Marc Raley: To paint Buhrdûr, I followed my usual game plan of starting with the innermost surfaces and working my way out from there. This way, it is easier to avoid messing up already-finished work as I painted. The order I painted in was something like this: eyes, inside of mouth, flesh, claws, clothing, stitches, belts, armour, spikes, sword. I also tried to save any parts that I was likely to accidentally rub off the paint (like the spikes) for last.

To keep the colours subtle and natural looking, I tended to add black and grey to the colours to tone them down. I even did this to a lot of the browns, as the range of Citadel Paint browns tend to be fairly pure and bright. To help keep the figure on the dark side (I tend to over-highlight), I left lots of black in the deepest recesses and went back in with thinned-down black paint and traced around certain areas to help knock back the areas in shadow. I also used a few glazes and washes to help tone things down and create shadows.

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Head: I like to start my models by painting the eyes, that way I can go back with black and touch up around them and not mess up any of my work on the face. To paint the eyes, I painted a single horizontal stripe of Fortress Grey followed by a vertical stripe of Chaos Black to represent the pupil. Then, I placed a small dot of Skull White mixed with Fortress Grey in the lower right corner of each pupil to create a reflection. I painted the tongue Blood Red mixed with Dark Flesh and then highlighted by adding Skull White to the mix. For the teeth, I used Bleached Bone and highlighted by mixing some Skull White with the Bleached Bone.

Skin: I basecoated the darker parts of the flesh with a mixture of Chaos Black, Codex Grey, and a dab of Graveyard Earth to warm up the colour. Painting the pattern on the skin was a bit tricky – I started by following the striations that the sculptor had modelled onto the surface and expanded outwards from there. I painted the first pass on the skin striations by adding more Codex Grey to the base mixture. Then, I gave each stripe a highlight of straight Codex Grey. I applied the final highlight stages to raised areas of muscles, bones, knuckles, etc. Finally, I mixed Chaos Black with glazing medium and painted it into the recesses to help knock back the patterned skin in a uniform way.

Clothes: To give Buhrdûr's clothing a particularly ragtag look, I used lots of different colours and did a lot of mixing. Some of the schemes on the cloth include: Bestial Brown with Bleached Bone mixed in for highlights, Bestial Brown with Snakebite Leather mixed in for highlights, Catachan Green with Bleached Bone mixed in for highlights, Dark Flesh with Bleached Bone mixed in for highlights, plus various subtler browns combined by mixing browns with black or grey. I painted the stitches with Bleached Bone to help them pop out among all the darker colours.

Sword: I painted the sword and the rest of the metal in my "pseudo nonmetallic metal" technique. I basecoated the whole thing with Codex Grey and highlighted all of the edges a couple of times by adding progressively more Skull White to the grey. Generally, the upper edges received lighter highlights than the lower, and I reserved the very lightest colour for the tips and corners. I created the rust/dirt effect by mixing Vermin Brown with a glazing medium to create a transparent glaze to lay on top of the grey. I used this mixture sparingly and concentrated on areas where dirt and rust might accumulate naturally, such as underneath the rivets in the armour. I started with the darkest parts of the rust patches and feathered them out by using almost pure glazing medium, with just a tiny dab of paint.

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Fur: I drybrushed the fur with Bestial Brown over the Chaos Black undercoat and added a little bit of Bleached Bone to the Bestial Brown for subsequent passes. To tighten up the drybrushing, I painted on the final highlights with a small brush.

Skin Highlights: I basecoated the lighter skin tone with a mixture of Chaos Black and Graveyard Earth and highlighted with straight Graveyard Earth and then a mixture of Graveyard Earth and Skull White. I created the transition between the tan and grey flesh last by mixing the two flesh colours and painting the recessed and raised parts of the striations separately. This part was a bit tricky and involved going back and forth a few times to achieve the correct look.

Arm Wraps: For the arm wraps, I first basecoated them with a dark mixture of Bleached Bone and Chaos Black to represent the dark colour between the strips of fabric. Then, I painted the strips with Bleached Bone mixed with Codex Grey. I created the highlights by adding Skull White to this mixture and applied it mostly to the edges.

Rocks and Base: The rocks on the base were from the Urban Basing Kit. I painted them with Codex Grey warmed up with Graveyard Earth and then highlighted by adding Skull White to the mix. For the base itself, I painted it Graveyard Earth and drybrushed with Graveyard Earth mixed with Skull White.

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