28mm Triumph of Death Skeleton
Skull and Crown miniatures ran a Kickstarter last year for an excellent range of 28mm Skeleton miniatures styled on Renaissance woodcuts and paintings. I was really taken by the style and look of these baddies and being a fan of Undead armies, well I simply had to jump in and support the Kickstarter.
With the painting backlog on my desk slowly being worked through, the time came for me to finally get around to painting the fist batch of these Skelly's. I wanted to paint them in a similar fashion to Skull and Crowns own painting method (see here). But I slightly varied the painting process due to the paints I had on hand.
Painting Method
The Skull and Crown method of painting was very simple and effective. My process was similar and is shown below for reference.
I began by basing the miniature and gluing sand to the base. Once dry, I then base coated the miniature in a Brown spray base colour. In this case it was Mournfang Brown spray. The spray is no longer available from GW but other similar colours in base spray's are available from other suppliers.
I then wet-brushed the model in Rakarth Flesh. By wet-brushing I mean that you dip the brush in to the paint, wipe most of the excess off, and then brush the model as through you are dry brushing it. Due to the fact that there is paint on the brush, this means the model is more heavily painted. However the recesses in the model remain the underlying base colour, thus giving a two-tone effect.
I then painted the metal parts of the poleaxe in Boltgun Metal.
I then painted the more bony areas of the skeleton and the face of the skull in Pallid Wych Flesh. This gave the impression of bone showing through the more rotten flesh parts of the skeleton.
I used a flash in the image above so that the outcome of this process can be seen more easily.
Once dry, it was inking time! I used Agrax Earthshade to give the model that 'just crawed out of the ground' dirty look.
Flash image again to show how the model looks once the Agrax Earthshade has dried.
Next it was back to the Pallid Wych Flesh. At this point I highlighted the areas I had painted previously in Pallid Wych Flesh before washing the miniature in Agrax Earthshade. This gave the impression of dirt stained bone whilst also highlighting the miniature to make the bone areas of the skeleton, such as the face of the skull, really stand out. This, I believe, really makes the model pop and is a very important process. Without doing this you just end up with a dirty brown looking paint job.
Close up on the outcome described above.
Flash image of the above.
Finally I dry brushed the base in Karak Stone. After that, I just applied the flock I desired to use. And your done!
Grin of death!
Sweet! These guys are going to be used for Kings of War, Chaos Wars and Role Playing. Now on to the rest of the lads.
