paints the basic dungeon tiles from 
At last, I return!
Sorry for the delay - real life, school, and painting commissions all cut in on my Simian time; plus I wasn't sure I liked what I'd done with the modelling, and was considering starting over. But didn't! We'll see if you think I did the right thing.
The basic issue in painting the Simian Messengers is that they don't offer a lot of opportunity for creativity at first glance. They're basically monkeys; they're not wearing armor or clothing (except a tiny loincloth,) and they don't have a lot of props or doodads on them - they're pretty much just fur. So the first thing I thought was that I'd like to avoid just painting them like basic brown furry monkeys a la Curious George, since they'd be dull to look at and dull to paint!
I did a little research using images.google.com, which is a great resource any time you want to paint something that looks like an exotic animal or bird - you can get a wide selection of photos showing feathers or fur patterns.
I found a type of African monkey called a Colobus Monkey which is very beautiful and eye-catching. They're black, but have long silky white fur around their faces, down their sides, and a large feathery plume of white at the tip of their tail.
After downloading a few reference pictures, I mixed up some ribbon epoxy and sculpted some additional fur onto one of my Simians.
As you can see, sculpting is not necessarily my long suit! Still, for this purpose I think it worked out all right.
I added thin flat bits onto the tail and flanks, trying to keep it from looking bulky and un-fur-like. I then scratched up the surface with one of my handy dental tools, to blend it in with the fur already sculpted on the surface of the model.