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Indeed, my bitz box is already quite big, its one of the few remaining bits from my old hobby days as a kid. So its got lots and lots of Dark Elf bits and a myriad of others sooo many rxbows and spears!!! Shame I no longer have the army they came from :( it was a good 5k atleast. hehe.

I'm about to set up the airbrush and primer these Bell components and the Plague Monks I finished building last night.
Not sure if the monks would be better with a green base spray than the usual brown, as the robes make such a large part of them, maybe I will brush the fur in on those guys.




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The Bell construction is underway, the Horned one will surely be pleased and show us favor!
I sprayed the entire lot, along with the unit of 20 Plague Monks with the same grey tinted gesso that I've been using throughout. (I made a small bottle of it, but will eventually have to mix more - proabably wont get the exact same grey hehe)
Then I cleaned the brush out and mixed up some GW Scorched Brown with Liquitex Airbrush Medium, and gave all the wooden parts a coat or two of that before a clean out and swapping to Calthan Brown to spray the Rat Ogre and the Grey Seer. At that point I realised that Grey Seers have grey furs? I shall have to check my fluff later; I could be thinking of the albino Storm Vermin in the Black Library book; Grey Seer (which I might copy )
I sprayed the bell with tin bitz (which is a very different effect to brushed on metallic paints by the way) and then cleaned up while things dryed. drying is actually very quick though, which is nice, I gave everything a quick blast of warm air off a hairdryer and left it to cool just to be sure however.
Next I began to drybrush all the wood with Bestial Brown, its getting there but its much slower than spraying! haha! when im happy with that I might drybrush again in a lighter tone and apply a wash before moving onto another colour.




Here you can see the wheels, some are still just Scorched Brown and a couple have had some drybrushing done to show the difference. As you can se i'm using the large citadel dryrbrush, i grabbed one the otherday because Im runnign out of brushes to ruin!! I'm kind of hoping this will last a bit longer than a softer brush.

A little progress on the Screaming Bell. I have drybrushed all the wooden frame with bestial brown, and then lightly with snakebite leather (which didn't make a huge difference tbh) and then a coat of Devlan Mud. After that was dry I took some Tin Bitz to the metal fixings scattered around it.
Also a basecoat on the stones and the archway was done with a mix of Chaos Black and Shadow Grey, there will probably be quite a few grey tones put into the stone by the end of it
Also the Rat Ogre has had a drybrush of Tallarn Flesh .. progress is slow! but its certainly there hehe.

So its been a few days, I've been a little busy. Got some things done though!

Heres the army so far;


30 Clanrats - WIP These neede, eyes, teeth and bases painting and then a wash - however GW has been all out of Devaln Mud for a while, theyre going to have to wait untill I can get Agrax Earthshade Can see a bit of the Rat Ogres behind, theyre still just plastic, need some cleaning up before gesso.


20 Plague Monks, Just my dark grey gesso mix been sprayed onto these at this point. I'm going to leave these till all the other WIP units are done.


20 Clanrats with hand weapons, these were going to be my 2nd core unit untill I splt the 40 block with 20 more to be two 30 blocks. Painting these along side the WIP 30block, Chainmail and Scorched Brown still to go before theyre at the same stage as the other unit.


The completed unit of 30 that i showed stage by stage painting of;


The characters so far, IoB Warlod and Warlock Engineer, and the Plage Priest from the Scremaing Bell set, theyve had some paint put on but I'm leaving these untill I've got the core done atleast.


And the Screaming Bell still in pieces, mostly I've been working on the stone archway and the counter weights, the colour is a mix of Chaos Black ,Shadow grey, Bleached Bone, Skull White which I kept adjusting bit by bit with Devlan Mud wash between stages of drybrushing my colour, Basecoat was a 1:1 mix of Black and Shadow Grey.


I've also textured all around the movement trays with 2 Layers of sand, painted them Graveyard Earth, and then Drybrushed them with Bleached Bone, The next stage is a Devlan Mud Wash to match the first units bases... but as mentioned above I'm waiting for the new paint line to get the new brown wash.

They are looking beautiful so far, I'm loving the effect on the stone but I have seen some mold lines you may want to get rid of before you go any further with it. The switch in the GW paints is giving me a headache and all, I may just switch over to using Vallejo paints instead.

How are you finding the GW paints with the airbrush? What airbrush are you using? Have been thinking about picking one up once I have the cash and I'm trying to get an idea of what people use.

Thanks, I'm happy with the one complete unit. They do look very dull and dark when sat next to some other peoples figures though! I've pondered; Is that a good effect - theyre skaven afterall, they live in the dark, with only 'rat-made' lighting, I never imagined really bright vivid colours to appear much with skaven, perhaps only the sexy green glow of some warpstone
Equally I could drybrush the same colours again as a highlighting layer if I come round to thinking they're too dingy.

