Help Trying to find a new scheme for my Lizardmen

[Raptorclaw]

I've been playing and painting Lizardmen for almost a decade and I remember joining Lustria Online so long ago that I can't even remember when, but I've been away from Warhammer and from this website for quite some time as I've been focusing on real life stuff. But I'm back and I'd love to resume with my Lizardmen!

So, back in the day I used to paint my Lizardmen with green skin and brown scales. I was okay at painting and I think I can do much better and want to figure out how I can take this colour scheme to the next level!

Here are some images I want to take inspiration from but also have no clue what colours (either Citadel or Scale 75 or Vallejo, I don't mind buying new paints) are best for this:



I love the browns and creams for this Skink, and I would love to have something this organic looking for my models, but I do still want there to be green for the skin. In any case, I'd love to know what kind of colours to use for both the browns and the creams. Currently I've got Citadel Mournfang Brown, Vallejo Armour Brown for the scales, and Citadel Ushabti Bone for the cream colour, but obviously I'll need more shades of the colours and am a little lost, I don't know much about these new colours (I still have Chestnut Ink lol, if that's any indication of how out of touch I am)


I adore the shield on the Skink, as well as the colours, but I think I'd rather a much deeper forest green rather than this almost yellow. The Saurus' tail is a good indication I think. It reminds me of GW Snot Green, tbh. I'm thinking I'll use the tan and brown colour scheme for the shields, as that's what I used to use before.


This guy is obviously far too blue, but I like the scales that have been added on, so I'll be using neveroddoreven's amazing freehand scales guide to replicate that look. I did have a question on what would look good for the tail - it fades from blue to turquoise, and I'd love to have green fading to something else as a theme for my Skinks - would yellow be better, or dark green? Or are there some better examples of real organic lizard tails that would illustrate how the tails should look?

All in all, I know I'm sounding really needy and useless, but if anyone can lend a helping hand for one or more of these things (what paint colours match the pics, what paints to use instead, what would look organic) I'd be most grateful!

Thanks ever so much Lustra-online, you guys are honestly the best <3

 

[Cerind]

For the ctam/brown guys I'd try the new contrast paints coming soon, they sou d like they could help get at least the basic tones for these quite easily. Otherwise I'd go with a white or zandri dust spray base, and work from there with a lighter belly (working towards screaming skull) and darker scales (scrag brown maybe!), using agrax and seraphim sepia for shading depending on how warm you want it (you can go over the scales for the shade to blend them in). I'm no expert hu that's how I'd do it.

For the greens I'm not sure, I'll be testing some similar stuff myself soon and post the findings. I had success with a white base, and painting only with dilute green washes (overall with the bright green one, recesses with darker greens if needed) to batch paint goblins.
A good vibrant green can be achieved by white - thin yellow overall wash - thin bright green overall washes for batch painting.
This is just to explain the technique, see video below too.
So for a deeper forest green, I'd play around changing the green wash with other deeper greens, and maybe try a pale blue first wash coat rather than yellow.
Method inspired by this guy :

Good luck and keep us updated on your progress

 

[Raptorclaw]

>contrast paints

Yeah I've had my eye on them and am quite curious to see how that turns out, if there are any brown or tan colours I'll swoop in and nab one to try!

As for the tans with washes on white, that could look quite good with sepia and agrax, thanks, I'll give that a try. I always like starting with a white basecoat because it helps everything look more vibrant, which is what I like best about Lizardmen haha. I do think you're spot on with Skrag Brown for the back scales though, yeah! any idea for the accent colours on the back scales? I'm thinking Bleached/Ushabti Bone, with some Snakebite Leather or XV-88/Balor Brown maybe? (I'm really unfamiliar with the new line of Citadel paints still lol sorry)

>dilute green washes

I'll try that, but I've always hated the wash look tbh, maybe I need to try using multiple layers with lighter greens and see how that adds up. I edited the brown Skink from the OP:

And I love both the shade of green and the warm light brown, but I feel like the two colours just don't interact as nicely as they should, and idk if it's because my quick edit is a rough shoddy mess with no blending between them or if I need to add a dark line between the colour scales (much like lizards have a layer of darker scales between two different areas of colour, but that wouldn't look as impressive from a technical standpoint.) Or maybe it's because the colours themselves don't work together in which case I need to sort out my eyes and go back to the drawing board lol. But before that point, what colour paints do you think I should use if I wanted to pull off that green? One of my friends just recommended Kabalite Green with a Warpstone Glow highlight and I think that could work based off the colour of the pots haha.

The Goblins seem like a cool idea, I might experiment with the yellow + blue then green washes and see where it takes me.