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How to Paint Everything: Genestealer Cults
In our How to Paint Everything series, we take a look at different armies of the Warhammer universe, examine their history and heraldry, and look at several different methods for painting them. In this article we're looking at how to paint one of the Imperium's worst threats from within, the Genestealer Cults. 
Despite being a recent army addition for most, the Genestealer Cults are one of the oldest factions in Warhammer 40,000, appearing in Rogue Trader as an insidious force resulting from infection by Genestealers. In their earliest incarnations, Genestealers were just another alien race, spreading form the moon of Ymgarl, completely separate and unconnected to the Tyranid threat (though they'd later be identified as the vanguard Hive Fleet Behemoth as the fluff was revised). Genestealers got a scarier (and decidedly alien-inspired) overhaul with the release of the Space Hulk board game, which also reintroduced them as a more sinister, widespread threat capable of infecting humans and other races. Old school Genestealer Cults had some incredibly funky models and relied a lot on conversions.
With the release of the 2nd Edition Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Tyranids, Genestealers were officially folded into the larger Tyranid grouping, becoming the vanguard of Tyranid hive fleets, infecting local populations and driving them to sabotage local infrastructure in preparation for the fleet's arrival. Genestealer Cults received their first full army list under these rules, giving them access to Patriarchs, Magoses, and Cultists of various generations, signifying how close or far they are from the purestrain Genestealer DNA that births the cult. After receiving no model support in 2nd edition Warhammer 40,000, Genestealer Cults vanished when 3rd rolled around, and didn't show back up until the end of 7th edition, when they were re-released as an entirely new army, focused on a mix of cultists and infected Astra Militarum Imperial Guardsmen to create powerful insurgent forces.
Rogue Trader Genestealer Cults. Credit: Games Workshop
It took Games Workshop a while to get Genestealer Cults right - as an insurgent force, they're lore-wise not particularly suited to the Warhammer 40,000 universe, where it doesn't make a ton of sense to have a handful untrained workers with rock saws facing down Space Marines. But with the release of 8th edition and its Keywords system and the addition of the Brood Brothers rules, players are now able to make forces that combine Genestealer cults, Tyranid Hive Fleets, and corrupted Imperial Guard to represent Cult forces at the height of their powers, while also giving Genestealer Cults players a wide variety of options without having to create units for the army that don't make sense. Unlike most Tyranids, Genestealers possess a high level of intelligence and are able to think and act for themselves. The largest and most advanced of these are Genestealer Patriarchs, powerful psychic entities with a connection to the Hive Mind that allows them to maintain control over its brood. As they increase in power and age, they become powerful psychic beacons for the Hive Mind, drawing them to the most vulnerable worlds. A Genestealer Patriarch will usually be assisted by a Cult Magus, a powerful psychic Genestealer 4th-generation Hybrid capable of infiltrating society proper and representing the cult as a public spokesperson, something a big gross alien monster can't really do.
The old school Patriarch. Credit: BuffaloChicken
Genestealers infect a host using the "Genestealer's Kiss," where they use ovipositors to implant a "seed" into the host body, mixing the host's DNA with that of the Tyranid genome, altering the host on both a physical and mental level. They become subservient to the Genestealer's brood and become driven to procreate, giving birth to hybrid monstrosities that are further driven to procreate. These offspring are also subservient to the brood and its Patriarch, and will dedicate themselves to spreading the brood's practices of worship. As the cycle continues, future generations will more progressively resemble the host's original species, allowing the cult to infiltrate human society at every level. They frequently do so via a mix of physical infection and psychological operations, creating propaganda and messaging designed to undermine the planet's existing infrastructure. When the Tyranid Hive Fleets arrive, the planet suddenly finds itself unprepared and unable to fight back as its own forces turn on it and submit themselves in worship to the arrival of the "sky gods," who inevitably consume them all while the Genestealer Patriarch escapes to repeat the cycle once more.
