.  The flesh areas were then given a wash with Citadel’s Reikland Fleshshade.

  

8.  In order to get a smooth transition of colour I layered on Cadian Flesh staying away from the shadow areas and staying up in the top areas of each muscle.

 9.  This shows the beginnings of the transition

10. For the highlights I started with a few coats of Citadel’s Cadian Flesh and Kislev Flesh mixed about 50:50 and added the same amount of water to paint, placing the brush towards the halfway point of the muscle mass and stroking the brush towards the highlight areas, the lighter pigment should then begins to show after a few strokes.

 11. This shows the lighter pigment towards the top of the muscle area.

12. Continuing the highlights I used a few coats of Citadel’s Kislev Flesh and water mixed about 50:50 and placing the brush towards the top third of the muscle mass and stroking the brush towards the highlight areas, the lighter pigment should then begins to show after a few strokes.

13. This shows the lighter pigment towards the top of the muscle area.

 14. I carefully picked out the veins with Scale 75’s Sherwood Green

15. I carefully applied a wash to either side of the veins with a 50:50 mix of Citadel’s Biel Tan Green and Lahmian Medium

16. I used a very thin coat of Citadel’s Flayed One Flesh for the final highlight of the skin. This layer is almost a glaze consistency and keeping the paint to the absolute top of each muscle. This will intensify the highlight area nicely. If you need to, feather out the border with a wet brush.

17. For the trousers I’m using an old technique I was taught by Marc Masclans, if you are unfamiliar with his stuff, look him up, he’s a genius. It uses a process of laying down multiple lines in an area and then applying the next colour (usually lighter) in a smaller area to create volume and texture. It’s difficult to see with black and grey so I’ve included a pic of Darkseid where I used the same technique for the blues on the legs.
 For Bane I picked out quite a few greys to build up a gradient, the first being German Grey mixed with a little Vallejo Game Colour Heavy Blue Grey. Keep the paint very thin, one part paint to two parts water. The thin lines are applied to individual muscles just like we did with the skin previously. Start and finish each line within the border of the muscle so that you leave a small area darker at the edge surrounding the muscle.

18. For this stage I added more Blue Grey to the mix and a little more water. Same process again, adding thin lines across the muscle staying away from the edge of the last layer so that you begin to build up volume i.e. the raised parts of the muscle are lighter than the recesses.

19. Apply another coat using the same mix of paint. If you can add the lines to a slightly smaller area than the last coat, that would be better but isn’t essential. The second coat will build up the opacity of this colour. After a couple of strokes the top area should have a nice highlight and have a gradient into shadow. I’ll wet my brush and feather out the border.

20-21. Going lighter again I used thin coats of the previous mix but added a little white to the mix to build up the highlights of the leg muscles, concentrating on the raised areas. With these areas I started slightly above the area I wanted to highlight and pulled the pigment up into the area to be highlighted.

To counter act the light I used a thin black wash and started the stroke about a third from the bottom of each muscle and pulled the pigment down into the shadow area.

22. A final highlight with a little more white added to the previous mix, it should be close to a light grey now. This is applied to the centre line of the muscle mass. Don’t worry if you go too light as you can always glaze back over with black to tone it down again.

23. I wanted to add a splash of interest to the shin guards and decided on some rust. The base coat here was Citadel’s Warplock Bronze as I wanted a slight shine at the edges. If you wanted a more matt appearance you can use any dark brown for this stage.

24. Citadel’s Skrag Brown was applied with a small piece of sponge. If you haven’t used sponge before you will need a small piece from the sponge in your blister pack, dab it into the paint then dab off the excess of paint onto a paper towel and the dab on the paint to the model. It’s a bit like drybrushing technique. Always test the sponge on paper first though to get an idea how much paint is still on the sponge.

25. For this stage I used a stipple brush but if you don’t have one, sponge will work just as well but you will need to control where the paint goes. I used Citadel’s Troll Slayer Orange for this stage

26. A final highlight of Citadel’s Fire Dragon Bright is dotted in a random pattern with a normal brush.

27. The belt was given a base coat of Citadel’s Ironbreaker.

28. Moving on to the vest now, I use a particular paint mix if I want to keep the shadows and highlights from the zenithal priming. Here I’m using Citadel’s Steel Legion Drab, water and Flow Improver in a 1:1:1 ratio. Unfortunately this will take a bit of practice to get a nice consistency, everyone’s judgement of a ‘drop’ is different. Leave to dry completely before adding a second coat.

29. Same process as before treat each muscle as a separate area e.g. left pec, right pec and each abdominal muscle. Shade the bottom area of the chest and abdominal with Steel Legion Drab mixed with a little German Grey. Keep it thin and start the stroke from the bottom third of the area and pull the pigment down into the shadow area. Feather off the border at the beginning of the brush stroke if needed.

The bat signal was coated with Vallejo’s Burnt Iron or any dark metal will do. The belt was shaded with a black wash.

30. First highlight to the vest is with Citadel’s Zandri Dust. The brush stroke can start about half way or the middle of the area and push the pigment up into the highlight area. You should now start to see a bit of gradient.

31. Another highlight using a 50:50 mix of Zandri Dust and Ushabti Bone. Use about 1:1 ratio of paint to water and apply an edge highlight to the vest. Once you are happy with that add more water and add another highlight to each muscle by starting the stroke from the top third of the muscle up into the highlight area.

32. The bat signal and base were given a liberal wash with Agrax Eathshade and left for a while to dry.

33. I forgot to do the flesh of the fingers so applied some Cadian Flesh there. I also started to edge highlight the bat signal with Blue Grey.

34. I lined the outer eye area and the inside of the belt buckle with German Grey mixed with some black. When dry I painted a thin line across the eye with white and then over the top of that with red. Highlight then with an orange dot.

35. I added a little bit of Vallejo’s Burnt Red to the bottom part of the buckle circle just to get a bit of contrast in there and then added a bit of yellow and white to the top of the circle. The mask was then defined with Light Grey. I lined the edges of the vest against the flesh using a thinned down German Grey. Fingers were highlighted using the same method as the rest of the flesh above.

36. I washed the veins with Biel Tan Green again as I wasn’t happy with them, same wash was applied to the pipes at the back. The mask was highlighted with white.

37. I highlighted the veins and pipes with Irati Green mixed with a golden yellow just to gain a bit of definition.

All in all a very nice mini to paint, I quite enjoyed going outside the normal box art paint job. It was great practice for getting contrast on the musculature too. Just remember when you are painting miniatures with big muscles keep your paint thin and be patient to build up the gradient.

Here's the finished mini under decent lighting.

  

 

I’d love to hear from you if you give this a go, just get in touch in the comments below or look me up on Facebook.

Hope you enjoyed it and hopefully see you again soon.

Cheers,

DB