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This is my blog to fully painted Skorne collection. I split this from my other blog as it seems that I'm now really pumped on getting my skorne figs painted and these deserve their own blog.

A bit of history on my starting difficulties: I bought the skorne battle box when it came out in 2004, but started to paint them this autumn. I wanted to have different scheme than the factory red-gold scheme PP uses and as I really like most of the minis I didn't want to mess with them. Finally the pieces got together in the spring and the ball started to roll on the painting last month.

The scheme is based on two primary colors: purple and brass with accents done with black and bone. I didn't want to go with basic human skin color, so that was another hurdle. After some tests the recipe for the grayish flesh was discovered and the scheme was ready. The desert/ yellow rock bases were added to the figs as the purple needed to have a strong base as the figs lacked contrast.



I have a about 800 points of the figs already bought and in the first step I'll paint a 500 point army starring Makeda, domina of House Balaash. The list is comprised of figs I like and have currently so the lack of shield wall troops will only be fixed after the current list is painted.

So the list I'm painting is
Makeda
Titan Cannoneer
Cyclops Savage
Basilisk Krea
Ancestral Guardian
Extoller Soulward
Pretorian Swordsmen 1 + 7
Venators 1 + 5


Here is the first unit I've finished the Venators. They have basically the same scheme as the pretorian, just applied to their different armor. I really liked the figs and they were a blast to paint. The leaders back banner is left out for now, I plan to paint all of the back banners in one go in the end.

Is very nice

I'm always a fan of the skorne.

Really diggin that gold purple color scheme.

malfred wrote:Is very nice

I'm always a fan of the skorne.

Thank you, the thing I like about the skorne is that it is also very consistent on the figs. There are no awful looking minis, so it is easy to get them looking good.

Frenzied Potato wrote:Really diggin that gold purple color scheme.

Thanks, it required too much thinking to get to this scheme, which is basically the scheme I used in my first 40k army about 10 years ago.

The first beast I got painted is the Cyclops Savage, from the battle box. Not one of the easiest models to put together, I think there are close to 10 pins in the fig. And boy was it nice to get the arms aligned nicely, couldn't do it in the end and had to green stuff the wrists. He is also missing the back banner, which will be added later. Overall I'm pretty pleased with it, it was one of the figs that caught my eye in the early days of Hordes.







After the Cyclops I will paint Extoller Soulward, here is a early WiP shot of her, just the skirt done and base coat on the brass. She is now close to finished, just have to get the base done.

They're looking good and it's nice to see an original scheme on them, makes them your own.

I wonder if you've considered picking out and painting the eyes?

Thanks for the compliments MeanGreenStompa, I'm pretty pleased with them myself. They are definitely better painted as a whole than my cygnar, which is the other army I've been doing in recent time.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:I wonder if you've considered picking out and painting the eyes?

The eyes are painted, but without the irises, in similar way that PP has done them. You can see it best in the swordsman.

Finished the Extoller on last weekend and here are pics of her. She was a nice fig to paint, I really like her expression and the fig is full of character. I think she came out nicely, which is good as she is going to see a lot of action unless they totally nerf her in Mk2.







And lastly a close up on her face


While finishing her I painted up a Ancestral Guardian, which is still lacking some finishing touches on the weapon and base. He was pretty quick paint job, the stone was done with drybrushing and after that the metal areas and jewels were added. The stone looks good with drybrushing, it gives the surface a nice dusty appearance. Another good looking sculpt, I am enjoying painting the skorne as there are no minis which I don't like.



Coming up next are some pretorian swordsmen, have already started on those. With the extoller finished I now have 166 of the 500 points painted.

Got the Ancestral Guardian finisthed on the weekend and had time to snap some pics too. Finishing the base added some contrast to the living statue and brightened him up nicely. I am pretty pleased with him as he was a really quick paint job. Managed to keep my limited palette intact too.








194 points of the 500 are now painted, and half of the figs to the list I posted are ready. I am a bit ahead of the schedule I anticipated, I estimated to be at this point when the field test rules for Mk2 are published but now it seems I might have most of my list painted by then.

After the swordsmen I have on my desk now I will probably paint one of the remaining beasts. I'm thinking the flesh color on them, would warm gray work and fit with the rest?

Nice work on the skorne. I like the stark contrast between your Ancestral Warriors
stone and his gemstones. Very striking.

Thanks Malf!

