How to Paint Beastmen Brayherds

Beastmen are the most forgiving army in The Old World and one of the fastest, for the same reason: almost everything on the model is fur, and fur is drybrushed. There is no clean edge to keep straight, no flat panel to keep smooth, and no uniform to keep consistent. Mess is correct here. A herd that looks slightly wrong in a hundred small ways looks exactly right overall.

That is also the one discipline the army demands. A Brayherd painted to a single recipe reads as a regiment, and a regiment is the opposite of what these are. Build four or five fur schemes and roll through them.

The signature look

Matted brown fur over ruddy, weather-raw skin; heavy bone horns going pale at the tips; crude warpaint and daubed sigils applied by something with no mirror; rusted iron weapons; and bone, feather and scrap charms hanging off everything. Value contrast between the fur and the skin is what makes the model readable, so pick a dark fur with pale skin or a pale fur with ruddy skin - never two mid-browns.

The fur

The core recipe, which is three steps and takes about four minutes:

1. Basecoat Dryad Bark over a black undercoat.
2. Wash Agrax Earthshade across the whole pelt and let it pool wherever it wants.
3. Drybrush Gorthor Brown hard, working strictly in the direction the fur lies - down the back, out along the shoulders, forward on the head.
4. Light drybrush of Baneblade Brown on the spine, the crown of the head and the outer edge of the shoulders only.

Then vary it. Four herd colours that all use the same three-step structure:

• Dark bull - Rhinox Hide, wash, Mournfang Brown, tips of Skrag Brown.
• Standard - Dryad Bark, wash, Gorthor Brown, tips of Baneblade Brown.
• Pale goat - Steel Legion Drab, wash, Zandri Dust, tips of Ushabti Bone.
• Black goat - Abaddon Black, no wash, Eshin Grey drybrush, tips of Dawnstone.

Rolling those four through a unit of twenty gungors costs you nothing in time and transforms how the herd reads on the table. Drybrushing covers keeping the brush dry enough that you get fur texture rather than dust.

Raw skin

Chests, faces, forearms and hands are the second largest area and want to look weathered rather than healthy:

1. Basecoat Bugman's Glow.
2. Wash Reikland Fleshshade, or Carroburg Crimson for a rawer, wind-burnt result.
3. Layer Cadian Fleshtone over the raised muscle, keeping the wash in every crease.
4. Highlight Kislev Flesh on the brow, the bridge of the nose, the knuckles and the collarbones.

Glaze thinned Carroburg Crimson back over the nose, ears, knuckles and any scarring. That single step is what turns clean fantasy flesh into something that has been outdoors all winter. For a darker, ox-like hide, start from Doombull Brown and highlight up to Cadian Fleshtone instead.

Horns, hooves and bone

Horns are the silhouette of the whole army, so give them a proper gradient: Zandri Dust, wash Agrax Earthshade, layer Ushabti Bone over the outer half, and take Screaming Skull onto the last centimetre of the tip. Leave the root of the horn dark where it meets the skull - a horn lit evenly from base to point looks like a plastic peg.

Dark horn is the alternative: Rhinox Hide shaded and then brought up to Baneblade Brown only at the tips. Hooves take the same recipe as the darker horns.

Bones, skulls and charms: Zandri Dust, Agrax Earthshade, Ushabti Bone, with Screaming Skull picked out on the highest ridges. Skeleton Horde over Wraithbone does the same in one coat and is the better choice on a Bray-Shaman festooned with the things.

Warpaint, weapons and totems

Warpaint should look daubed. Thin Corax White slightly and apply it with a scruffy brush in a few decisive strokes - a bar across the eyes, a handprint on a shoulder, a stripe down a muzzle. Do not tidy the edges. Khorne Red and Abaddon Black work equally well, and using different colours across the herd suggests separate warbands.

Weapons are scavenged and rusted: Leadbelcher, two coats of Nuln Oil, stipple Typhus Corrosion through the recesses, dab Ryza Rust around rivets and the base of the blade, then run Runefang Steel along the cutting edge only. Wooden hafts and totem poles take Dryad Bark drybrushed Karak Stone, with lashings in Snakebite Leather.

The fast route

Undercoat Wraithbone and let contrast do the shading. Wyldwood or Gore-Grunta Fur on the pelts, Snakebite Leather on the paler goat fur, Darkoath Flesh or Guilliman Flesh on the skin, Skeleton Horde on horns and bone, Basilicanum Grey on iron. Then one drybrush of Karak Stone over the fur and one Kislev Flesh highlight on the face. That is a complete gor in under ten minutes, and because the army wants variation anyway, the slight inconsistency between contrast coats works in your favour.

Army Painter equivalents: Monster Brown and Fur Brown for the pelts, Barbarian Flesh and Tanned Flesh for the skin, Skeleton Bone for the horns.

Tips and common mistakes

• Drybrush along the fur, not across it. Direction is the entire illusion. Scrubbing in circles gives you a dusty lump.
• Keep fur and skin at different values. Mid-brown fur against mid-brown flesh is the commonest Beastman mistake and it makes the model unreadable at arm's length.
• Leave the horn roots dark. The gradient from skull to tip is what gives the horn weight.
• Do not neaten the warpaint. If it looks like it was masked off, it is wrong.
• Change something on every fifth model. Fur colour, warpaint colour, horn tone. The herd should look gathered, not recruited.

Try the balance of hide, bone and warpaint in the scheme generator before you commit the herd.