Tutorial: How to paint Death Guard Pox Walkers

In today’s post, I share with you a complete photo tutorial guide to paint the Death Guard Pox Walker pictured below. Perfect if you’re working through your Dark Imperium starter set or the Warhammer 40,000 Conquest Subscription. What are you waiting for, more after the jump!

This tutorial assumes you have a basic understanding of how to paint. For the beginners, I will explain the techniques as I go along. Each picture below shows four chronological steps. Underneath each picture are the corresponding instructions. Each step shows the paint I used during that step.

Paints you will need for this tutorial:

Black Undercoat
Rakarth Flesh (Base)
Screamer Pink (Base)
Kislev Flesh (Layer)
Ulthuan Grey (Layer)
Khorne Red (Base)
Druchii Violet (Shade)
Emperor’s Children (Layer)
Ceramite White (Base, OOP – use White Scar instead)
Bloodletter (Glaze, OOP – use Blood Angels Red Contrast pain thinned with Contrast Medium)
Abaddon Black (Base)
Incubi Darkness (Base)
Thunderhawk Blue (Layer)
Russ Grey (Layer)
Warplock Bronze (Base)
Leadbelcher (Base)
Eshin Grey (Layer)
Dawnstone (Layer)
Nuln Oil (Shade)
Skrag Brown (Layer)
Tau Ochre Light (Layer)
Ungor Flesh (Layer)
Screaming Skull (Layer)

If you need to expand your paint collection to follow the tutorial, check out our partner stores Wayland Games and Element Games, which offer an amazing range of paints at a discount.

How to paint Death Guard Pox Walkers

1. Undercoat the model black. I use Vallejo Surface Primer and an airbrush. You can hand paint on a Primer or use an aerosol. 

2. Basecoat all the flesh areas with Rakarth Flesh. Add a touch of water to thin your paint and apply two coats using a large brush (size 2 or 3). 

3. Creat a glaze by mixing 1 part Screamer Pink to 2 parts Lahmian Medium (or water if you don’t have it). Wash this mix all over the skin of the mini. 

4.  Use a dry brush or an old large split bristled brush and add some Rakarth Flesh to the bristles. Then repeatedly wipe it off on a tissue until the brush is ‘dry’. Wipe this dry brush back and forth over the skin so the residue of paint left on the bristles picks up on the raised areas of the skin. You may have to repeat this several times. 

5. Water down some Kislev flesh a little and paint it onto all the raised areas of the skin to highlight the skin. Make sure you leave the previous layers in the recesses for shading.

6. Add smaller, finer highlights of Ulthuan Grey to the skin. Do this sparingly.

7. Paint all the tentacles, daemon skin and open wounds with Khorne Red.

8. Wash over all the Khorne Red with Druchii Violet. This will shade the red.

9. Use small, fine strokes of Emperor’s Children to add texture and highlight lines to the tentacles, daemon skin and open wounds.  Check the picture for details. 

10. Apply watered down Ceramite White (OOP, use White Scar instead) fine highlights to the previous step. These should be thinner than the previous step. 

11. Use Bloodletter Glaze (OOP, thin Blood Angels Red with a lot of Contrast Medium instead) to wash over all the tentacles, daemon skin and open wounds. Also, use Bloodletter Glaze over all the spots and bulbous lumps. You can also use this glaze to paint over the skin areas that meet the daemonic appendages, this will help blend them into the skin. 

12. Use Abaddon Black and paint all the detail parts. 

13. Basecoat the cloth areas with Incubi Darkness. 

14. Highlight the raised areas of the cloth with Thunderhawk Blue. A touch of water to thin the paint helps. 

15. Paint edge highlights of Russ Grey over the top of the Thunderhawk Blue. Nice thin lines. Thinning your paint with water will help the paint flow from the bristles and make painting thin lines easier. 

16. Basecoat anything metallic with Warplock Bronze. I find mixing Lahmian Medium Citadel Technical Paint with metallic paints makes them smoother and easier to paint with. 

17. Paint the areas of metal with Leadbelcher. Make sure you leave Warplock Bronze showing through in the crevices and gaps. 

18. Use Eshin Grey to paint raised areas and edges of anything that is to be black, such as: pipes, pouches, belts, necklaces etc. 

19. Highlight the previous step with thin lines of slightly watered Dawnstone.  

20. Use Nuln Oil Shade to wash over all the black parts, blue cloth and metallic areas. Be careful not to get this on the skin areas. 

21. Use Skrag Brown to base coat all the areas that are to be bone. Water your paint for this. Should cover the areas in two coats. 

22. Highlight the bone areas with Tau Light Ochre. Make sure you leave Skrag Brown showing in  creases, crevices, gaps and dents. 

23. Highlight the previous layer further using Ungor Flesh. Make sure you leave some of pervious layer showing. This is called layering. 

24. Paint on edge highlights of Screaming Skull to all the bone areas. Nice thin lines. 

Finally, base the model in a way which fits in with your collection. I glued sand to the base with PVA  and then painted it with Zandri Dust highlighted with Screaming Skull and the base edge was painted with Steel Legion Drab.

Finished Pox Walkers & more Death Guard painting guides

You can check out a showcase post of the whole unit of Pox Walkers here. Also, make sure to have a look at my free Plague Marines tutorial:

Thanks for checking out my tutorial. If you enjoyed this and would like to support me, Garfy’s Get a Grips available to order with same day dispatch here (shipping worldwide).