Age of Sigmar: Painting Trugg
Ben is back and this time he’s tackling the Trogg King himself. Get ready for a wild take on the massive Trugg!
Trugg was a complete blast to paint! Like a lot of my other favorite GW models, he is absolutely loaded with little details that you only really get to fully appreciate while painting.
I had two things in mind picking my color scheme for Trugg. First I wanted him to stand out from the rest of the Troggs in the herd. Right now I have orange Rockgut troggs, purple Fellwaters, and pale pinkish Dankholds. That left a few options open for colors. While I think a blue, red, or even yellow Trugg could have looked great, I picked green because he’s supposed to be infused with Ghyranic (Ghyranite? Ghyranese?) life energy from his eons long snooze on a leyline. Green it is!
Painting Trugg
1) I started with a thin layer of AK Frog Green with thin Light Prussian Blue used for some early shading, and also concentrated at the extremities. With large models like this that are basically all flesh, head-to-toe, using the same color throughout can be a little dull. I find some color variation can make the whole thing seem more interesting, and with large creatures I usually go with the hands and feet/paws.
2) Next I start on the pale underbelly using a basecoat of AK Frostbite. I also give the shrine a basecoat of Reaper Imperial Purple.
3) I began shading the pale areas by blending in a small amount of AK Mud Brown with the Snow Blue basecoat. I also started adding some warm tones to the ears and nose with AK Magenta mixed with some AK Basic Skintone. For the beard, I started at the bottom with AK Black Green blended up into AK Burnt Umber.
4) I continued to increase the shading with thin glazes of Light Prussian Blue on the green skin, and some pure Mud Brown in the recesses of the pale skin. The beard was highlighted with Vallejo Blue Violet. I went for two different colors of cloth with Vallejo Cavalry Brown and AK Camoulflage. The handle of his club was painted with AK Black Green. For the dirt encrusted around the shrine, I used Reaper Red Brick. I also used AK Deep Purple for the lips, shaded with more Light Prussian Blue. 
5) I finally decided to go with orange for the antlers, starting with a basecoat of AK Light Rust shaded with Vallejo Cavalry Brown. Additionally I began to increase the amount of Light Prussian Blue a lot on the hands and feet, highlighting them a little with AK Deep Sky Blue. I used AK Ochre for all the skulls and bones, and then washed the beard with Agrax Earth with some AK Black Green mixed in. Finally I used AK Basic Skin Tone on the glyph scars to go for a gross exposed flesh look.
6) I used a thin wash of AK Wine Red on the scars, then highlighted the edges with AK Basic Skintone to complete the open wound appearance. Unfortunately the one on his forearm looks kinda like a big pretty pink flower, but I like it enough to leave as-is. I used more Wine Red washes around the knuckles on the feet and hand, highlighted with AK Deep Purple and Basic Skintone. I always like how this effect looks on humanoids with weird colored skin. I also began to bump up the highlights all over at this point.
For the beard I lightened things up with a mix of AK Snow Blue and Vallejo Blue Violet. AK Radiant Flesh was used to highlight the antlers, with a little Reaper Imperial Purple to darken the shading a bit. The stones on the altar were drybrushed with a little P3 Arcane Blue, then a little Vallejo Stone Grey. With that finished, I painted the branches growing on it with AK Black Green. The Club Haft was highlighted with Vallejo Green Grey then some AK Dark Sand. A bit of Vallejo Blue Violet was towards the base. I started the shell with a basecoat of AK Salmon which was shaded with AK Magenta and highlighted with Basic Skintone and Radiant Flesh. I made sure to keep some of the streaks showing here to help accentuate the shell appearance.
All the weird drooping moss was painted with AK Deep Yellow mixed with AK Camoulfalge to go for a gross green snot look. I used more AK Light Prussian Blue for the mouth as a way to tie all the carious blue areas together. Also I just go with blue for mouths a lot. I also really started to define the face with some thin applications of Prussian blue in all the recesses to get all the wrinkles and weird bumps to stand out. I used Basic Skintone to add more highlights to the lips and ears. Finally I used some Vallejo Offwhite to make the pale skin even paler.
7) This step was almost exclusively tightening everything up. It’s all the same colors as earlier steps, but I’m spending more time on every little bump and wrinkle to make each one pop. Other than that I gave the skulls and dirt a wash of Agrax Earthshade.
8) I drybrushed the dirt with some AK Ochre and then AK Greenish White. Yes that’s actually the name of an AK color you can buy. I finally decided to go in and do the old skeletons on Trugg’s back. I started these off with a mix of AK Snow Blue, AK Dark Sea Blue, and AK Black. This is shaded with a mix of Dark Sea Blue and black, and highlighted with Snow Blue. AK Offwhite is used for a few final intense spots of highlight on a few raised areas and thin lines on the edges of surfaces. Then I added a few splotches of Dark Rust with a little Red Brick mixed in near the nooks and crannies to make it look more aged.
The rim of the shield was meant to look more copper and so I started it off with Vallejo Cavalry Brown. This was highlighted with AK Basic Skintone. I used a little thinned down P3 Arcane Blue stippled on to give it a copper patina look. I washed some thinned down Vallejo Cavalry Brown into the recesses of the plant growing on the altar, then highlighted it with AK Dark Green. Then I knocked out the glow effect on the altar by drybrushing the area near the gap with AK Dirty Yellow, then AK Intense Yellow, then a tiny bit of AK Ivory.Apeaking of AK Ivory I used it for the final streaks on the shell-club. The skulls were highlighted with AK Dark Sand, then AK Ivory. Finally, after puzzling over which color to use for awhile, I went ahead and just used black for all all the strips of cloth on the horns and club.
9) There were only a few steps left at this point. I finished off the mouth and the little trogglet by using AK Deep Sky Blue to highlight the AK Light Prussian Blue beneath. A little AK Snow Blue is used as a final highlight. The black cloth was highlighted with AK Oxford Blue and AK Grey Blue. Then I busted out the AK Deep red for the little mushrooms on the Trogglet, Trug’s eye, and the gems on the armor. Then I went back into the glyph recesses on the belly and shaded them with a little more Wine Red since they weren’t quite looking right.
10) I prepared the base ahead of time using pieces from the Shattered Dominion large basing kit, and a pool of UV resin Goo. Trugg’s hands and feet didn’t want to connect properly with the base so I built up some sand and glue so it didn’t look like parts of him were floating. Then I painted it with Cavalry Brown with an Agrax Earth wash to match the rest.
And there are some close-ups and other angle pics to close it out. Man there were a lot of steps in there so I’m sure I probably missed descriptions of some. Hopefully the pics will be helpful to see how everything came together.
Finally a picture of all the paints I used.
~Hope you enjoyed the article! You can follow me on Instagram if you like pics like these. I go by @t00mini. Thanks for looking!
