Chaos

Chaos is a very challenging army to paint and an even more challenging army to talk about painting. There are so many troop types and color schemes that you can do just about anything you want. In many ways, that makes Chaos easy to paint.

Color Combinations

I've painted the most Khorne and Tzeentch, just a little of Slaanesh and almost no Nurgle. I'll tell you what I like for color combinations first then walk you through a figure. Eventually, I'll put a photo of each model in there for reference, I'm just not there yet. Thanks for your patience

Khorne
Tzeentch
Nurgle
Slaanesh
Minotaurs and Beastmen
Harpies

Khorne

Polly S Dragon Red for any armor, bloodletters, flesh hounds etc. THis gets washed with Liquitex Payes Grey for the shadows and highlighted back with the orignal color. If I want to get brighter, I mix in some orange.
Black for weapons and armor sometime. This should be fairly self explainatory.
Polly S Brass or Citadel Burnished Gold for my metal work. I just recently discovered the Polly S Brass and it goes on very smoothly and is very bright when it dries.

Painting a bloodletter

Prime white
Basecoat Polly S Dragon Red
Basecoat the sword black and paint the mouth black also
Wash the entire model with Liquitex Paynes Grey
Drybrush the body with Polly S Dragon Red. Add a little orange if you want to really brighten it up.
Paint the bracers or spiky crowns Polly S Brass.
Highlight the edges of their swords with a little green, blue, red, or grey depending on how you feel.
Paint bony horns with Snake Bite Leather then blend up into Bleached Bone.
Pick out teeth in white
Pick out the eyes in bright blue. This is a personal preference of mine because I wanted the crazed eyes to really stand out. You can always do them in another color.
Base
Seal

Tzeentch

For demons of Tzeentch or any magic constructs like my chariot conversion, I like to stay to pink highlighted to white and light blue highlighted to white. To me they are really electric colors that kind of capture the feeling that these creatures are made from pure magic.
For champions, I like to use purple or blue with yellow or white. Staying to these four color combinations keeps the general theme of my army pretty constant.
Citadel has a nice range of metallics that work well in these combinations.

Painting a Sorcerer of Tzeentch

Prime white
Basecoat
- Scale armour with Citadel Polished Blue (Metallic)
- Remaining armor in Polly S Kirin Yellow Gold
- Exposed skin in Citadel Bronzed Flesh
- Handle of mace in Polly S Centaur Brown
- Head of mace Polly S Aluminum
- Platform of disk in Polly S Dragon Red
- Bags and pouches in green
Wash everything except the exposed skin and the armor painted in yellow with Liquitex Paynes Grey
Wash everything else with Liquitex Raw Siena
Highlight the exposed flesh and yellow armor with the orignal color
Edge the base of the disc in Polly S Brass
The scroll can be painted with Snakebite leather and highlighted up with Bleached Bone
To paint books, I usually paint the pages in white and wash with a very diluted brown. The cover is whatever color i want washed as applicable
Paint over the symbols of Tzeentch on the breastplate and his forehead with a dark blue then touch up with Polly S Dragon Blue to highlight it
Base
Seal

Nurgle

All I have time for right now is a short talk about colors, green in particular. Most of my Nurgle figures (there's not that many) are inevitably painted in some shade of green. I use the same shades of green for my Skaven Plague Monks.

There are two ways I use to get really dark grungy greens. The first is to prime the figure white, then basecoat with Polly S Slime Green. This is a very bright green that covers well. I believe the Citadel equivalent comes in the basic set. After you've finished the basecoat, wash all that green with Liquitex Paynes Grey. This will add the shadows and darken it a bit. After the wash is dry, highlight back with some of the orignal color.

The second method is my preferred techniques. I prime the figure black, then go over all the green parts with a very heavy drybrush of Polly S Black-Green. When I'm finished with this basecoat, only the very deepest recesses should still be black. On a black base, you almost can't see the green, it's that dark. What it does though, is provide a nice basecoat to put additional greens on. After applying this basecoat, I start to mix in Polly S Basilisk Dark Green to the Black-Green and start to hit the highlights. Eventually, I work all the way up to pure Dark Green. This also gives me a very dark but strong green color.

For greens, especially painting Nurgle, I prefer Polly S colors because they have a great line of military colors. That means that there is a whole range of drab earthy greens that are terrific for rotted demons of Nurgle.

Slaanesh

A section on pastels coming soon. Just remember that adding white to almost any color will pastel it. When I paint Slaaneshi champions, I start out with the basecoats as I would with any other figure. For the highlights however, instead of using a lighter shade of the same color, I'll use white and highlight up until I'm using pure white.

Other colors that go well with Slaanesh are the metallics range by Citadel, especially the green, blue, and purple. Either apply the metallic then mix with silver to highlight, or wash with Liquitex Paynes Grey to darken and add shadows.

Minotaurs and Beastmen

I like to paint minotaurs and beastmen in dark natural colors such as brown and greys. Their gear can be picked out is the colors of you army or they can be made more neutral so that you can field them with a wider variety of armies. This particular minotaur was ridiculously easy to paint because of the large size and good relief of detail.

Prime black
Drybrush Polly S Hobgoblin Grey-Black over the entire figure.
Adding a little white with each step, add successive layers of lighter grey. I finally stopped with almost pure white at the hairy ridge on his back.
Paint the "diapers" and his bracers dark brown. Highlight with a lighter brown.
Paint the swords and the cap on the end of his horn Polly S Aluminum
Wash those areas with Liquitex Paynes Grey.
Pick out all the studs and metal discs with Polly S Brass
Paint the horns Snakebite Leather and highlight up to Bleached Bone.
Pick out the toenails and teeth in Bleached Bone
Paint just a bit of dark red-brown along the very tips of the swords to simulate some blood
Paint the eyes red and pick out the pupil in orange or yellow
Base
Seal

Harpies

I found harpies to be faily easy to paint but too flat. To fix this, I started by bending some of the arms forward and all of the wings backwards a little so that the model would be somewhat more animated. I also primed the wings and body separately.

Prime the wings black and the body white
Basecoat the entire body Polly S Raw Sienna.
Wash the entire body with Liquitex Raw Umber
Pick out the teeth in Bleached Bone.
Paint the hair dark purple
Drybrush the hair white mixed with just a hint of purple
Paint the horns and claws Snakebite Leather and highlight up to Bleached Bone.
If you want, paint just a bit of dark red-brown along the very tips of the claws to simulate some blood.
Attach the wings now. Be careful here, paint will be on the pin and socket and you may have to scrape some of it off or enlarge the socket.
Brybrush the tips and edges of the wings a dark blue to give it some color.
Pick out the wing horns in bone as before.
Paint the eyes red.
base
seal

With chaos, let you imagination run wild. A good source of information in nature books if you want to research tiger stripes or claws. It's worthwhile just to take the minute and get a good idea of what a tiger really looks like for example, before you paint something bright orange with black stripes.