I needed to get some color to the stone man and red gems seemed the way to go. I was still thinking of adding some metal areas to the body before finishing the base, but in the end opted to limit the metal to minimum. The gems and the base bring enough contrast to the fig and keep it simple, which is how I like it.

Here are the next 3 swordmen. I got these painted last week and took the pics yesterday. Comments and critique are welcomed as usual.






Basic paint job, I got a bit sloppy when painting them and had to do more corrections than usually. I got to the target I set to myself as I got 218 points of the 500 and 13 of the 20 figs on the list painted. Next have to read the Mk2 rules and see what changes they make to the list I was gonna paint. At the same time I probably take a bit of a time out and paint something fast for a change.

The horn on that guys shoulder makes him look really off balance, almost hunchback-like.

Liking the purple, the highlights really add depth to the cloth and the pallid looking flesh is kinda freaky...
Hope you are liking mkII so far.

I really like the color scheme on these. It's always worth it to use a non-studio scheme to make your army a bit more personalized. One of the things I like most is the skin tone you have going. What colors are you using? I also really dig the basing you have going, it's nicely done.

Your colors appear a bit flat to me though. Are you painting on white or gray primer? The group pic of your Venators appears darker than the rest. Is that the lighting? Or are your colors possibly washing out a bit on the other pics? For some reason I'm always drawn to more to darker color schemes. I think it's the depth factor(or whatever you want to call it).

Very nice looking army. I love the colour scheme.

Seems that its about time there was a group shot

Deminyn wrote:Liking the purple, the highlights really add depth to the cloth and the pallid looking flesh is kinda freaky...
Hope you are liking mkII so far.

Thanks for the comments. I'm just looking at the Mk 2 rules, but so far it looks to be ok. The only fig I have no use for and have painted is the extoller as she cannot anymore give eyeless sight to the venators. I expected something like that though so... The 500 points list is worth 27 in the Mk2 so have a bit of juggling to do to get it to 25 or 35 points on the new system.

Lord Alaric wrote:I really like the color scheme on these. It's always worth it to use a non-studio scheme to make your army a bit more personalized. One of the things I like most is the skin tone you have going. What colors are you using? I also really dig the basing you have going, it's nicely done.

Your colors appear a bit flat to me though. Are you painting on white or gray primer? The group pic of your Venators appears darker than the rest. Is that the lighting? Or are your colors possibly washing out a bit on the other pics? For some reason I'm always drawn to more to darker color schemes. I think it's the depth factor(or whatever you want to call it).

Thanks! The skin is simple enough, but took some time to figure out. It starts with mix of ½ dwarf flesh and ½ cold grey from Vallejo game color. Wash with mix of purple and brown inks and highlight by adding bone to the base color. The sand bases were needed to light the figs as the rest of the scheme is so dark, they needed some additional light color to get some contrast.

I'm paining on grey, black or brown primer depending on the fig. The Venators are primed brown if I remember correctly. The changes in the darkness are the lightnings fault, my photo set up is less than optimal and I have to edit the photos for brightness afterward. That makes the colors seem a bit washed out .

StubbyGB wrote:Very nice looking army. I love the colour scheme.

Seems that its about time there was a group shot

Ok, lets see how the weather is on the coming weekend as I need natural light for the group shot to succeed.

Here is the a shot of the progress so far (Click for full scale image in Gallery):


After the Mk2 rules were published I have been pondering on the list. The plans are changing, but I moved the first goal to be the following 25 pts list:
Makeda -5
Gladiator 8
Savage 5
Krea 4
Ancestral Guardian 3
Swordsmen (min) 4
Venators (min) 6

I still need to paint the Makeda, Krea, Gladiator and 2 swordmen to get that done. After that I think I'll get Cetrati and some beasts to paint. The cetrati are excellent looking and really good on the table and I need to have some more beasts, Molik Karn is looking good both on table and as paint project.

Next up is Krea, which is coming along nicely. Still need to paint some details and metal parts to get her finished.

Got the Krea done last week and I took these pics of it on the weekend. Pretty basic paint job on the blind frog, the fig didn't inspire me much. Tried to get similar effect to the back armor plates that is described in the evolution book's skorne section and practiced my jewel painting skills there also. Overall looks nice from behind, but the front angle is a bit lacking.









