How to Paint Sons of Behemat

Sons of Behemat is the strangest painting project in Age of Sigmar, because an entire army is three or four models. There is no batch painting, no unit discipline, no shortcut for a block of twenty. Every model you own is a centrepiece, and every one of them will be picked up and looked at closely. That changes how you should approach it: paint a gargant the way you would paint a display piece, not the way you would paint a regiment.

The signature look

Weathered, sun-coarsened skin covering enormous surfaces. Scavenged human junk worn as gear - ship's timbers, netting, anchors, stolen banners, an unfortunate soldier tied to a belt. Rusted iron, salt-bleached rope and dirty cloth. The palette is entirely earthy, so the small trophies are where colour belongs.

Painting skin at scale

A gargant's forearm is larger than a whole infantry model, which means flat basecoating shows and blending pays off.

1. Undercoat black, then spray or brush a grey zenithal so the light direction is already established.
2. Basecoat Bugman's Glow over the whole body.
3. Wash Reikland Fleshshade, concentrating it in the belly folds, armpits and behind the knees.
4. Layer Cadian Fleshtone across everything that faces upward, then Kislev Flesh on the shoulders, brow, nose and knuckles.
5. Glaze thinned Carroburg Crimson over the nose, ears, elbows and knees so the skin looks like it has blood under it.

The fast route on this much surface area is Darkoath Flesh contrast over Wraithbone, followed by a Kislev Flesh drybrush - and a drybrush genuinely works here, because the sculpting is coarse enough to catch it. See the drybrushing guide for keeping it clean over large areas.

Hair and beards go Skrag Brown shaded Agrax Earthshade and drybrushed Karak Stone, or Zandri Dust into Ushabti Bone for a blonde. Eyes are worth the effort at this scale - they are large enough to paint properly, so do them.

Scrap, rust and trophies

Everything a gargant carries was stolen. Iron goes Leadbelcher, Nuln Oil, a sponge stipple of Typhus Corrosion and points of Ryza Rust. Timber takes Rhinox Hide, drybrushed Karak Stone with the grain. Rope and netting: Zandri Dust, Agrax Earthshade, Ushabti Bone. Save your brightest colours - a Macragge Blue tabard, a Mephiston Red banner - for the trophies hanging off the belt, where they read as somebody else's army.

Tribal palettes

• Taker tribes - coastal scavengers. Net, driftwood and Sotek Green cloth, with damp-looking skin and seaweed on the base.
• Breaker tribes - siege wreckers. Stone dust and rubble, Dawnstone grey scrap and heavier rust.
• Stomper tribes - everything else, and the excuse to mix the two.

Bases and speed

The base is a quarter of the model. On a footprint that size, plain texture paint looks bare - build up rubble, broken walls, a crushed cart, a flattened victim. Stirland Battlemire for wet mud or Agrellan Earth for cracked ground, then static grass and a few larger pieces to break the flatness.

As for speed: this army is quick to own and slow to finish. Three models is not many, but a mega-gargant is comfortably ten hours of work if you do it justice, and none of that time can be batched away. The upside is that a fully painted Sons of Behemat force is achievable in a way a fully painted horde army is not.

Tips and common mistakes

• Zenithal first. Establishing light direction before colour is what stops a large flat body looking like a slab.
• Glaze the blood flow. Red at the nose, ears, elbows and knees is what makes skin look alive.
• Colour lives on the trophies. Keep the giant earthy and let the stolen banners be bright.
• Build the base properly. On a footprint this large, a bare texture coat undoes the model.

Set your skin tone against a tribal accent in the scheme generator before you start.