The airbrush I use most often is a Harder & Steenbeck Evolution Silverline 0.2mm

This badboy; (made in Germany sounded like a plus to me for some precision made equipment over say china or elsewhere perhaps)


I've also got 3 others which either are in a state of disrepair, or simply dont get used often;
This one is the most used, but not for mini's really, when I want to change colours a lot, this is good with 10 spare paint bottles.

This one i expected to be better than the generic one above, but the parts break down was fiddly and annoying tbh, spray pattern wasnt any better to make up for it either.(made in the USA, sorry America but Badger do not seem to have anything on the build quality of my H&S from ze Germans)

This one got broken quite quickly, but was quite good for fine detailing untill it did, I replaced it witht he H&S Evolution and havent looked back!


My 2 cents are;
When shopping for airbrushes its a bit overwhelming, theres a huge range of price, brand, style and quality.
Gravity fed bushes are better for detail, and are more paint efficient (good for mini's tbh), You do get what you pay for, the higher price bracket ones certainly seem to have a lot more quality to the parts and the spray pattern. If you want hairlines you want a good brush. Suitable for thinner paints at lower air pressures, better for hard, non absorbant surfaces than syphon feed.

Syphon fed brushes, I actually found the generic brand one to be better and more useful than the known brand, for a fraction of the price... go figure They get through more paint, can spray thicker mixtures, use higher airpressures and can be convinient for rapid colour change. Also good for absorbant surfaces : tee-shirt painting for example

For paints, I've had zero issues spraying GW colours, I thin them 1:1 with Liquitex Airbrush medium. Only the metallics (tinbitz i think it was) seemed like the metal flake was a bit large for my 0.2mm tip. I wasnt very suprised by this. Would suggest a 0.3 or 4 tip for the metallics, maybe bigger still. All other colours have sprayed fine, as have many other paints (I do fine art with W&N Galeria acrylics thinned down)

Thanks for the info, its nice to get an idea of what to look for and after all I can see how well they work on your rat men.

I agree on the colours, more muted colours work better for the rat men, bright tones just don't seem quite right, except for the glowing green warpstone of course.

Mini's are not really the main use for my airbrushing kit. I just use it because its there I suppose
I paint allsorts, cars, motor biks, guitars, laptops, pc's ,tee shirts, canvas, walls... it goes on
heres an acoustic guitar I did freehand with that Evolution Airbrush spraying Liquitex Acrylic inks ; It's not the most amazing airbrush work ever, but thats roughly where I'm at after 2 years of working at it (I'm quite pleased with myself haha!)

Finally it rolled around, the new paints are on the shelf. So I got my Agrax Earthshade wash (2pots! hehe) and 10 other new pots... Couldn't help myself! haha
To save on time, and hopefully be a little more efficient with this agrax earthshade, I'm going to get all my WIP units upto the point of being ready for a washing, and then spray them all together.
So thats the 2nd unit of spear rats, the bell, and the new fortnights project. Which is a 3rd core unit, and a Battle Standard Bearer.
Luckily I've got that unit of 20 hand weapon rats half done alongside the 2nd 30unit so my core choice is almost done already. The BSB I'm going to have to order one, or convert one. I might get a new Warlord, and then use the IoB one as the BSB on account of his trophy rack resembling a battle standard.

My concern is that I'm pretty much looking at the Finecast Warlord, I've never had a Finecast mini, but the general response to them here on Dakka is horrifying, and peoples pictures of godawful defects put me right off even bothering to try my luck!
I'm not usualy overly picky and will repair what I can on a mini... but because I took a 10year break, I'm seeing the same figures as before, recast in Finecast, for sometimes 200% of the price I remember them being in metal years back. - A new sculpt wouldve been tempting atleast!!

Am I right to feel like I should avoid finecast products? Are the horror story threads extreme examples? or representative of the majority?
I definatly do not want to be posting a mini back and forth several times to get an acceptable sculpt, and even if picking one up at the store, I'm going to feel a bit strange inspecting and rejecting mini's until I find one worth having.

Is it reasonable to insist on an immaculate figure? How many times can I reasonably say 'no this figure is garbage gime another'
they do call it 'Fine' cast and say they swapped to it because its better in some way - even if thats just better profits... I atleast hope that equates to more cash pumped into games dev and mini design teams! but the cynic in me says that it just means better return for investors





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Had a play with the new colours today;



Had a first ever try at the corroded copper. What I've done here is to paint the whole thing with 'Screaming Bell' and washed over that with 'Agrax Earthshade' two coats, fully dried between each coat. Then drybrushed 'Screaming Bell',and another coat of 'Agrax Earthshade'. Then I mixed up a wash made of 'Sotek Green' and Liquitex Airbrush Medium. This wash I slathered all over quite liberally ad then with some cotton buds, started to remove it in places somewhat randomly. When that was fully dried I once again drybrushed with 'Screaming Bell' (lighter than before) and washed with 'Agrax Earthshade' for a final time.