Where to Read More
Genestealer Cults are some particularly interesting antagonists in the 40k fiction. They haven't really had a chance to shine as protagonists in their own right, but show up in various roles in other books as threats of varying levels. I haven't read these, but if you're interested in reading more, I've generally heard good things about the following books:
- Cult of the Warmason by CL Werner is primarily about the Sisters of Battle going up against a Genestealer Cults infestation on the shrine world of Lubentina.
- Cult of the Spiral Dawn by Peter Fehervari that looks at just how sinister and insidious the Genestealer Cults can be, following the story of some pilgrims who quickly discover some secrets that were better left hidden as they return to their Imperial Sect's world of origin.
- The Alien Beast Within by Ian Watson follows the Callidus Assassin Meh'Lindi as she infiltrates a Genestealer Cult.
Covered in this Article:
- How to paint the core units of the Genestealer Cults - from neophytes to hybrids
- Different techniques for tackling Genestealer Cultist skin and Tyranid parts
- Techniques for painting Genestealer Cult vehicles and some of the faction's special characters
Painting Genestealer Cults
There's a lot to cover when it comes to "Genestealer Cults," with Neophytes, Genestealers, Characters, Aberrants, Metamoph Hybrids, and vehicles like the Achilles Ridgerunner and the Goliath Rockgrinder. We may cover individual models in greater detail in the future, but in the meantime, we've got a few different methods for you to consider here that cover different paint schemes and methods for achieving certain looks. - Prime black. Because I tend to figure out things as I go along sometimes and am easily distracted, my process is a bit non-linear compared to Rockfish’s and a result, my photos are a bit “Now paint the rest of the owl”, sorry! A good source for inspiration for Genecult colour schemes is to look at their tentacle-mawed gods’s own. After all, it’d make sense they wanna emulate the giant space bugs they’re desperately trying to summon right? The 2019 codex features 2 minor cults that do this with the Sons of Jormungandr and the Behemoid Undercult parroting the schemes for Hive Fleets Jormungandr and Behemoth respectively, with and this formed the basis for my own cult’s scheme based off the cold minty chitin of Hive Fleet Tiamet. Everything: - Prime Grey Seer. White Armour: - Wash with Apothecary White, keep an eye out for pooling in the crevices and draw it away before it sets too much. - Soft Drybrush VGC Ghost Grey with a round-tipped makeup brush. - Edge Highlight the most raised parts of the armour with White Scar. Mutant Flesh: - Wash with a 50/50 mix of Coelia Greenshade/Lhamian Medium. - Apply a light 60/40 mix of Coleia Greenshade/Lhamian Medium to the more prominent crevices and separations in the alien arms. - Soft Drybrush VGC Ghost Grey with a round-tipped makeup brush, focusing on the most prominent raised edges and features (face, hands etc). Build up a few light layers on the smooth areas of the head this way to help blend into the darker skin. - Edge Highlight with Pallid Wych Flesh. Mutant Innards (Tongues, Tentacles, Exposed Muscle, Blood Vials): - Base with Daemonette Flesh. - Wash with Guilliman Blue (if available) or 50/50 Tallasar Blue/Contrast Medium - Carefully Highlight with Warpfiend Grey. - Edge Highlight with Slaanesh Grey. Green Chitin and Cloth: - Wash with Terradon Turquoise. - Layer with Lupercal Green, leaving the deepest recesses. - Highlight with Kabalite Green, focusing on the raised areas of the cloth/carapace. - Edge Highlight with Sybarite Green - Edge Highlight any bladed/horned parts of the carapace with Dawnstone. (Larger areas of Chitin on Metamorphs/Purestrains, Patriarch can be carefully Drybrushed instead for a more naturalistic, less clean look). Blue/Grey Cloth: - Base with Dark Reaper. - Wash with Coelia Greenshade. - Highlight with Dark Reaper. - Edge Highlight with Thunderhawk Blue. Claws and Weapon Casings: - Base with Corax Black - Drybrush claws with Eshin Grey, focused along the edges. - Edge Highlight casing and claws with Dawnstone. - Wash Claws with 50/50 Aethermatic Blue/Contrast Medium for an alien sheen. Leather: - Base with black of choice. - Drybrush with Skavenblight