Skaven: Lets try some speed painting Part 1

Back to Basics - Speed Painting

I've had an unpainted skaven army since Games workshop decided to end Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB) and replace it with Age of Sigmar (AoS). I'd purchased a couple of the Island of Blood boxed sets and assembled them, but not really gotten round to do anything with them. AoS killed any enthusiasm I had for that particular project. I've tried playing AoS a few times, but it's not the game for me.

Fortuitously just before the lockdown started, a few gamers in my area started planning for a WFB 6th edition gaming group. I think its the best edition, and I still happen to own most of the army books from that edition, so naturally I dug out my skaven. put them on their movement trays, and there they have remained for the past 5 months. 250 pieces of grey plastic (and a few metal ones) mocking me.

Skeletons, now 25 years old.

My first 'proper' army for WFB was undead. I picked them for a couple of reasons; firstly I hated taking and leadership based tests, and secondly I could afford to buy either paints, or miniatures. With 10 paints that was more than enough to do a fairly good job with undead. they didn't require any fancy techniques, and i managed to build and paint about 50 of them in a weekend. The majority have been lost to the winds of time, but 10 remain. painted simply with a white undercoat, Chainmail for the weapons, Chesnut ink wash. and then I drybrushed the bone with screaming skull. and then obligatory black and white for the shields. 

While my painting standard has improved markedly over the years, my painting speed has diminished substantially, with a normal model taking anywhere from 2-5 hours. This isn't much help when you are painting an army and it makes painting 250 rat men a daunting proposition. 

While i was mulling over whether I should just put my Skaven away and pretend i had never heard about the 6th Edition gaming group, a friend posted a link to the Lazy Painter guide in the local infinity FB group page. I read through it, and decided to go back to basics: Speed Painting.

I mulled over whether I should try my hand at some PanO models I have laying around (let the fascists be the guinea pigs) or, since i had 250 of them and Skaven are messy anyway, it should be the skaven. I picked the Skaven.

Prep work.

I picked 36 models on early Friday evening; 25 clanrats, a rattling gun, 6 rat ogres and 4 packmasters. This would give me a variety of different sized miniatures to try so I dusted them off with a cheap foundation brush (79p on amazon) and decided to select my colours.

Early on I decided to go almost exclusively with washes as they provide shading and highlights all at once, and they are much more fluid which means you don't have to be nearly so precise to cover all of an area, it will naturally flow over a surface. Red would be the main Colour for the clothes, and the skin and hair I could do with a mix of Sepia, Agrax Earthshade and Reikland Fleshshade.

Colour selection

German Red Brown.

Liquitex White

Seraphim Sepia

Agrax Earthshade

Reikland Fleshshade

Nuln Oil

Ironbreaker

Carrouburg Crimson

Bieltan Green

Black

Lahmian Medium

Airbrush Varnish

Priming and Undercoating

I started at about midday on Saturday with an undercoat of Red Brown, the Skaven are a subterranean race so will get filthy, it's also a nice base for lots of bare flesh, such as on the Rat ogres. and I applied a zenithol white highlight to them. This took me about 40 minutes to do. I then left them for about an hour (to have some lunch) If you don't have an airbrush, then you can just use a spray can to apply both the undercoat and the zenithol highlights.

       

                 

Lets Get painting

Once the paint was dried (it wasn't and almost caused a massive mess) I put on 2 washes of 1:1 Seraphim Sepia: Lahiman Medium to bring out all the details, this gave a nice skin tone to all the miniatures, and helped to define all the details even more. the White over brown helped to really emphasize the shadows, particularly on the rat ogres

Skaven with a Sepia Wash

Next was getting all the metal done. I had contemplated using several different metallics on all the miniatures, but the majority of the details you won't actually see unless you really look for them, particularly on the Clanrats, so Ironbreaker went on all the miniatures. Its a bit lighter than I would usually use for a base coat, but i'll be using washes on it to tone it down.


I then washed the metalics, first with a 1:1 wash of Nuln oil: Lahmian medium, and then with a 1:1 wash of 1:1 Agrax earthshade: Lamian medium. first to define the metalic details, and then to make it a little bit corroded.

With the metals done, it was time to get the rest finished. I applied 2 washes of neat Carrouburg crimson onto all the clothes. and then used Reikland flesh shade and agrax earthshade to all the fur to darken it and separate it from the skin tone.

I used a few other colours, at this stage, Rhinox hide for any leather on the rat ogres, pack masters and weapon team, black for the cables, and mournfang brown for any pieces of wood I could see. Some pieces of warpstone I just washed with bieltan green, and the eyes I picked out with white, and washed with yellow

with that, I left them for the evening to properly dry, and then varnished them this morning. I know from experience that washes can rub off if roughly handled, and that would never do.

Total Painting time was about 6 hours, so 10 minutes per miniature. I still need to base them, but I have some GW technical paints I picked up from somewhere, and i'll add it once the varnish has been left for 24 hours or so.

So, what have a learned?

I'm quite happy with how they have turned out. Adding Zenithol highlights as a first step has really helped to define the details, particularly on the Rat Ogres. I could have spent a lot longer on the Rat Ogres as they are such big miniatures. Using Washes really helped to speed up the process as they create basic highlights and shading with minimal effort. and keeping the paint palette small and not worrying overly much about the details saved masses of time. 

As a unit the miniatures I think look great, but a close look will reveal pouches, belts and so forth that haven't been painted. It may be worth a little extra time in future to do them on miniatures that will be in the front rank, but I think that would just be for my benefit. The overall effect is the units look unified, they are completely painted.

I will definately be doing this with the rest of the skaven units, the characters and other centre piece models will get a different treatment, but i think using washes is definately the way to go with the murderous rat men.

Most importantly, i'm not ashamed of them at all. I don't know why, but I thought I would be

Links:

Lazy Painter guide:

https://lazypainter.com/?fbclid=IwAR39H0dQuM9zT6CimQ6qBN7WYROtVtt0Aqa0Z_mUtq6a34zeqqOHbQm3GiM

Gallery