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Xenos Likes to Paint @xenominis.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

One of my favorite designs ever; the 2002 metal Chaos Spawn! I love how the old Fantasy spawn are so visceral and gory compared to its current kit. You can even see the head and arms of the poor, transformed man. #warhammercommunity #worldeaters #minipainting #40k #warhammer #oldhammer #nerdlings

Despite being the same model and painted at roughly the same time, I really didn't know how to approach such a fleshy, biological model.

I was familiar with painting bone, as I primarily paint World Eaters, but I hadn't done a lot of flesh tones at this point, nor did I have any experience painting skinless muscles, tendons, or ligaments.

The result is two Spawns that look extremely different. The left one, the first of the two I did, is far bloodier looking, with visceral crimson reds and dark, almost dead and diseased looking skin consisting only of browns and tans, like it's turning into beef jerky. I also kinda messed up on the ligaments of the limbs, resulting in chaotic streaks of white on the muscle. I decided to headcanon this issue away by deciding this is the far older of the two spawn, half-rotted and decaying.

The spawn on the right, however, came out immaculately. It's fleshbag body has a pleasant pinkish hue to it, just like real skin, as that's the red of our blood showing gently through the skin layers. I took extra care to be precise with my white-streaks of tendons and ligaments in the stripped limbs, and the result is by far my favorite limb I've ever painted. I also sold the transition between areas better, with a pinkish, organic gradient color used to show the blade-limbs on the back bursting from the skin, or the fleshy tips of the tentacles. Thus, this is the fresher spawn, more recently transformed.

I think my favorite part of the model is that you can see the poor guy's head at the top of the spawn's back, fused into the rest of it's skin, which is now simply a bag of flesh to hold all the guts in place. Considering the mouth of that head is stretched to the base of the chaos spawn's neck and head, I like to imagine the gnashing jaws of the spawn exploded out through the former human's mouth, much like it's other limbs burst out at random from it's body.

The backside of the Spawn is probably the weirdest because, as a chaos spawn, it really has a lot going on, while also having not much of anything.

The whole model is one gigantic blob of flesh, wrapping around itself, and sprouting several ugly, skinless limbs.

I appreciate how the bladed limbs can be positioned almost any way you want them, a nice quality of life to ensure not even spawn looks the same even in metal.

I also love the detail of the former human's head and arms being fused into the fleshy bag of a body, a grim reminder where this abomination came from.

The skulls and helmets near the base of the tail had a surprisingly practical purpose; the Chaos Spawn model didn't really fit flush against the base (likely due to how awkward the single foot was to attach) and so I used bones and helmets to disguise the gap.

I tried two different methods of adding gradients and skin tones to these models, and I'm a lot happier with the one on the right, which came out more of a fleshy pinkish hue instead of the dead-looking brown and tans of the left.

Ironically, or perhaps fittingly, Chaos Spawn are rather hard to photograph. Their limbs are flailing all over the place, and by intentional design, they look nothing at all like the poor humans they once were. So, for once, I felt compelled to take a top-down photo to show how the model actually looks.

The left limb is a massive, sinewy, skinless arm with massive claws. I put in a lot of effort towards getting the visuals of the sinew and tendons of this giant arm, and I'm SO happy with how it turned out on the bottom model.

The right limb is an amorphous mass of tentacles, which was a bit difficult to figure out a good painting scheme for as there's not exactly a lot of flesh tentacle animals running around to use as reference.

On the spawn's back are four bladed limbs, similar to those of the Necromorphs from Dead Space.

And finally, the "head" is merely a giant chunk of flesh or bone violently erupted from the poor human's fleshy bag it now calls a body. There is actually an alternative build option; you can choose to not attach the neck and "head" and instead leave a giant, toothy hole at the front. But I decided I liked the head option more.