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Hi everyone,

This is my first post on here since re-starting my Warhammer interests this year. I had been an ardent player, painter and green-stuff modelling enthusiast for many years, but somehow lost the time (and money!) for the past 5 years or so.

Skaven were always a mainstay army of mine - and I'm delighted to see the revamped models - they look great!

I've also been drawn back to the hobby thanks to an image in my mind of painting up a warpstone-spirit Skaven horde, raised into existance by a Vermin Lord (with an especially large piece of Warpstone - possibly part of the Wyrdstone at Mordheim)

I've found this pretty cool painting scheme: http://www.vampirecounts.net/Thread-The-Rise-of-the-Von-Kerryathe-Legion-Picture-Heavy?page=5

Does anyone else have any tips on how I can go about painting an army in this way? Even from working with a white or black basecoat? I'm not so familiar with the new range of Citadel paints yet - though they look fantastic!

Also - if you've got any tips on how I can build my back-story for the army - I'd love to hear your advice!

Thanks

I've never attempted to paint spirits like this, but from the pictures it looks like a black base coat with progressively lighter drybrushing moving up the model (from grey to white). If it were me, I'd probably then do a black wash to bring out the details, let it dry, give it another light white drybrush and then give it a green wash. Be careful to pull all the green into the recesses, otherwise you'll end up with tide marks.

If you made the entire army spirits, that would be easy to paint (and with Skaven you're going to be painting a lot of models). Try a test model and see what it would look like if you painted the weapons normally - like they're poltergeists carrying real physical weapons. Paint the Vermin Lord normally. If you want to get fancy, you can design some sort of pose and scenic base where it looks like he's summoning a spirit into existance.

It sounds like you already have the back story for your army, you just need to fill in the details. I'm not sure and a Skaven player could probably answer this better, but aren't Vermin Lords summoned by the Skaven? Maybe paint up whichever magic user summoned the vermin lord normally as well?

Thanks for the advice!

You're probably right about the Vermin Lord - I haven't bought the new army book yet - working off my (hazy) memory of the old version.

Given that the spirits are a product of the Skaven affinity with Warpstone - I'm thinking about introducing a yellowish tint, similar to some of the Warpstone painting techniques - though I'm not sure where in the painting process this would work best.

Any suggestions?

The paintjob you found is basically a black undercoat, progressively lighter drybrushes up to white, then a wash (the painter actually shows this on the same page you linked ) If you want a different tint, use a different wash

He actually gives a step-by-step How To guide halfway down the page you linked, dude! Go back and scroll down a bit. ;-)