Tutorial: How to Paint Gory and Dirty Zombies!

Hi to everybody!
Today I'll show a fast and effective method to paint zombie but, you can easily turn this painting scheme to everybody who needs to be "corpsey". As always there are only ideas that I want to share, hoping to be helpful: out of this blog there is many painters and Painters better than me.

Sometimes, you have hordes of them and painting so much minis could be very long and boring, and this fact could affect the final results.
After painting a small quantity of them I've found some techniques that make easy, fast and funny painting zombies: logically you can apply this colour schemes etc. to corpses and rotten bodies.

I've started painting zombies because, after an army of dark elves, and dark eldar, I needed to paint something of dirty and messy: probably they are the first unit that I paint in a real DGD style so, thank to them, I decided to paint as I paint!

As usual, a bit of theory:
-zombies are dead (captain obvious mode on) so it is difficult to find them with pink and soft skin;
-zombies are corpses (captain obvious strikes again) so, choose a different level of decomposition and you'll find the colours to use: if you choose a general one (like mine), skin is pale as there is no blood with some exception that we are going to find;
-zombies has some areas different on their skin: stagnation of blood, hematomas etc give irregular skin;
-zombies does not care about clean, so they are dirty;
-zombies' blood, if they are not freshly dead, is dark ( but also matt and gloss);
-optional: uses natural colours (and different, but not too much) for zombies like these that I'm painting, and try to not choose different level of decomposition: equal skin give homogeneity, different clothes take away monotony. Generally, for these kind of unit without a standard uniform, try to have the two levels (homogeneity for some surfaces, differences for other): IMHO it is very useful.

Ok, after these ideas, lets paint the zombies!
I was very fashinated by the atmosphere of Silent Hill (not the foggy, the red/dirty/gory/sweltering one) so, inspired by those images, I painted my Zombies.
First, generally I cut some arms and limbs, I bend ankles and knees, and make the units like it is rising from graves (look the link above). I try also to make them looking to the same direction (the standing one) and the arms outstretched forward. These measures gives IMHO the idea that they think only to eat your brain, and nothing can distract them, but also the typical slouching feeling.

As the bloodreavers tutorial, I put a photos for the colours and left the reader to match on the picture: I use also OOP colours so, for me, it is more clear give some colours pics, and readers can find the one that are more similar, than give a list.
The second step (after priming of course), is to put some bases. In the following picture, you can see that some areas of the skin are "brownier" because, when the skin base is not yed dried, I use a kind of wet blending to mix directly onto the zombie other colors, to create spot of stagnant blood (remember the theory above?). The zombie in the pics has the paint wet to show when make the "wet blending".
For metal, paint all now: the shadows of the next steps are useful also for them.

The third step is to give irregular shadows, mixing colours diluted directly onto the mini: generally red and purple are only for the skin, the others of all the mini: I also use black (not in the picture).Sometimes a colour is more strong it is necessary a seconda hand. Let be generous because puddles of colour are good this time (usually no).

Lets apply another time light with the base colours: for pants, use also a "pointillism" technique with the "wet blending" mentioned above, this is going to give an irregular and pleasant effect. Often I do not give too much light to shoes because they are the most dirty clothing, and, as usual, where the light do not go naturally,  I decided to give less light.

In this step, lets add some light grey to the bases, to give light and a desaturated feeling (and an homogeneity and depressing touch with the same light). For skin I use White - not in the picture-.After that I recall the shadows if the model is too much clear.

Ok almost finish!
Lets put some spot of green and light green in the wood to create mold, splash colours as seen in the bloodreavers tutorial (black, and/or brown and/or green) to create dots, use diluted light blue to add a light patina onto the eye(s).

Let's add the gore. If you want, add some rust. Generally I apply different levels of dirty and gory because some zombies are more polite than other!Just joking, I use different level of dirty because it is very improbable that all the zombies are equally dirty. This one is really dirty!
Lastly I use a natural but dead basing style. Sometimes I spray some hair spray (yes, air spray) onto the base: it is cheap, fix more the basing and give a gloss finish like wet undergrowth: logically a bit goes onto the legs, but this thing help, because make the zombie wet (as when you walk when it rain a lot) increasing the truthfulness of the effect.
And here the results!

What do you think?