Speed Painting Techniques
In my humble opinion their is one technique that
you need to master to enable you to paint a Skaven force before the end
of the millenium. That technique is the humble one of Drybrushing.
Once you can drybrush you will have no problems painting rank and file
Skaven at a rapid rate.
So you now how to Drybrush know do you? Excellent. Below are the colours and simple techniques that I have used with some sucess to paint my Skaven Army. It may not be quite Golden Deamon winning standard but it's neat, tidy and looks good on the battlefield.
Undercoats
All of my Skaven models have been undercoated with
a white undercoat with two important exceptions. These are the Screaming
Bell and the Doomwheel. These were both undercoated black as the majority
of the models colour scheme was black and I didn't fancy painting it all
by hand. Remember you must always undercoat as otherwise the paint will
just rub off in your hands and you'll have to start painting all over agian.
Fur
Painting Fur on Skaven is easy. For brown Skaven
paint all the fur areas with Vermin Fur and leave to dry. When it
is dry wash with a mixture of Chestnut Brown and Brown inks
and again leave to dry. The final stage is to drybrush the fur areas with
a mixture of Vermin Fur and Skull White. With Stormvermin,
Assassins and Important Characters with black fur I use the following simple
method. Paint the fur with Chaos Black and then with a mixture of
Chaos Black and Skull White drybrush. The drybrushing technique
works very well with fur as it has lots of nice ridges for the brush to
get caught up on.
Hands, Feet, Tails and Heads
I tend to paint all of these areas at the same time,
mainly for speed reasons, though on characters I do things in a different
order. I normally basecoat with Snakebite Leather and then highlight
with Bronzed Flesh. The final highlights are done with Elf Flesh.
Toenails are painted with Chaos Black and then Bleached Bone
so that a small line of black stands out around each of them. This is very
simple to do but looks very effective. Characters and Specials tend to
have Go Fasta Red toenails which are highlighted with Blood Angel
Orange. Mouths and eyes are first painted Chaos Black and I
then pick the teeth out in Skull White together with the pupils
of the eyes. I don't like doing the eyes red because they always end up
looking silly.
Robes
Many of the Skaven models come with full body robes
which make them very quick to paint. Take Plague Monks for instance. To
give them a more monkish feel than the GW ones have, my Plague Monks all
have the same colour robe but different colour hoods. The robes are painted
in Shadow Grey and then drybrushed with Space Wolf Grey.
The hoods are painted in various bright colours such as yellow, green and
orange, much as the "official paint scheme" shows.
Armour
Most of the Clanrat and Stormvermin models tend
to wear laminar type armour. I tend to paint this with colours, rather
than metalics as I personally feel that it adds to the overall appearance
of the model (plus it fits in with the cover of the army book). My big
block of clanrats that pushes the Screaming Bell, for instance, have dark
red armour which, when combined with the bell, makes the unit look very
mean and menacing. The armour was painted by first base coating it with
Red Gore and then giving it a Brown / Cheastnut ink wash. It was
then highlighted with Go Fasta Red with the edges of the armour
plates being highlighted in Blood Angel Orange. I used a similar
technique on the Stormvermin regiment though their armour is painted green
instead of red.
Chainmail I paint as normal ie a Chaos Black
basecoat with a Chainmail drybrush.
Swords and Wooden Bits
I don't like giving my Skaven metal looking weapons
as it tends to make them look to clean and tidy. Instead I paint them Chaos
Black and then highlight them with Dark Angel Green followed
by Goblin Green . This looks very effective and makes the weapons
look as if they are made out of warpstone rather than plain metal. I tend
to do wood such as standard poles and the plague monk staffs in the same
manner, again giving them a warpstone inflicted look.
The bits that have to be metal
Some things just have to be metal, such as the big
bell on the Screaming Bell. I tend to paint these things bronze / gold
rather than silver and this is the technique that I use. Firstly I paint
the object Chainmail (over a Chaos Black basecoat) and then
paint all the silver with Dwarf Bronze. When this is dry I give
the whole area a heavy chestnut ink wash and then leave it overnight to
dry properly. I then highlight with Gold and end up with a lovely aged
bronze effect. It took me a few goes to get the consistancy of the ink
wash right but in the end I managed it. The other things that I 've painted
using this technique are the Plague Censor Bearers censors on the flails.
Basing
I base my models by painting the bases Goblin
Green and dipping them whilst the paint is still wet into a tub of
flock. This is a quicker way than using PVA and sand and proves just as
effective. I then clean any loose flock off the edges of the base and then
repaint it, again with Goblin Green.
Get your own Free Homepage