How to Paint House Escher

An Escher gang is ten or twelve fighters, not a hundred, and that changes everything about how you should approach them. There is no batch to grind through and no reason to compromise. You can afford three highlight steps on a bodysuit, a different hair colour on every model, and an afternoon on the leader. Necromunda rewards that: these are individuals with names, and they get looked at closely across a table two feet wide.

The scheme itself is also unusually forgiving. Acid green, neon hair and pale skin are three loud colours that do not fight each other, and the bodysuits are smooth curved surfaces - the easiest thing in the hobby to highlight cleanly.

The signature look

A vivid, slightly yellowed acid green covering most of the body, broken by black or dark leather straps, harnesses and boots. Skin is pale to the point of unhealthy - these are chem-alchemists who live around toxins. Hair is the accent: pink, violet, orange or electric blue, deliberately artificial, and usually the brightest thing on the model. Weapons and buckles are bare steel rather than gold; Escher are not a wealthy house.

The acid-green bodysuit

Undercoat black. The green ramp reads much richer over a dark base than over white, and the straps and boots are then already done.

1. Basecoat Caliban Green, two thin coats. It will look almost black at this stage - that is correct, it is a shadow colour, not the finished green.
2. Layer Warpstone Glow over everything except the deepest recesses and the underside of each limb. This is the colour people will read as "Escher green".
3. Shade only the panel lines and the creases at hips, elbows and knees with Biel-Tan Green. Do not wash the whole model; the green is meant to stay clean and bright.
4. Layer Moot Green on the upper surfaces - the top of the thighs, the front of the shins, the shoulders and the tops of the forearms.
5. Edge-highlight the sharpest boundaries with Moot Green mixed roughly two-to-one with Yriel Yellow. On a leader, add a final thin catch of pure Flash Gitz Yellow on two or three edges only.

Vallejo Game Color takes the same ramp with Sick Green, Scorpy Green and Livery Green on top. The nearest Army Painter Fanatic run is Angel Green into Greenskin into Ferocious Green.

The fast route

Undercoat Wraithbone, then one coat of Warp Lightning contrast over the bodysuit. It gives you shading and colour in a single pass, and the acid-yellow bias of that paint is genuinely close to the studio scheme. Tidy the panel edges with Moot Green and the model is table-ready in about fifteen minutes. The Army Painter equivalent is Absolution Green speedpaint over a bone primer.

If you want the contrast finish to hold up next to a hand-painted leader, add the one step people skip: a single edge highlight. It costs five minutes and doubles the apparent effort.

Hair, the other half of the scheme

Neon hair over green needs a light foundation or it goes muddy. Basecoat the hair Grey Seer first, then run one of these:

• For pink hair, Emperor's Children highlighted Fulgrim Pink. Contrast route: Volupus Pink.
• For violet, Naggaroth Night into Genestealer Purple, edged Dechala Lilac. Contrast route: Magos Purple.
• For orange, Troll Slayer Orange into Fire Dragon Bright.
• For electric blue, Lothern Blue into Baharroth Blue, with a final catch of Blue Horror.

Give each fighter a different one and keep the green identical across the gang. That is what makes ten models look like a gang rather than ten unrelated miniatures.

Skin, leather and steel

Pale skin: Rakarth Flesh basecoat, a thinned Reikland Fleshshade or a glaze of Guilliman Flesh in the eye sockets and under the jaw, layer Pallid Wych Flesh, highlight Screaming Skull on the nose, cheekbones and knuckles. Vallejo painters can run Pale Flesh into Elfic Flesh; Dead Flesh pushes it further towards chem-sick if you want a Death-maiden to look genuinely wrong.

Straps, boots and harness: Abaddon Black basecoat, Eshin Grey on the raised folds, a fine Dawnstone edge. Brown leather instead works well as a break from all the black - Rhinox Hide into Mournfang Brown.

Weapons: Leadbelcher, a wash of Nuln Oil, then Ironbreaker on the edges and Runefang Steel on barrel lips and blade edges. Keep gold to the odd buckle in Retributor Armour shaded Agrax Earthshade.

Toxin vials, needle rifles and chem-throwers are the one place to be indulgent: Waystone Green or Tesseract Glow technical paint over a light base gives an instant glowing fluid, and a spot of gloss varnish sells it.

Tips and common mistakes

• Do not wash the whole bodysuit. A full coat of green shade drops the saturation right out of the scheme and Escher live on saturation. Recesses only.
• Vary the hair, never the green. The temptation is to make each fighter different all over. Resist it - one shared bodysuit colour is what identifies the house.
• Pale skin is a ramp, not a colour. Straight bone-coloured flesh with no shading looks like unpainted plastic. The wash in the sockets is what makes it read as skin.
• Keep the metal dull. Bright, clean steel next to acid green flattens both. Nuln Oil generously, highlight sparingly.
• Paint the hair before the final green highlight if you are messy with bright colours - it is far easier to tidy the hairline with green than the other way round.