Next up are the last swordsmen to make the unit into minimum size and then all that is left of the 25 point list are Makeda and Titan Gladiator. I will probably post couple of WiP shots of the Gladiator as it's going to take some time to get that bad boy painted. I bought full unit of cetrati from Maelstorm's new year discount so those will follow to round out the list to 35 points.

Looking good. The armour turned out really well. I don't know why but that belly is kinda disturbing. Painted well, but disturbing. Looking forward to the titan

Thanks!
The whole fig is kind of bloated and unhealthy looking and I tried to emphasis it by adding a bit of green tone to the soft belly. It is one ugly frog.

I'm also looking forward to the Titan as it was the fig that made me start collecting skorne in 2006 or 2007. It is really nice fig once it is built and painted, it is one of the worst PP figs to assemble though, these are gaps and ill fitting parts a plenty. Now I just have to get those final swordsmen out of the way before capping the first step in fully painted skorne with it. 23 points of 63 I have are now done.

It's been over half a year and the Hordes Mk2 has been released along with the updated Skorne. This has reinvigorated my interest in getting the desert dwellers to paint table. With the updated rules I've made some adjustments to the lists and started to paint the missing pieces with aim toward fully painted lists for 3 casters at 50 points. That seems to be the local maximum for tournaments. First up is the Makeda list and that's including a lot of the units to be used in all of the lists.

I started to paint the Cyclops Shaman as the first new project and as I promised in the last post before the break I'll try to get more Work in Progress shots of the figs this time. So here is the Shaman with the base colors on. Basic stuff for my Skorne with purple cloth with black and bone as the other colors along with brass metallics. The skin is a experiment, I was aiming for weathered and sun tanned look. Lets see how it works.

Wahoo! I knew I kept this subscription up for a reason. This guy has a tendency to seem harmless then prove to be very annoying whenever I see him across the table.

Deminyn wrote:Wahoo! I knew I kept this subscription up for a reason. This guy has a tendency to seem harmless then prove to be very annoying whenever I see him across the table.

With him and the new baggy pants the skorne can sling animuses on the table with low cost on fury. I haven't fielded my skorne at all so I still have to experience the laser eye myself.

Shaman has recieved some shading. This time I did the shading using washes, usually I just paint from the darkest color to the lightest applying the shadows and highlights as I go, but this time I decided to do it a bit differently. Also the size of the fig demands some nicer transitions than the usual human sized figs. The skin and wrappings got both same shade color (ss camo black brown) and are bit too close now in shade. Have to think what to do to solve that, probably some lining is needed. Brass got the usual brown ink and purple was shaded with imperial purple from vallejo.

The grey areas I'm going to highlight first and the wash down to almost black.

I've now highlighted the shaman's skin. After the shadows it was first highlighted with the base color of Earth and Elf Flesh (both from Vallejo Game Color). After that more elf flesh was added to the mix, and then bone was added to the final highlights. The contrast to the wrappings still needs to be made stronger, I will highlight them next and after that we'll see if something extra is needed to divide the colors.

Also the teeth, nails and eye was painted at this stage. Teeth and eye are painted with bone, nails have a hint of skin color mixed with bone.

To continue with my monologue I have now finished the wrappings on the fig. I mixed some light grey to the color to get it look different to the skin and it made a lot of difference. I still need to put some dark lining between the skin and wrappings, but at least they are now clearly separate colors. The figs seems to come alive with the upper body close to finished.

The I'll tackle with the black areas before highlighting the purple cloth and armor.

Metsuri wrote:Overall looks nice from behind, but the front angle is a bit lacking.

I know a girl like that

Nice.

jackanory wrote:

Metsuri wrote:Overall looks nice from behind, but the front angle is a bit lacking.

I know a girl like that

Don't we all

I washed the black areas with wash of black paint and blue ink to get them down to black. This worked well to create a black with highlights, which doesn't look grey. Next I'm going to tackle the purple cloth.

I have now highlighted the purple cloth and metal areas. The purple got highlighted to almost pink and then I washed in down with purple ink. The brass areas got highlights with brass and mithril silver. Next he'll receive a coat of gloss varnish to protect the paint job while the spear arm get attached. Then its on to the finishing with painting the details and the lacquered armor.

I got the final details sorted out on the shaman, put the spear arm in place with green stuff and he has received varnish to protect the paint job. The base is all that remains to be done, after the pics were taken I have glued some sand to it. I left the images a bit bigger this time, so if you want to have closer look click on the images to go to the dakka gallery for full size pics.

Purple and gold always go well together, good work so far.