I was finishing up my Onar last night when it occurred to me that it might be cool to paint some scars on those massive arms. I've never done anything like that so I looked at a few tutorials, but they were all for light human skin and also a bit exaggerated for my taste. I'm looking for something quite subtle but still easily recognisable as a scar – I don't want people to see him and ask why someone drew on his arms with a sharpie, which is what I'm afraid will be the result if I just try to wing it. I'm also not sure what colours to use with is grey-green skin (I used a more or less 50/50 mix of Celestra Grey and Death World Forest for the base tone). My first idea was to use a lighter colour for the scar and then shade around it, but I have no idea if that would work at all.

So, any advice on painting convincing, non-cartoonish scars on grey-green skin?

PS. Here he is in his nearly finished state. I still need to do the eyes and a few touch-ups here and there.

I think you have the right idea there. At this stage I'd suggest making an test at the scarring on something like another figure or possibly on the base or the underside of the base. (somewhere that's easy to hide or paint over).

Otherwise, I would have offered that you might sculpt (very fine sculpting) some scars out of green stuff before priming & painting that could pick up some paint when you do a dry brush on it.

At this point, just do your best with the finest brush you have. Lay down a line of a dark shade of the skin color followed by a thinner line of a light tint of the skin color to create the highlight and illusion of raised scars.

**just found something that might work better than green stuff.**

Excellent work on the figure by the way! Very clean work.

Waiting for the texture paste to dry on Onar's base.

Arm detail (heavy gloss gel - Vallejo Water Texture stippled on with a fingertip)

Edit: I ended up cutting him off the base and making a new one.

This is from Polda's thread: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/220204-polda-paints-more-ffg-plastic/?page=2

Thank you for the advice and the kind words! I actually saw that post you linked when I was looking up whether anyone had done something like this, and the water texture does indeed look amazing. Had I found it beforehand I would've definitely tried it, but it's probably not worth it at this point.

I'm not sure if testing on a flat surface will give the best idea of how it will look on the arm, but I'll see if I can find something suitable to experiment on. I'll post the results here for sure if I decide to go for it.

Hey, that's a good looking Onar you got there! His paint scheme is so easy to mess up with too much wash but you got it just right.

If you want some examples of how to apply the effect on the arms - this is the aeons (huehuehue, eldritch humor huehue) old tutorial I got the idea from.

You can do it on top of your paint job but might wanna paint over it with some thinned down matt varnish so you don't get shiny spots where the veins are.

http://morebloodypulp.blogspot.sk/2011/06/slimy-veins-tutorial.html?m=1

Cool, thanks! I must admit I was a bit confused about how exactly to apply it with a fingertip, but that clears it up. What a clever little technique, and it looks brilliant.

There are many tutorials on painting scratches for nonmetallic metal. For that, you basically paint an extremely thin line of black (or near black) with another extremely thin line of white (or near white) underneath it. For a raised scar, I would do something similar in the opposite fashion, although I have never done it myself. The upper part should be a bold highlight, the lower part a shade darker than the normal skin color. It would be painted in 2-D, but should read as 3-D if done properly. Like I said, I've never done it, but it should work in theory.

As to color, with the nice green-grey you have going on, I would suggest adding a bit of purple for the darker color, and add lighter grey for the highlight.

Ok, here we go!

I did a quick test run, and while I really liked the idea of adding purple for the darker bit, I couldn't find the right shade and it just looked off. That's probably just me with my terrible understanding of how colours work. I thought I'd keep it simple, and this is what I ended up doing:

I first carefully built up a thin line with Athonian Camoshade, and then on a whim decided to add some smaller lines going across the main one. I went a bit too far with a couple of these so I might try to neaten them up later. I then painted a thinner line inside it with the highlight tone, and finally went back to the shade to add some more definition to the edges.

It's not mind-blowing, but I think the bigger one on the upper left arm turned out alright. I'm not quite as happy with the smaller one, so I may go back and cover that one up again, not sure yet.

What do you think?

You knocked it out of the park! Are those sculpted? I seriously can't tell.

The scarring on both arms look great; I don't know why you'd think to cover any of them up. I'd consider this a success for sure!

39 minutes ago, Force Majeure said:

You knocked it out of the park! Are those sculpted? I seriously can't tell.

The scarring on both arms look great; I don't know why you'd think to cover any of them up. I'd consider this a success for sure!

Thanks very much! To clarify, it's mainly the shape and position of the smaller scar that I'm not entirely satisfied with. I am pretty happy with how the illusion of 3D turned out though, I'm glad you like it as well.

Wow, they really turned out well. Very convincing.