John from 1000 Foot General had the great idea to celebrate the Halloween season by painting spooky Bones. I totally agree and lined up all my unpainted undead Bones , and chose to start with some Zombies from the “Undead Horde” set!

So, let’s start with the Zombies (Reaper Product Number 77053), which come in a pack of three. After watching the premiere of the 4th season of “The Walking Dead” this week and seeing all those nice Walkers, I’m itching to get some paint on these miniatures.

Basing and Priming

Again, all minis were cleaned in a bath of soapy warm water and bent into shape with the boiling water method. I then glued them each on a round 25mm plastic base. After that, I used white glue to add a mix of coarse and fine sand to the base. The minis then were primed using Vallejo Black Primer and an Airbrush.

Painting

I really liked how John from 1000 Foot General painted his zombies. Chris from All Bones About It also already painted his Bones zombies,which also turned out pretty cool. I think we have a rather clear cultural image, how modern day zombies should look like. Again, that’s also how they look like in the “The Walking Dead” tv series.

For the basecoat, I used a mix of Vallejo Model Color (MC) “Green Grey” and MC “Brown Violet” (the name is confusing, it’s a dark green). You can see the result in the picture above. I painted the rags in a different color on each zombie, so they can be better identified on the game table, later. I used Vallejo Game Color (GC) “Leather Brown”, Beasty Brown” and MC “Pale Sand” for that. The hair of one zombie was painted with GC “Leather Brown” as well, the other two got black hair. I used a darker version of my skin color mix for some shading on the stomach and the faces.

I applied a black wash (thinned down Vallejo Game Ink “Black”) on the miniatures, and drybrushed the highlights of the skin with MC “Green Grey”. For the eyes I used GC “Dead White”. One of the zombies only has one “good” eye (I cut the face open a little bit before painting), so for the face half with the missing eye, I used an even darker version of the basic skin tone mix. Since there are no weapons, leather parts or other details, that pretty much was it.

To paint the bases, I went through the same routine as the last time:Drybrushing with MC “Chocolate Brown”, MC “Flat Brown” and eventually MC “Sky Grey”. The result is a desaturated look of earthy dirt/rocks, which I find really fitting for the undead.

Finishing Touches

First, I sealed the miniatures with Army Painter Anti-Shine Varnish. I wanted some more vegitation on the bases, e.g. withered bushes, old roots and withered grass. For the bushes, I glued some small pieces of Iceland Moss on the bases and put a basecoat of MC “Chocolate Brown” and a drybrush of MC “Green Brown” on it. Finally, I added some small patches of moss and tufts of grass from an Armypainter battlefield basing package.