Moonstone: Painting Grub

Time for another Moonstone painting article.

If you’ve never heard of Moonstone it’s a very cool fairly new small scale skirmish game. Combat is handled with two decks of cards rather than dice. Melee combat uses a rock/paper/scissors kind of mechanic with all other attacks and abilities using the other deck with a bluffing mechanic. I’ve enjoyed the games I’ve played so far and if you want to learn more youtube has plenty of videos.

The base skin tone is a nice vivid Moot Green. This is shaded mostly with Rhinox Hide and in some places Genestealer Purple. The face has a lot more color with a little Kantor Blue around the eyes. Cadian Fleshtone is mixed with the Moot Green on the neck to give it a bit more warmth. Pure Cadian Fleshtone on the ears really makes them pop.

Moving on I add more of the same colors. More purple is introduced to the hands feet and neck to make them stand out more. I’ve also begun adding some highlights of Menoth White Highlight (formula P3) blending it into the Moot Green.

Next I get the shadows even darker while bringing out the pink in the neck with some Kislev and Cadian Fleshtone. The eyes are formula P3 Moldy Ocher highlighted with Menoth White Highlight.

I add the corneas with some Screamer Pink (which is actually a dark red) and continue adding definition here and there smoothing out the shading. I decided to accentuate the belly, making it paler by adding some Kislev Flesh highlighted with Ionrach Flesh.

The fingers, toes and knees get some attention with Kislev Flesh shaded with some Genestealer Purple and Screamer Pink. I also add some arcane blue around the eyes. Inthe pupils I blend a little black into the red around the top. When you have a model with eyes this large, you can paint the corneas like gemstones – darker at the top, lighter at the bottom. The hat gets a basecoat of Baneblade brown.

In the last frame, all the skin gets some final Menoth White Highlight highlights to really bring out the detail. The hat is highlighted with some P3 Sulfuric Yellow and Pallid Wych Flesh. It’s shaded with a mix of Kantor Blue and Rhinox Hide.

His fur collar is Rhinox Hide with some Sulfuric Yellow drybrushed onto it. His little beak started with a basecoat of black with some stark highlights of Celesta Gray and Menoth White Highlight applied in a little cone shape to try to make it looks shiny.

I did some NMM effects for the knife and and bug spray can. I’ve done a lot of NMM articles so if you want to learn more about that this is a good one with a lot of theory.

His eyes get pupils with a little spot of black  before I add a little off center highlight to each eye. I also did a checker pattern on his hat, to tie him in with the rest of these goblins. Check The Beaky Bobby painting article for more on doing a checkerboard pattern.

Then there is his little bug back. I wanted to go for an iridescent beetle look here. I tried this by using cool colors for the highlight and warm colors for the shading. To try to take it another step I reverse this on the other half – warm highlights and cool shading.

I think I was on the verge of something cool here but I didn’t quite pull it off. Still looks fairly nice but it could have used darker shading and more saturated colors.

~And while Grub didn’t end up absolutely perfect, I’m still quite proud of how he turned out. I’ll have lots more Moonstone content coming since I got wip pics of all the models I’ve painted so far. Hope you like them!

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