Painting Poorly: A Song of Ice & Fire - Ghost

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by CMON Games

"A White Wolf in a White Wood, Silent as a Shadow..."

If Jon Snow is my favorite character, then Ghost has got to be my favorite non-human character (sorry Wun Wun, still love you).  That said, we've already tackled the boy, now to tackle the dog.

Ghost is actually a SUPER simple paint job.  In fact, you could even just prime the whole thing white, throw a black wash on it, and call it a day!  However, that route can lead to some problems on it's own, as my basing for the Night's Watch units have them in pretty deep powdery snow, a PURE white Ghost would just blend into the base.  Instead, I'm going to be incorporating quite a bit of grey into the paint job.

1. Gameplan, Prep, and Prime

So, obviously Ghost is white, everybody knows that.  But there are a few pops in color, such as his red eyes and dark black nose, lips and inner ears.

As such, to help break up all of that white, I'll be using grey primer to base coat, and these as my paints:

Keeping it pretty simple with some light grey and a dark pink from Target.  I started off with the dark red that I have classically used for the Lannisters, but I didn't like the results, so I switched to Red by Vallejo, though it isn't pictured above.  Lastly, I have black and white from the craft store.

I used my airbrush and the Stynylrez grey spray on primer for his undercoat.  It gives a nice grey coloring and preserves all of the awesome detail on Ghost's fur.

2. Basecoats

So, if you don't have any grey primer, you can always basecoat in gray, but make sure you have another lighter grey to go over it for this first step.

With your light grey and your chisel/wedge brush, you're going to drybrush all over the wolf except the underbelly.  Remember, when we drybrush, we don't thin the paint.

Now, we're going to take our white and drybrush over what we just drybrushed.  This will give you a nice gradient between the dark gray prime and the white highlight of the fur.

You could also take this time to drybrush the white onto the rock that Ghost is standing on, as well, before mixing up some 50/50 black white mix.  You'll paint the inside of the ears, the nose, and the lips with this mix.

For the lips, aim for between the upper and lower lips around Ghost's mouth.  This should evenly distribute the paint without looking like it's too much on one side or the other.

Now, using your your detail brush and your red, paint the eyes.  Try to get the entire sliver of the eye to make the red effect look full.

3. Shading

There's only one thing that you'll be shading today, and for that we'll be using Dark Tone by the Army Painter.

Here's the thing, though, we're not going to be using it on Ghost because Ghost is already pretty well highlighted and layered through the drybrushing process.

We're actually just going to be using it on the rock.  This will add depth to the rock, and help differentiate it from Ghost's coloring. 

4. Highlights and Finishing Touches

The first thing I actually highlighted were the eyes.  Using your detail brush, just put a little TEENY TINY dot of your dark pink in the eyes, in the direction Ghost is looking.  This helps keep them bright and focused.

After that, you would take the time to accentuate any areas of the fur that you weren't particularly happy with.  The ribs for example, and the face as well.

Regarding the face, you want to make sure that is the brightest area of the model, so give the snout, eyelids and forehead a nice highlight in white will help it pop and draw focus.

You can also paint any individual tufts of fur that you feel should be whiter, as I did with the ones on his chest.  Focus on the points of the tufts, while leaving the base of the fur grey.

5. Silently Stalk the Enemy!

That's a good boy!  Spray him with your matt spray, base him however you like, and Ghost should now be ready to join his master on the battlefield!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, simple as it may have been, and this, along with all of my tutorials regarding A Song of Ice & Fire can be found on my blog here.

In other news, make sure that you check out A Song of Ice & Fire Competitive Community site.  It's recently been taken over and revamped by Chase from THE BEST ASoIaF Podcast there is, On The Table Gaming, and it should serve as a type of informational hub for A Song of Ice & Fire, including painting tutorials by yours truly, tips, tactics, and links to third party tools to pimp your game out.

As always, if you've found this tutorial to be useful, please consider becoming a Patron, as every dollar helps to keep this blog ad-free.  Until next time, Westerosi, when we learn that Jon Snow isn't the only person to have loyal monsters north of the wall...

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