Oh nice, we’re posting golems now! As my players ventured into the Doomvault as a side quest in the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, we needed a fierce Flesh Golem to oppose them! Of course there was a Flesh Golem in the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter I could use here. Meet Bob the Flesh Golem!

In Dungeons and Dragons, a golem is a construct type creature made of stone, ice, metal, clay or even flesh. The Flesh Golem (77169) from Reaper Bones was sculpted by James Van Schaik. It has a very muscular frame and clearly visible stitches all over its body. It’s a good painting practice for anyone interested in painting flesh tones. I decided that my version should have different flesh tones on different body parts, because they are originally from different … people.

Basing and Priming

The miniature only fits on a large (2-inch) base. In D&D 5th Edition, the flesh golem is medium-sized, but let’s ignore this for a bit because the figure is so awesome. My players would have to face a more challenging version, then.

As usual, I primed the miniature by airbrushing it in black and white. Sorry for the pictures below, I started with painting the base and then realized, I forgot to take a picture first.

Painting

I resisted the urge to paint the flesh golem like the Incredible Hulk and give it purple pants. The skin colors should be natural, as in no undead or oddly colored skin. For a nice contrast to the warm-toned skin, I chose blue pants instead.

The golem was a chance to try out several new color recipes for human skin. I used different base, highlight and shade colors for different parts of the golem’s body and applied different washes. During painting, the different skin tones were clearly visible.

I then started to bring the different tones closer together by using the same highlighting color and applied a very thin brown wash to the whole miniature.

As a result, the distinct skin colors are more blended together. I hope they can still be perceived as being different, though. I am happy with the result.

And finally, again with a 2-inch base, I had some fun decorating it with vegetation to contrast the painted miniature.