Only 3 colours, a further step could be to stipple (or perhaps airbrush) some Sotek Green / White mix onto some patches of the green. Highlight the edges of the copper - I might get another of the new metallics for this as theres a few red/brown metal colours now.

The corroded copper is nice, I may just have to steal that one. There is at least one metal warlord model on the website at least that might be useful. That or there is always ebay to pick up an old metal one. So far I have managed to avoid buying any finecast but with my birthday coming I know the fiancee has got me a few skaven bits so we shall see.

I had a chance to look at the new and old paints side by side and it looks as though GWs colour matching chart is basically garbage so I will run down my current stocks and switch to Vallejo. My thinking is that if my paints aren't going to match they may as well be cheaper too!

Thanks Mercutio, I had to check with the staff in my local GW as to what colour is used for it Then he had to go off and check the old to new conversion chart hehe. I actually have an old hawk turquoise I could've used though, in future I might do Hawk turquoise First (as its a bit more towards green than Sotek) and then do Sotek Green after.

I continued this across all the little plates and bars on the rest of the model;


The only difference between those parts and the bell is that; the bell has a 'Screaming Bell' base coat, and the other parts had Tin Bitz, which has come out a little bit more dull (which I like )
I also gave all the wooden parts a wash of Agrax Earthshade while i was applying it to the metal parts.

Having a think about trying some weathering powder effects using ground up pastel colours, wouldn't be untill the rest of the figure is painted and I need some top coat to use as a fixative (I would like to put a protective layer on them anyhow)
The colours of pastel i have to choose from are here;

Maybe a mix of the aqua and lime green colours?

As for the metal Warlords on the GW site, the one with additional hand weapons might be alright for me the shame is that the finecast figure is a preferable sculpt, but I'm really offput by finecast hehe. Maybe I'l bite the bullet and try it, I'l let you know
I was going to order a grey seer the other week, but upon emailing GW to see about choosing a sculpt variant, they told me there is no way to choose... so I havent ordered one, I like the one thats got a rat ontop of his staff (the newer sculpt) but the old one waving a sword in the air I dislike strongly - GW customer service told me they cannot open a box to see which variant is inside, which I guess is loosing them a sale?

Great to see progress on this blog every time I log on!

Is it the warlord with the scythe that you are looking for to make a BSB? If so it might be worth keeping an eye on ebay as thats where I found my metal one. I agree on the grey seer sculpts, the older one is pretty much just plain ugly as far as I'm concerned.

For the pastel weathering are you talking about adding to the patina effect or more general mud etc? This blog has got me really looking forward to putting together some skaven, I just need some nice weather so I can get out the aerosol primer. Sometimes I really wish I had an airbrush.

Thanks for the support guys it certainly helps with motivation when there's people that want to see progress!

As it happens I was a little busy this saturday just gone, I did'nt get chance to lug my carry case down into town to see the other players force's and get pics done. I did quickly drop in and get those paints, check the next stage and apppologise for being busy to the other tomg players
On Wednesday I'l be making my check in, so that gives me today and tomorrow to get that 2nd clanrat unit washed and based, and the Screaming Bell constructed - which is getting close now anyway.

Last night I did some work on the ropes that secure the stone archway in place. First the were painted Scorched brown, and overbrushed with Bestial Brown, with a wash of Black ink (Liquitex Carbon Black + Liquitex Airbrush medium - I bought some Nuln Oil since then lol!). I left them like that for a few days (that how they are in the pics above) and then decided that they looked too similar to the wood parts. So I mixed some Graveyard Earth with some Ushabti Bone and drybrushed all over what I have previously done,and then put a wash of Seraphim Sepia ontop.



I've also tryed 'Necron Compound' on the chain lay across the decking, and the one the Rat Ogre is pulling on (its in the back somewhere ) Continue the Agrax Earthshade washing on these? or use Nuln Oil?
Parts jumping out at me as needing to be done are the leather straps around the top most wooden beams, both the characters and maybe the runes that go around the top of the archway, cant decide if I like the in stone, the copper they are on the Eavy Metal one, or a green warpstoney glow. And the many many nails and spikes dotted about, I'm thinking necron compound drybrush, with a splash of rust maybe.

The weathering poweder I was thinking of adding more depth to the patina (verdigris/corrosion whatever you call it) But now you mention it, a bit of grime might look good around the wheels and botom of the frame. Might be a final touch perhaps

I think the current level of patina is pretty much about right. As the bell gets hauled around really large deposits would be knocked off so I think its about right now. I would go nuln for the chains to make them stand out against the copper as the Agrax will make them slightly brown in colour and disappear amongst the wood and copper but thats just how I would do it.

