Vampires Chapter 7: More Skeletons!

It may be slow, but I'm still progessing on my Vampire Counts army. I'd already painted my main skeleton unit using the slowest method to paint bone ever but, having originally intended to run two large blocks I still had a bunch left over waiting for some attention. Since I was running low on undercoated models waiting to be painted and was having a lot of fun with Contrast paints, I decided to try to paint the remaining bony boys a bit more quickly.

Here they are:

In total there are 29, but as they're all the same basic skeleton I decided to take close-ups and alternate angles of just a few (and the command, of course). Unlike last time, I just painted the bone with Skeleton Horde over a white undercoat (actually it might have been a Bleached Bone undercoat) and then gave it a light drybrush of Vallejo Dark Sand mixed with a little Ivory. Deeper shadows were enhanced with a little Agrax Earthshade. I decided to keep the speed up for the rest of the painting by stippling and dryburshing pretty much all of the rest of the models, except the wood which was painted using brown Contrast paints (mostly Cygor Brown and Skeleton Horde over a woodgrain painted on in white).

I think I could have pushed the bone highlights a little more, but otherwise they're a very good result for much less time invested, even if the freehanded banner got away from me a bit - pro tip: always sketch your freehands at least once before trying it on a model.

So ends the last of my rank and file skeletons... except for one which has been taken for a special, secret project that may or may not appear here*.

Until next time, happy painting!

*Eventually. Maybe.

More Ghoulishness

After putting quite a bit of effort into my last few models and using mostly dark and cold colours, I decided I needed a change of pace. Inspired by John Blanche's use of Contrast paints (it's somewhere on the Warhammer Community website if you feel like searching for it) I decided to try doing something with a yellowish palette. 

I had a hunt through my boxes of sprues I found some more ghouls I thought I'd lost or traded. They seemed like a good choice for playing with Contrast paints and dirty, yellow tones, and as I'd already sold the other ghouls I'd painted there was no obligation to keep to that colour scheme. A couple of days of building and painting later, they were done!

While these were nice to paint, I'm not quite happy with how they came out. The yellow seems to have green undertones to it that I wasn't really aiming for. One problem this project highlighted for me was that I still don't understand the Contrast method of painting as much as I'd like - I forced myself not to use any highlights after the Contrast paints but wasn't quite able to get the level of nuance of light that I would have liked. I guess it all comes down to practice. Maybe I should try painting with traditional watercolours.

Anyway, it was still nice to have a change, and while they're not the best they do look pretty good in the cabinet (which now needs extra shelves, but more on that later). As I don't have a place for ghouls in any of my armies, I intend to sell or trade them off at some point for something else that looks fun to paint.

Until next time, happy painting!