Dirge - Edge Highlight with Stormvermin Fur along the most raised/distressed folds. Metal: - Base with Leadbelcher. - Wash twice with Nuln Oil. - Edge Highlight Ironbreaker. Decorative Metal (Icons, Leaders’ Weapons): - Base with Balthasar Gold. - Wash with Agrax Earthshade. - Drybrush with Hashut Copper. - Lightly Drybrush with Sycorax Bronze, focused on the edges. Glowing Areas (Eyes, Torches/Headlights, Battery Packs etc): - Clean up any overspill from other steps with Grey Seer. - Wash desired area with Lamenters Yellow (if available) or 50/50 Iyandan Yellow/Contrast Medium. - Apply another wash of Lamenters Yellow or Iyandan mix, draw the wash out around the surrounding area to start building a glow. - Wash with Cassandora Yellow. - Wash with Lamenters Yellow or Iyandan mix, once again drawing the wash into the surrounding areas, but tighter than before. Toxic Morass Basing: - Apply Stirland Battlemire to the base, piling up in some areas. Carve out little divots with your texture tool of choice as it dries. Don’t be worried about getting it on the model, they’re trudging through the mess after all. - Wash with Agrax Earthshade. - Drybrush with Ryza Rust. - Lightly Drybrush with Elf Flesh. - Apply a 50/50 mix of Agrax Earthshade/Lhamian Medium. - Base the insides of the divots/craters and any deep cracks left by the Texture paint drying with Moot Green. - Apply Nurgle’s Rot to the green areas until it starts to look thick and toxic. These steps can be used to paint any unit in the GSC roster, even say… a mildly stole- errr I mean liberated Shadowsword tank. All it takes is a slightly larger makeup brush. Hey look, I am starting another army, its not like I haven’t done this a million times before. Technically I started this one quite a while ago, as I picked up a box of these cultists like a year ago for some reason or another and they have been lurking in my mercifully small backlog since then. Most of the colours for this army were based on happenstance honestly, while I was sure I wanted to have them fit in with my Leviathan Tyranids I wasn’t quite sure how. What ended up happening was that I bought some chipping medium and a box of Vallejo air paints for another project and decided that I could test them on something “simple”. With the initial sandy colour figured out, the rest ended up being mostly just seeing how I could get the red and purple of leviathan in there. I think they ended up working pretty well given how its comparatively simple for one of my schemes! With the background out of the way, lets move on to getting paint on models… After priming black I gave the models a coat of Vallejo Metal Colour (VMC) Duraluminum, followed by two thin coats of Vallejo Chipping Medium thinned down with water. You might be able to get away with one thicker layer but this stuff is weird to apply through a airbrush, so your experience may vary. After that was just about dry, I applied a coat of Vallejo Model Air (VMA) Yellow Brown that I then chipped back in a few ways to get variety: Once the chipping is where you want, its crucial that you seal thoroughly with varnish, otherwise washes and later paint layers can reactivate the chipping medium. In my case I am using either Vallejo Mecha Matte or Premium Air Matte, and I am not quite sure how other finishes will affect how the the scheme turns since there are a lot of washes involved. Do note, that while I describe doing this with a airbrush you could probably do it by hand or rattle can, its just that it might take a lot longer. The first thing I did was get all the metals done, this included hitting anything I wanted bare aluminum with the VMC Duraluminum to tie it back to the material under the chipped paint. In this scheme I am using the Warplock on iconography and Balthasar on coppery pieces of equipment. Next up, I washed the metal and armor panels alike with Agrax Gloss, this will get us the final sandy beige of the main armor and recess shading on the metals. After that dried, I went and cleaned up everything but the metals and armour with VMA Yellow Brown, this is needed becausein the last step you probably had excess chipping or weird textured areas. You could go straight to base coating with conventional colours, but I wanted to save time and I am happy with how contrast looks over the yellow brown. The