Hi, For a lizardmen army maybe a desert kind of paint scheme would work; browns and greys, and use of washes to create a dusty kind of look. Any thoughts would be kindly appreciated.
I have got desert themed lizardmen. I use snakebite leather for the skin and calthan brown for the scales and it works very well . It is also great for converions: giant snakes, scorpions and desert turtle(which I made), and many more.
I think brown can be a tricky colour to make look nice as your primary colour. Not impossible of course, but make sure you test out the scheme on some test models first. When coming up with schemes to paint my new Fenrisian Wolf models I inadvertently came up with something that looks nice on Lizardmen. Basically white undercoat, give it a wash with Gryphonne Sepia, then before it dries paint slightly watered down Calthan Brown down its back (don't water it down too much, its already going on Sepia wash, then while its all still a bit wet, mix up some more watery Calthan Brown and use it to blend the Sepia wash and the more solid Calthan Brown. Will give a yellowish brown belly and a darker brown back.
Yeah, here is how it looks... The shield is done using what I described above (I use all the old Saurus shields I have lying around to test new painting methods ), the centre of the shield is Calthan Brown and the right of the shield is Gryphonne Sepia, the bottom and left of the shield is going toward black, as that's what I wanted on my wolves. You could probably throw a Devlan Mud or Black wash over the Calthan Brown bits to bring them out a bit more. The wolf is painted in much the same way, except instead of pure Gryphonne Sepia it was Gryphonne Sepia + Devlan Mud, about 70:30 mix, and it was finished off with a highlight of Bleached Bone + Skull White just on the lower portion of the wolf.