You make a reasonable arguement
I had looked back at my wheels and realised that I've got some un-natrual looking bits forming around the banding - because the wheels are constantly scraping the floor, they would remain the cleanest parts of the whole lot.
However maybe there would be streaks of it going down the non metal surfaces where its being washed off by rain (maybe not - it would be under ground for the vast majority of its life - another thought; does the reaction that creates this effect require light?I genuinly don't know but it's possible I guess)

Another thought I had was, even though theyre Skaven and theyre dirty rats that probably do not have a word for cleaning, something like a Screaming Bell might be a bit of a source of pride for a clan. Would it be unreasonable for them to polish her up to honour that great horned one? Or would this thought genuinly never occur to a rat man? (opinions please )

You're right about the chains, I might change a couple of the hooks and fixings to be this colour too, just for some variation...Might get carried away though :( I do want the brassy coppery metal to be the mainstay of my clan, all my armour is the same.

It's all about keeping it tied together and the brassy colours definitely do that. The patina requires water and oxygen to form,sunlight isn't required. I know that for a fact after the copper pipes in my old student house burst in the loft and were covered in the stuff!

As for the banding there would be corrosion around any spikes and nail heads where it would be sheltered from any abrassive action.

I would think the bell itself would be looked after but probably not scrubbed and polished, it just doesn't seem right having the skaven dragging around something so clean. If anything the travel through the under-empire would dirty it up plenty on the way to battle.

That is good to know about your copper pipes. Was just a thought - as it'd would be underground basically forever receiving nothing in the way of sunlight, stuff like moss and algae just wouldn't appear unless perhaps the glow of warpstone, torches and oil lamps etc is enough. (cant imagine Skaven burning oil much down there - the smoke would kill them all surely?)

And around the banding, it is mostly at the base of the spikes in the wheels... because of the way I applied liberally and then scrubbed it back off with cotton buds. The cotton bud cant get to tight places like that so it gets left behind, while the flatter areas mostly got cleaned up with a light staining.
For my first try at the effect I'm really pleased, just have ideas about a few layers of varied tones of the green/blue.
It might be possible to use the same paint over and over with addition of a transparent mixing medium (matte medium I guess for mini's) to get an array of depth and tone in it by layering it up. Maybe I'l experiment on the armour of my Clanrats at some point.

edit; Been having a think about the battle standard bearer that I need to make. Aswell as looking a the sculpts available on the GW site.

This guy with a spear (listed as a staff? but is clearly a spear lol!), I've not checked but I'm sure I have some various flags and banners in the bits box... with a bit of greenstuff to carry on the wood grain up the flag pole (or smoothout the bottom half) if required I could probably change his polearm to be a flag without much effort.
It'le be Thursday before I can order one, maybe this guy and a weapon team to go with the 3rd core unit
Maybe a Ratling gun, and then a doom flayer with some Storm Vermin at a later date (to get one of each basically), are any of the weapon teams actually awful and not useful in the game?
Even if one is, I'l probably still go for one of each before getting duplicates just to paint and model them to be honest.

:( Its been a whole week since I had the chance to do any hobby stuff!
We've had all the windows in the house changed, and as such my paint station and all my figures had to be packed away and stored out of the way while the work was going on.
Am hoping to start catching up on lost time tomorrow so expect some pics again soon.

On a side note; Should I get a Vermin Lord? (Can maybe get one for half of the gw price)

Great blog mate, keep going

Thanks for the support.
Turns out I didn't win the Vermin Lord auction but I did get 2 poison wind globadiers (I know I need more but theyre hella expensive on GW! I'l try my luck on ebay for a while)
Give it a few hours I might win a couple more of this guys listings, but theres other people bidding against me so I'm not holding my breath (I'm not rich enough to bid 'feth you' money! hehe)
Still havent had chance to set up my paint station again, so hobby activity is postponed and I'm quite behind my schedule for the TOMG campaign, I hope I can get caught up and that the other guys don't mind too much!

Ebay is the wargamers friend, the deals you can get are great.

Is'nt it just!
I didnt manage to win a great deal of the sellers stuff, there was a couple of listings I kinda wanted (an old sculpt of Thanquol and Bone Ripper and a unit of metal plague monks) but never mind.. there'l be more!
I did manage to win the 2 poison wind globadiers and 2 warpfire thrower teams though (old metal ones) for just a few pounds each figure
I'm sure to be having a look back to see whats there every now and then looking for the good deal.
Today I'm really hoping to get my painting station set back up,so I can get the Grey seer and RatOgre for this Screaming Bell painted and glued on. Just waiting for some plastering to be done in the room I use :( hehe arrg feels like its been forever hehe.