first round of base coats are for the skin, and this is pretty much what you can see. I used Carroburg on the more evidently Tyranid hybrids and then various flesh contrasts for the more human range skin tones. The rest of the base coats are also pretty straight forward: What might be confusing here is the uniform, where I start with Nuln to darken and desaturate it a bit before Druchii gets colour right. While not a highlight, the first thing I did at this step was to used black templar to tint the base of the claws on the banner, this was in a few steps thinned each time although the first step was probably a bit dense. After that the highlights mostly go where you expect: For the human skin highlight the colours are basically just moving left to right from darkest to lightest of this trio of paints. The darker skin is a couple of thin coats of Knight-Questor, then for the last highlight mixing in a touch of Cadian. The medium skin tone started with Cadian followed by mixing in a bit of Kislev for the final highlight of the medium tone. Then I reused that Cadian/Kislev mix for the initial highlight of the lightest tone that was then finished off with kislev. The hybrid skin is a couple of thin coats of Ushabti over the base coat, you can push it a touch further with screaming skull if you want. We have a few quick hits to start off this step: Moving on to the armour, it is carefully highlighted Screaming Skull making sure not too cover up too much of the chipping that we worked so hard on. Getting the right balance is somewhat tricky, as it can look incomplete without enough highlights or too clean with a excess. The lenses are just the most basic approach from our Gemstones tutorial, I am not blending the colours to any real degree just because there are a lot of these to be done in the army. You are aiming for something like this, essentially crescents getting lighter towards one side with a extreme contrast in the other. In this I am using Skrag, Trollslayer, Fire Dragon and Ushabti for the main colours and a extreme reflection of Vallejo Model Colour White. I did use some left over thinned black templar to recess shade the crack on the heavy weapon fellow’s visor. This is just a little optional detail, but the flamer gets a layer of crusty burnt stuff by doing a layer each of Typhus and Black Templar contrast. This kind of thing works well on exhaust stacks too! The models themselves are just about done now! For the bases, I start by hucking a bunch of vallejo dark earth on in a nice thickish coat, for the river/lake I pressed the paste back in a few areas to create lower areas and you can exaggerate this by building a bank up a little bit. Once that dried I put wyldwood on the river/lake and agrax on the rest of the base, then I drybrush everything but the river with steel legion. Then I varnish the models with matte varnish, for this I am pretty happy with either Vallejo Mecha Matte or Premium Air Matte. To get river/lake looking shiny I just kinda pour some gloss varnish from the bottle on, you will want a paper clip or something to poke any bubbles. The penultimate step is painting the rims with your choice of paint, in this case I used dryad to match my Tyranids. The last model thing the models need is to throw on some tufts, I like using these ones from Gamers Grass: Then we take some pretty pictures and sit back and be pleased with ourselves! Here’s another five I did earlier! That wraps up our look at painting Genestealer Cults. Hopefully you've got what you need to start playing around with different styles and schemes, and you feel comfortable coming up with your own scheme for your cultists. Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
Credit: BuffaloChicken
Genestealer Cults Infantry
Credit: BuffaloChicken
Credit: BuffaloChicken
Credit: BuffaloChicken
Credit: BuffaloChicken
Painting Cult Vehicles
Credit: BuffaloChicken
Credit: BuffaloChicken
And now for the fun part: Just like Lupe, I experimented with several different skin tones to show that my gang was made from different generations of Hybrids and Backgrounds… that and I wanted an excuse to buy more paint.
Beanith's GSC Headshots
Bosh, a simple and quick method to make the horde tabletop ready to sneak up and ask you if you’ve heard the sweet siren call of the Four-Armed Emperor?
