Category: Wargames

At Martin’s request here is my step by step painting of the Skaven Warlord from the Island of Blood box set.  Apologies for the quality of the pictures.   I couldn’t be bothered getting the tripod and the light box etc out so just snapped them on my table as I painted it.  A poor decision.  As was the decision to leave the flash on.  I’ve chucked most of the photos but for the sake of struggling on with this I’ve left two pictures in and taken a third in the light box with the tripod.  You should use your imagination to fill in the blanks :-/

I’ll forgo the picture of a grey or even a primered figure. But rather obviously I assembled and undercoated the fellow with dulux spraykote matte enamel black.  (or something like that, is cheaper than citadel primer and is just as good, if not better).  Didn’t require any puttying really (I hate puttying the cracks) but these new figs use overlapping pieces a lot so for the most part there is no puttying to do.  In fact the Island of Blood figures as a whole have had quite some thought put into the assembly of them, I have been hugely impressed.  For the most part they snap together and you can barely tell where the individual sections meet.  Where the joins aren’t hidden behind an overlapping piece many of them zig-zag which like camouflage is a lot harder to pick up than a straight line.

Step 1.  Painted the Flesh and Fur areas Bestial Brown (as is fitting).  Painted the Robes Scab Red.  Wasn’t too worried about getting a perfect even coverage.  I use a wet palette (see some earlier post on making a wet palette) so the paint can be a little thin allowing the black undercoat to show through a bit on the raised areas, but these get covered in later stages so it’s no big deal.

Step 2.  Wash the Flesh and the Fur areas with Devlan Mud.  Washed the Red Robes with Devlan Mud (have I mentioned Devlan Mud is the most awesome wash).   Generally I paint the wash in where it’s supposed to so the raised sections don’t get any.  This kinda helps later with blending however I was real lazy with the brown and just went over everthing.

Step 3.  Wash the Fur areas with black wash, just to darken up the fur areas in contrast to the flesh.  With a slightly thinned Bestial brown repainted the flesh areas, trying to stay away from the recesses, so they remained darker in contrast.  Repainted Scab red onto the raised areas of the robes.

Step 4.  Highlighted the individual tufts of fur with Bestial brown.  Mixed Bestial brown (66%) with Bronzed flesh (33%) and highlighted the flesh areas.  Mixed Ruby red (50%) and Scab red (50%) to highlight the robes.

Step 5.  Mixed Bestial brown (33%) and Bronzed flesh (66%) and highlighted the flesh areas.

So far that is it.  Not really a great deal I realise but I thought I’d chuck up what I had whilst it was still vaguely fresh in my mind what I’d done.  Below is a better photo, not sure what is up with the knee, it really isn’t smudged? like that but at anyrate gives you a slightly better indication of colour.