Painting Blood

Over the past couple of years, I've had a lot of questions about the way that I paint blood on weapons. I think that blood effects are something that almost everyone tries out at some point, but unfortunately a lot of people give up after a few tries.

I first started painting when I was eleven, and I first started painting blood on weapons almost immediately. The only trouble was that I was a terrible painter back then, so all of my minis looked like their axes and swords (and sometimes even guns) had been dipped in blood red paint. Which they were.

As I grew as a painter, I also grew out of the stage in my life where I wanted to throw tons of blood on everything. And since I wasn't having any luck with blood effects, I gave up on it.

A few years ago, I decided to give blood another chance. This time, I approached it as a multi-layered effect to add onto the weapon underneath. Here's my method:

First, start with bright '70's movie blood colored paint (that's Blood Red for fans of Citadel's line, and Khador Red Base for those who use P3). Mix it with black. You want this first mix to be almost totally black in color- more or less the color of a scab. Apply this to the edge of your weapon. This will end up being a layer of more dried blood.

From there, mix a little more red into your dark color, add a little bit of water and paint outward from the edge of the weapon.

You will mostly want to continue to do this, adding in more layers- and each layer gets closer to using pure red, while also getting thinner and also covering just a little bit more of the weapon.

After you have a pretty strong blood coloring on the weapon, you still aren't finished. You need to make it look wet. If you're going to seal your minis, make sure you do it before this step.

The last step is to apply Tamaya Clear Red over all of the areas you've painted with blood- and don't worry if you go just a little bit over the edge. Tamaya is just the perfect color to tint some of the darker shades and make the whole area look very fresh and gory.