Credit: Soggy
I started my GSC army at the beginning of 2019 with the advent of their Codex. At the same time I made the commitment to attend the NoVA Open, where I was aiming to get 3000 points of cult painted up in 6 months so I could take part in my first Apocalypse game. I managed to get them done in time by horrendous amounts of batch painting. The main approach I took was from this ">video, which I found had the quickest approach to producing reasonable cultists at speed. I ended up taking this approach to all aspects of the army from line troops and characters through to my bike squads.
Credit: Soggy
Credit: Soggy
Credit: Soggy
Carapace and capes
Credit: Soggy
Aberants A shame they won’t see the table often since Chapter Approved 2019, the Abberants were the lynchpin to all of my lists. For these I used the brilliant Marting Siversten’s approach to get the flesh tone I was after
Jackals These took the same approach as the basic troops.Rebel Alliance Cult of the Rusted Claw, previously covered in our HTPE: GSC. I’m a simple man and as a result so are most of my paintjobs. The TLDR; is that I’ve mostly kept to ">Sonic Sledgehammer’s approach as it is a great way to get your uprising onto the table quickly.Prime time
Old habits die hard, for a good decade and a bit I always used to base black, thankfully I have seen the light (relatively speaking) and now base grey – making it loads easier to build layers on and it also happens to be the main colour of the armour for my cult scheme.
I’ve opted for Army Painter’s Uniform Grey here, however GW’s Mechanicus Standard Grey is also a great choice.
Basecoating/ The Basics
Once primed, the model gets a liberal drybrush of Longbeard Grey over all of the armour ridges, giving it some immediate depth. After this, I applied Bugman’s Glow to the armour and skin locations, as it acts as a foundation for the orange jumpsuit and caucasian skin tone.
With the boots themselves, I find that painting black is often in the too hard basket so opted for a Incubi Darkness leather which I later washed with Drakenhoff Nightshade to give it some needed depth.
I keep meaning to buy some new brown shades to use for leather tones, opting for what I had on me which was Dryad Bark mixed with some XV-88 – as I needed to keep away from Steel Legion Drab which would be used later on the base.
Details/ Skipping right on to dessert
At this point I realised the cloak was going to be a pain to get access to later and I should get it sorted. In theory you could have done the arm as a subassembly but it's really not necessary if you aren't glued to your base. I really enjoy trying to blend colours so this suited me perfectly.
The cloak was started from a Macragge Blue (still have too many pots from Conquest Issue #1), which was worked up into Teclis Blue and then a 50/50 mix of Teclis and Temple Guard Blue. A whiff of Bahharoth Blue was applied to the edges, which doesn’t come up on the photos – but it’s there. Believe me.
Happy with the blues, it was time to revisit and layer the orange jumpsuit. The Bugman’s Glow layer gets covered with one of Jokaero Orange, edging with Troll Slayer Orange with a touch of Flash Gitz Yellow on the extremities.
It was then time to hit up the other details on the model:
Face Off
It was around this point I needed to decide on what head to go with and skin tone. In the end Two-Face won, but they are both great options.
For my skin tone I used a Bugman’s Glow Base, followed by a coat of 50/50 Kislev Flesh and Bugmans Glow, washed down with Reikland Fleshshade and edged again with straight Kislev Flesh, with Bugman’s applied to the lips.
The burnt flesh doesn’t really look like it in hindsight but looks allright in person, it was simply Genestealer Purple with Emperor’s Children Highlights, later washed down with Druuchi Violet.
The eyes are always a fun part of any model, with huge risk and reward. I never used to bother with them to be honest, until I tried the approach which gets mentioned on the 40K Badcast from time to time:
Ever since trying this approach I never seem to get crossed eyes as a result, the only thing to be mindful of is the brush control and how long you hold your breath during the process.
