Skaven Warlord with Contrast paints

Here's a Skaven clawlord/warlord painted up with contrast paints.  As expected he painted up pretty quickly.  I used contrast paints for a non-metallic metal look on the silver and bronze areas.  This is passable, but a little more effort with some highlights or drybrushing would really help.

Silver Tower WIP Acolytes and Skaven

A little more progress over the weekend on my Silver tower set.  The Acolytes are almost done... probably just need a few quick highlights.  The Skaven Assassins are done, and now its onto some of the familiars and characters.

In other news, I played a game of Betrayal at Calth with my brother.  We played learnt the rules and played the intro mission.  Pretty fun game, and nice rules mechanics.  I like the hex square movement more than I thought I would.  I expect we'll try to play through the missions over the Christmas break,

More Silver Tower Progress

Lets start off with a shot of the shelf that's slowly getting filled up.  As you can see, the hero side doesn't have any of the proper box guys, just the mighty hero expansion and some other singles from my fantasy collection.  The monsters are slowly filling up, and I took a break from the bunches of guys to do the two skaven (pics after the break).

Skaven Vermin Lord WIP 2

Here's the Warhammer Forge Vermin lord with some final touches on my painting table.  I'm trying to keep the final steps to a minimum, but its hard stopping when I know there are more details I can add.  The point is to speed up the workflow, so I've got to show some restraint.  Anyway, I'm happy with the results and will post some finished pics shortly.

After airbrushing the steps were limited to:
black wash on horns
Metallic bits on weapon
leather base and layers
green wash on warpstone followed by white edge highlights
teeth
red eye

Skaven Hellpit Abomination Showcase

One of my goals for 2015 is to make more use out of the older stuff I've painted, so an easy way to do that is showcase videos of past projects.  Here's the Hellpit Abomination I painted a few years back.  

The painting video post is here:

http://itslikewatchingpaintdry.blogspot.ca/2012/01/skaven-hellpit-abomination-painting.html

Skaven Vermin Lord (Forgeworld version) WIP

I'm enjoying the Minitaire paints.  In fact, I took a break from Smaug to paint up the Forgeworld (Warhammer Forge) Skaven Exhaulted Vermin Lord that's been sitting on my to-do shelf for quite a while.  This is why I haven't picked up the new plastic kit, because I need to clear out some of my backlog before I buy more stuff to paint.

I didn't take any video of this, so maybe it'll be a written tutorial if there is enough interest.  It took about an hour and a half to get to this point, and now all I have to do is some of the detail painting.  Time wise I'm really happy with how this has turned out, so its a nice compromise in getting stuff done.  Next time I'll probably just run the camera and post the video.

Skaven Grey Seer Tutorial and Guide

Here's the finished Grey Seer as well as the tutorial video and painting guide.  To save time I didn't video the base colours or wash step, but they's nothing too interesting happening there.  I used the same wash for the while model (Reikland Fleshshade).  This was a lot of fun because he was done so fast.

Skaven Grey Seer WIP

Followers of this blog may remember that I made a quick tutorial on how to make the Grey Seer from the Screaming bell a single character.  This is good if you make the kit into a plague furnace and have him left over.  Well, with the new Skaven coming out I decided to give him a quick paint job.  Pretty simple scheme and I'm surprised at how fast I was able to lay down the base colours.  Much more fun than all the complicated schemes for 40k (especially my flash gitz).

Skaven Plague Monk Tutorial and Guide

Here's a painting tutorial of the Plague Monk that comes with the Screaming Bell/Plague Furnace kit.  I have two of them, so as a result have an extra plague monk to mount on a 20mm base.  I added a thin piece of cork and have had this guy ready to go for years.  Anyway, its a fairly simple paint scheme so was pretty rewarding to paint up fast.  Check out the video and let me know if there are any requests for future tutorials.

Skaven Grey Seer Conversion

Here's a quick tutorial showing how I mounted the extra Grey Seer from my Plague Furnace on a 20mm base.  I used a piece of cork to get the right angle and replaced the screaming bell handle with a knife from one of the extra clan rat arms I had laying around.

Skaven Plague Claw Catapult (Tutorial)

Here's a guide and painting tutorial for the Skaven Plague Claw Catapult.  I started this over Christmas after having an itch to paint some Skaven.  I meant to paint up a blob of 40 Stormvermin, but I needed to do the Screaming Bell, so I figured that I'd paint this at the same time.  Well, after all that, this got finished first, the bell is 80% done, and the Stormvermin are assembled and spray painted.  Hopefully I get to them soon.

Anyway, here's a painting guide and video commentary of how I painted up this beast.

Skaven Plague Furnace

Turns out I painted this up a long time ago and never made a tutorial to go along with it.  So, here's the explanation about how I went about painting it along with some pictures of the finished product.  Paints used are just after the video.

2012 Year in Review

Ok, so I guess its that time of year to look back and see what I accomplished in the hobby during 2012.  Outside the hobby world it was a busy year for me... I finished up my master's degree, switched jobs, moved to a new town and had some excellent vacations.

Skaven Army Showcase

Following in the trend of showing off some of my armies here are all the Skaven I've painted up.  Lots of units, but not nearly enough clanrats and slaves.

More Skaven Clanrats

I actually painted these guys a while back, but just put together a video about the process and discuss using the new GW paints.  Here's some pics with suggested paints at the bottom of the post.

Skaven Doomflayer Complete

Here's some pics of the finished doomflayer using the new GW paints.  I've shown the ones I used at the bottom of this post.  The patina finish was done with a watered down coat of Sotek Green then a smaller coat of Temple Guard Blue.  I used to do this by mixing Dark Angels Green and Hawk Turquoise in the old range.

Skaven Doomflayer WIP 2

Here's the rest of the work in progress shots of my doomflayer using the new GW paints.  Like I said before, I like how they work together and don't really see any big difference (apart from the selection) from the old paints.

In other news, I played a fantasy game tonight... my Orcs and Goblins against some Bretonnia knights.  I brought Grimgor and 29 black orcs as the anchor of my army, and would have won if not for a mix up with a rule about the green knight.  I should have killed him in the first round of combat because of his ethereal rule, but it was overlooked (I've never faced him, and it was my opponent's first time using him).  Anyway, fun game otherwise, and great to be rolling some dice.

Skaven Doomflayer WIP

Here's some pics of the first model where I use only paints from the new GW range.  I've had this on my desk forever and finally decided to paint it up.  Is going to be lots of metallics (a little of each kind) and some standard Skaven paints.

I also finally realised the logic to the new range (I can be a little slow sometimes).  If you organize your paints by the short sku (xx-xx) you'll notice that the bases are in the same colour order as the  layers.  For each base there are 2 layers typically, but for some there's an extra layer (for a lighter highlight) or alternate layers (for different versions of black).  You'll also notice that the sets that go together are typically named after the same 40k or fantasy faction.  For example, the green/blue ones are all dark eldar names.  So this means that if you compare the new GW range to the reaper triad scheme you have the equivalent of a triad for each of the base paints.  This might have been obvious to others, but I had to actually start using them to see exactly how it all came together.

Anyway, here's those WIP pictures.

Skaven Doomwheel Painting tutorial

Here's a video showing how I painted up the Skaven Doomwheel a while back.  As I mention in the video its using the tutorial GW used to have on its site with the old paints, but that's gone now.  Enjoy.

Skaven Hellpit Abomination painting video

Here's one that I overlooked posting... so you get it now.  Enjoy.