How Not To Paint: Otherworld Spiders

Ok, so this week I’m going to look at painting Otherworld spiders. The first step in this guide will be to locate your copy of the extended edition of the Fellowship of the Ring (or any of the Lord of the Rings trilogy really, well, except Return of the King…!)…

Ok, do you have it? Good, slot it into your computer/laptop/dvd player and we’re ready to start!

I started with a black undercoat, followed by a layer of Khemri Brown (any brown with a lot of white in it will work just as well). Finally I washed this with a mix of Yellow and Brown Ink.

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I have not yet glued the model to the base so I can paint the two parts separately without either getting in the way of the other. Once this was dry I added a layer of Desert Yellow.

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As you can hopefully see I just left the recesses dark. Next I used Bleached Bone to highlight each segment. To do this I left around a millimetre on each leg Desert Yellow doing the rest in Bleached Bone.

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Note I left the abdomen alone because I plan on painting it a different colour later. Next I used White and Bloodtracker Brown to add highlights to the legs. First I painted straight lines in white that had a slight curve towards the top end. Then I used the brown to emphasise that line.

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Next I took some Desert Yellow and mixed it with some Gryphonne Sepia and washed the entire model with it. The pigment from the paint, when mixed with the gw washes remains dominant, but the wash makes it act more like a shade and gives a very pleasing overall finish.

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Now, this next step is definitely not recommended, what I did next was mixed up some brown and yellow ink and washed the entire model. The result was a mess and if you’re painting along at home, this will take you from meeting “Mr. Bilbo’s Trolls” to “The Mines of Moria” to put right…

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Once you’ve fixed your disastrous error it’s time to move on. Using Chestnut Brown I painted the head. I mixed up some Bloodtracker Brown and some Moldy Ochre and painted the abdomen. Then using Battlefield Brown I added the wavy stripe, which I outlined with Bleached Bone. Further, sporadic dots were added to the abdomen in Bloodtracker Brown and Bleached Bone.

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Dots were then added to the brown stripe in Moldy Ochre. The whole abdomen was then washed with Ogryn Flesh. The head of the spider was washed in Badab Black. Ogryn Flesh was also used to deepen the recesses in the segmented legs.

The head was then highlighted using Chestnut Brown and White, just on the segmented areas, followed by a Devlan Mud wash. The Eyes were painted black, and then a thin line of white was added to the upper edge of each. The Bleached Bone lines on the abdomen were added back in again. And the brown strip was painted again using Brown Ink.

Finally I added a dab of gloss varnish to each eye and a thin coat over the whole abdomen.

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And that’s it The base was painted using Desert Yellow, Greatcoat Grey, Battlefield Brown and Thornwood Green. This was then washed with Gryphonne Sepia. Highlights were then added to each stone, just adding white for the grey and green and using Bleached Bone and Bloodtracker Brown for the Yellow and the Brown. Finally each stone was washed with a mix of the base colour and Devlan Mud.

Right, back to the grindstone. Time for the Two Towers and the other 3 spiders… until next time, keep on gaming!

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