Shades/ It all comes out in the wash
I know convention stays to apply washes before highlights but, the washes applied at this point were rather light and I was happy enough with the results I was getting. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Basing/ All your base
I am considering rebasing my GSC army as I had previously done an incredibly low effort sand + drybush job. For this I used the tried and true method that I’ve been using on my marines as of late.
At this point I was happy to call it done and was pretty stoked with the result.
Bloody hell I use far more paints than I realised to paint a single model.
Gallery
Credit: Games Workshop
Credit: Jay (Steel Mentor)
Credit: Jay (Steel Mentor)
Credit: Jay (Steel Mentor)
Acolyte Hybrids
Credit: Pendulin
A quick note: I keep the heads separate from the body until they are both fully painted. This makes it trivially easy to paint hard-to-reach areas like the collar, base of the skull and under the chin. Once both head and body are fully painted, I superglue the heads on (or magnetize them if there are alternate heads I want to swap between). First let’s go through clothing, leather, armor, and metal. Next we’ll cover the carapace, followed by skin. Then finally we can go over the remaining details. The order below is the exact order in which I put paint on Acolytes.
Acolyte Hybrid with Rocksaw
Credit: Pendulin
Airbrush Work – Chips can be addictive
Base Coats – Its almost all washes baby
Highlights – Making the gribblies pop
Lenses – All the better to see you with
Basing our cultists – A pretty little swamp
The Final Results
I am painting this three armed bomber up in my GSC scheme with a few adjustments to be a little more detailed for a character, but most of basic colours will be something you will be familiar with if you have already read that article.
I will say this is one of my favorite new models to build because none of the moldlines or sprue connections are on hard to work with areas and the build is quite intuitive.
Part 1 - Airbrushing
After priming black we get the model extremely shiny with a base coat of Duraluminum, I will warn you this stuff is very thin and just hosing down the model can be detrimental to the finish.
We do hose the models down with chipping medium which should be thinned quite a bit if you want to get the stuff to not be like trying to spray snot, normally I use a mix of water and flow improver to thin paints for the airbrush but you get through a lot of this stuff so I was lazy and just used airbrush thinner which helps it dry a bit faster too.
Once you have dried the chipping medium enough, I do a couple of thin coats of yellow brown. Normally I use a hairdryer to accelerate the drying, but in this case not quite letting the paint set can aid use in chipping.
For the chipping I mostly just use a wet toothbrush, but your fingers are great for sharp edges too! You can do things a few ways for this, if you want large areas to chip off apply a bit of water then come back later, or if you just want just fine edges just go at it immediately with the damp toothbrush. I would try to be pretty selective on the character since anything that you don't want chipping on will have to be brushed over with the Yellow Brown again as it is the basecoat for the contrast paints.
It is very important you varnish the whole model before moving on, the chipping medium is reactivated by water and all the paints and washes later on are water based so will happily reactivate the medium!
Part 2 - Base coats and washes
After the varnish dries we start by using the metal and primary base coat colours to clean up surfaces so stuff like chains are pure metal and the cloak is ready for contrast, I also make sure the little bit of iconography is base coated with Warplock. Then I go around and use Agrax Gloss to wash the metals and armour panels.
I then run around and throw contrast on stuff to use as a base coat, most of those are pretty straight forward, orange for explosives (other then the C4 blocks which are grey), black for black, etc ...
There are some things I should detail though, the Nid flesh is just carroburg but the human skin is a bit less straight forward. I used a mix of Knight-Questor and Krieg Khaki, mostly to get a slightly less ruddy skin tone, which is then washed with Reikland.
The purple cloth is two steps, its washed Nuln and then once it dries with Druchii, I like the slightly desaturated look that gets but you could probably just use the purple wash.
Part 3 - Highlights
I started by highlighting the skin by just mixing Kislev into the original base coat a bit at a time until I was happy. Next up was the red bits most of which are pretty simple, the claws and tools are squig with the claws getting Kislev as a extreme highlight. The cloak got a more complex highlight, I started by placing a few extreme streaks of Squig which I glazed a bit of a transition to, then I glazed a few streaky highlights of Kislev over that before finally thinning down Flesh Tearers that I applied as a filter to the whole cloak, which knocked down the extreme highlights into something I am quite happy with.
