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Heya,

After doing a lot of 40K, mainly Ultramarines I've suddenly got the urge to start a dirty Skaven army.
Because my painting style normally is ultra-tight (lol) I really wanted to stay away from edge highlighting, blacklining and what not.

For my Skaven army I wanted to do something that was fast, really "muddy" and earthy looking, with an extermely limited set of colors (at least for my taste)
I used only these colors and used them as alternating block and highlight color. I mixed my metals with the base color again, to bring everything really close together in terms of palette, almost monochrome.




What I've done:

Assemble, prime black

Overbrush Body/Fur and Base/Sand and wooden shafts with Dryad Bark

Block in the cloth alternating with Adeptus Battlegrey and Castellan Green

Highlight the tails with Adeptus Battlegray

Highlight the Adeptus Battlegrey clothing with Castellan green, highlight the Castellan Green clothing with Gorthor Brown

Highlight the ears, furs on the arms with Gorther Brown

Block all the metal parts with a 30/70 mix of Boltgun/Dryad Bark (yes looks almost not like metal)

Wash metals with black wash, wash clothing with a brown wash (optional)

Highlight wood parts and base with Gorthor Brown

Dot eyes with Deneb Stone

Grass is a 70/30 mix of burned grass and darker grass, with some mordheim tufts

So, these are the few steps to knock out my units. Its interesting to see what can be done with a very limited color range.
At least for me this is a super simple fast process. compared to my ultramarines, where a single tactical marine takes me an entire day. With this I can knock out about 10 to 20 Skaven in a day.
Quite a refreshing thing for me

Im not super happy about the bases/grass and constantly have to remind myself its "OK" to not paint super tight and spend ages on all the detailing.
I might weather powder the bases and upwards onto the feet and clothing to give everything an ever more muddy/sand look, as if they've been dredging through the dirt for ages.

Feedback is welcome!

Chris

These look great, the colours and your paint style give them a really dirty, gritty feel.

I hate seeing things like this because it makes me want to buy more models to pain, and I have a bunch to get on with!

Although I don't think they need it, I'd be tempted to add some rusting or similar to the metal.. But the way you've painted them, even though they look dirty the clean weapons are kind of appropriate as rats are supposed to be fairly clean in real life

Love it, I'm looking forward to seeing your next set!

Hey,

Im waiting for a rust effect and weathering powder pot to come in, then I will add weathering and rust as a final step.
This is just the basic batch paint result.

thanks!

Chris

Those are great, i like seeing more fantasy units up here. i just wish i had the patience to paint so many models to such a high standard. currently battling through 120 dwarfs for my fantasy army.

Great looking unit, Skaven aren't my favorite...but your rats really stand out.

Started working on the Plague Furnace as a fun side project to counter balance batch painting 150 infantry models :-)



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 stargasm wrote:
Those are great, i like seeing more fantasy units up here. i just wish i had the patience to paint so many models to such a high standard. currently battling through 120 dwarfs for my fantasy army.

Hey thanks for the kind words. I definitely know the feeling of having to work away ranks of models!

For me this is a fast and kind of smudgy painting quality. To compare:
I can do about 10 clan rats this style in an afternoon, while a single ultramarine to my highest quality takes me the same time.
So I intentionally tried to come up with a really fast, yet good looking paint scheme to balance my painstaking process of the ultramarines army.

When done right, you can get quite nice results with minimum effort, Its about spending time in "the right places" and limiting your steps as much as possible.
With my marines I have 6 highlight and shading steps for the armor alone, then there's all the details like bags, bolter, eagles, lenses, base etc.

For this Skaven army I intentionally picked only 5 colors to do everything. The color of the rat bodies is the same as the wooden parts like shields, shafts and even the sand on the bases.
Also there's a lot I don't do on these units (that I normally see as a must) such as:

- No edge highlights, I highlight a bit of the helmets, and clothing but by using alternate colors of my "holy 5". No other highlight steps at all.
- I fudge the bottom/insides. The top and side of the models get some more love, but the details underneath their hunched posture don't, backside of shields remain black etc.
- Base is only 2 steps: Dryad Bark overbrush for whole model, then one overbrush with Gorthor Brown, then grass. Normally my bases are 4 to 5 shading steps.
- No washes, or very little. Washes are great but take time to dry and need cleanup. I only wash my metals, and leave the clothing untouched as much as I can to save time.

Also, by using one of my 5 colors as a pseudo-highlight on another base color you get "max value" out of a limited set of colors. A nice effect by limiting the use of colors is that the end result looks really coherent and professional.
Its usually when I loose myself and use many more colors that my models start to look less good.

It also depends on your army, Dwarves have quite a lot of different unique details that all require their own attention. This makes it sort of like Marines: time consuming to get right.
Skaven is quite ideal for assembly line painting !

I really enjoyed looking at these. They just come to life. Amazing job on the furnace as well. Love it.

I love the eyes. The way you painted them makes them look, rabid.. crazy. They look like they're coming straight for your throat!

Bro... I love the furnace. It looks awesome. Post of the weathering powdered models when you get a chance, I'd like to see how they look.

Great stuff. Love me some Skaven.

These look great. My best friend plays Skaven, so these should be a real inspiration to him !

Pretty cool stuff you have there.