Dwarf beard Tutorial by:Kuffeh

Blonde Hair By Kuffeh at The Grumpy Stunty or The Trading Post

Being a dwarf player, blonde is often a colour I want interspersing my units and characters but it can be hard to paint a convincing blonde. I have come up with a method that works rather well.

You will need

Mini

Brushes

Paints; Calthan Brown, Snakebite Leather, Golden Yellow, Kommando Khaki, Dheneb Stone, Skull White and Gryphonne Sepia

Each layer should be quite thin, as not to obscure the hair strands. Also multiple layers will most likely be required for each step. Bear that in mind.

For this tutorial I have used a random dwarf body and painted only the beard. I am not being careful of the other parts of the mini as this is just for practice, on the actual mini you will want to be careful of other parts - especially existing painted parts. I also started with a black undercoat.

Step One

The basecoat is Calthan Brown. Paint it all over the hair (from here on in, the beard) until you have a nice solid colour.

Step Two


The next layer is snakebite leather. Paint this all over the beard, but try to leave the basecoat in the deepest recesses of the beard and next to facial features or body parts.

Step Three


Add a small amount of golden yellow to the snakebite and reapply to the previous layer. This will give it a more yellow tone, something blonde has.

Step Four


Add a small amount of kommando khaki to the snakebite mix. The khaki is a neutral colour and has a way of lightening without it gaining colour - it sort of mutes the colour.

Step Five


Now add some dheneb stone to the mix. This does a similar job to the khaki but is lighter in tone. The more you add the lighter the blonde will be at the end. It is also worthwhile to start picking out individual hair strands at this point.

Step Six


Here I have added some more dheneb stone to highlight the beard more.

Step Seven
Add some skull white to the mix. Again, how much determines how bright it'll turn out. Again picking out individual strands makes the beard stand out and look more than just a flat tone.

Step Eight


Wash the beard with gryphonne sepia. Don't just slap the wash on, try to add thin layers of the wash, allow to dry and repeat until happy.

Step Nine


Reapply the highlight from step seven, again looking at highlighting individual strands.

Step Ten


The final layer is to add more skull white into the mix. This is used to pick out the most prominent strands. Such as the moustache and parts of the central braid.

That is it then done. A nice blonde beard.