I also highlighted the orange with Ungor in the same step.
I did the black in a similar way to the cloak, most of it just gets a simple highlight of Administratum, but for the subtle folds in the back pack I used a filter of thinned black templar to make it a bit less extreme.
The ushabti was used to do the first highlight of the Nid flesh here, the stormvermin was just used on the C4 blocks, and the Dechala was used on the purple cloth.
Part 4 - Details (and the remaining highlight)
All the lenses/screens are done in a fairly basic way, start with a dark colour and then make successively brighter crescents towards one side ending in Ushabti in both and then a extreme opposite crescent of white.
You can take a look at our Gems article for some more examples on that idea.
Just a few things to get now, I did the lights with a base coat of Screaming Skull washed Iyandon and then a highlight of the base coat. The rocks on the base were stormvermin and agrax, and the cult symbol was highlighted Brass Scorpion.
I did the eyes with a really simple base coat of Screaming Skull and then Abaddon black for the pupils, I also went and did all the armor panels with Screaming Skull at the same time.
Part 5 - Basing
The main texture is Dark Earth washed Agrax and drybrushed Steel Legion, but for the river I indent it a bit and just use wyldwood. Once I have varnished the model I coat the river in Vallejo Still Water and the environment on base is done besides throwing some tufts from Gamers Grass on, specifically:
Then its time to paint the base rim with Dryad Bark and you are done models!
Gallery
As a bonus, you might have been seeing a Leman Russ in the background of a bunch of shots, I was working on it in parallel with the Saboteur.
It was a test at painting vehicles quickly in the same scheme, while it is mostly the same stuff I do have the plasma written up over in my HTPE for totally loyal guard.
Credit: Keewa
Credit: keewa
Flesh
Credit: Keewa
Blue Carapaces and Boiler Suits
Credit: Keewa
White Armour
Credit: Keewa
Orange Lanterns Quick OSL
Credit: keewa
Then I drybrushed the model again using Celestra Grey, again putting extra pressure on the cloth and skin to get it nice and bright. Now we start using contrast, starting with Black Templar I block in all the pipes, metallics, boots, and rubber glove parts of the model. On the gloves I like to leave the little rim in grey, this gives a bit of separation once it’s all done. Next I block in the yellow cloth using Nazdreg Yellow. Don’t worry if you catch any of the grey areas with the yellow, you can apply Dawnstone or Celestra back over it. 
From here I hit all the pouches and belts with Snakebite Leather and the diamond wrapping of the power pick with Volupus Pink. Next I wash the skin with a heavy coat of Druchii Violet to get that classic cult look. While that dries I drybrush all the silver metallics with Leadbelcher and pick out the cult icon hanging from their waist with Retributor Gold. 
I layer the skin with Slaanesh Grey next, and then get to some details. I apply Tesseract Glow into all the lamps and on the little buttons of the mining suit, Flesh Tearers Red onto the dynamite sticks, Creed Camo on the grenades, and the eyes or lenses of the face get hit with Mephiston Red. Once that’s dry I layer the red lenses with Evil Suns Scarlet and add a dot of pure white into the corners. I then take Grey Seer and put a stripe down the center of the shoulder pads. Once you have a good few squads done, the shoulder is an excellent place to put a unit marking, and having this stripe of “white” is a great backing for applying a black unit number or symbol. 
At this point I decided to breakup the face mask by applying Black Templar on the sides of the rebreather. Now for basing, I start by applying Astrogranite with a texture tool and once it’s dry I apply Druchii Violet. 
This is then drybrushed with Dawnstone, then we black rim the base and add some tufts and our little freedom fighter is done! 
Prepare for the Sky God's Arrival
