Painting Skeletons: The Weasel Tails Way

I knew at some point I was going to need some skeletons for my Hellfrost game so I finally got around to getting some put together and painted. I decided not to make a big art project out of it so I decided to speed-paint them and see how they came out. As an exercise I timed how long it took me and I was surprised at how fast I was able to churn these guys out.

Rooting around in my parts bins I found a number of partial skeleton sprues that were left over from my son's Vampire Counts army. As it turned out, left arms were the scarce resource but I was able to squeak out fifteen models once I included the musician parts. I assembled these guys months ago and finally primed them a couple weeks ago. Now the session that included undead was looming and I wanted to get them painted. I didn't want to spend a lot of time on them so I opted for a speed-painting-factory approach in hopes of getting the fifteen models done in as short a time as possible.

One of the most important aspects of speed-painting is planning. If you plan on doing a project like this it's a good idea to start thinking about how you're going to paint the models even while you're assembling them. If a model has parts that might obscure areas you need to get at while painting like a shield or a cloak, it's often better to leave that part off and paint it separately. The next thing, once everything is primed and ready to go is figure out just how you plan to paint the minis. Choose your colors ahead of time and the methods you're going to use to apply them. Consider the order that you plan to paint them on. If you're working on a new model or are having trouble visualizing the steps, do a test model first before you start in on the whole batch. There is nothing worse than getting halfway through a batch of models and realizing you should have picked a different color or used a different technique.

I had painted skeletons before and for this project I came up with a pretty easy plan to get them done:

1. Prime the models in black.
2. Drybrush bones with Vallejo Game Color (VGC) Bone White
3. Paint spear shafts and dry brush both sides of the shields with VGC Beasty Brown
4. Dry brush spear shafts and the backs of the shields with VGC Earth for a highlight
5. Glue the shields on the minis
6. Dry brush the fronts of the shields with some Citadel (GW) Gretchin Green to suggest worn off paint 
7. Paint all the metal parts with GW Boltgun Metal
8. Wash the metal parts with P3 Armor Wash
9. Wash the metal parts with VGC Parasite Brown to suggest rust
10. Paint any leftover details and the bases

While assembling, I knew I wanted the models to have shields but I also knew starting with the shields attached to the models would slow down the painting process. The shields were cut from the sprues, cleaned and then stuck to a piece of card with blue-tack (or UHU Tac in this case) for priming. The nice thing about using shields stuck to card like this is you can spray a bunch at once, then flip them and spray the other side. You can even paint them on the card if you want. I didn't but I'm foolish.

Step 1: Not timed

Ossuary, Kutna Hora Czech Republic

I primed the models in black which is an important point here. The whole technique relies on the models being primed in a dark color. You can certainly use other colors such as a dark or medium brown depending on the effect you're going for. I used black because I wanted stark contrast which looks good on the table. Also my bone color, VGC Bone White, looks like a warm, brownish grey when dry-brushed on black. I have visited ossuarys in Europe, in particular the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic. The bones in these dry environments turn a bony grayish color and I wanted my skeletons to look like they had assembled themselves from such a place.

Now that everything was primed and ready well in advance, like any organized GM I got right on to painting them: the night before the game. Grabbing my plan, my phone with it's handy stopwatch app, and the camera I set to work.

Step 2: 40 minutes

Dry-Brushed with Bone White

I dry-brushed the whole mini except for helmets, spears and if possible anything else that wasn't bone with the VGC Bone White. Since this was the first color going on I could afford to be a little sloppy with this, speeding things up. The goal was to get a nice light coat on every bone surface being careful not to get too much paint in between the ribs or in the spaces between the forearm and shin bones. I was also careful not to overdo it on the faces as I wanted the eye sockets, nose holes and teeth to stand out. once I'd gone over all the models once, I did it again adding some more saturation to the more solid bones such as the cranium, pelvis, long bones, knee caps, etc. This was also an opportunity to catch any areas I might have missed on the first go around and also served as a highlight. The areas with more saturation would now have a more "bony" color too.

At this point, it was getting really late and I went to bed. With the bones all done, the models would at least look like skeletons. As luck would have it, we never got to that part of the Friday night session and I didn't end up having to use them. I picked up working on them again Sunday afternoon.

Step 3: 30 minutes

Dry-brushed Shields

With the bones done, I got to work on the spear shafts. I painted the shafts with a nice even base coat of VGC Beasty Brown. This step took a little longer because at this point I'm actually painting instead of dry-brushing and I'm also being careful not to paint over the hands and spear tips. Once all the spears were done I set the models aside and dry-brushed the backs and fronts of all the shields with the same color. The shields have a nice wood grain pattern on them which really stood out with dry brushing. Once again, I could afford to be a little sloppy here as the shield rims were going to get painted a different color later.

Adding Earth to the Spear Shafts

Step 4: 5 minutes
To give the spears a little highlighting and also suggest old dry wood, I next dry brushed VGC Earth on the spear shafts. In  this case, I ended up not so much dry-brushing as dabbing the paint on which made it look a little more splotchy. I also did a light dry-brush on the backs of the shields which served to make the surface look a little less uniform in color.




Step 5: 6 minutes
With the backs of the shields painted, I glued them onto the models' bony little hands. A quick note about this: plastic model cement works best when you can glue plastic directly to plastic. While it will stick with a layer of paint between the parts, the parts will fall off more easily. With that in mind, I scraped a little paint off the center of each shield and off the knuckles of each left hand with a hobby knife before gluing. While not perfect, the shields should stay on under normal conditions.

At this point, I decided to take a break so my wife and I decided to go get ice cream. On a cold day in October. This was handy since not only did I get ice cream, it gave the glue some time to harden which would be important when I started painting the fronts of the shields in the next step.

Step 6: 5 minutes

Shield with green dry-brush and metal rim

Back from break, I took out some GW Gretchin Green and did a quick dry-brush over the front faces of the shields. My original intent here was to make the shields look like they used to be painted green. Instead what I ended up with was more of a rotten wood effect. To get my formerly painted effect I would need to paint the green on a little thicker but instead I decided I liked the look and decided to keep it. Happy accidents.

Step 7: 31 minutes
Now it was time to paint all the metal bits. I painted the spear tips, helmets, and shield rims using GW boltgun metal as it is a nice metallic grey rather than a silvery color. Again, this was painted on being careful not to mess up the work that had already been done.

Step 8: 13 minutes
Now that everything was a nice shiny metallic grey, it was time to ugly it up. I took some P3 Armor Wash and slathered it all over the metal bits making sure to get it into the deeper recesses, around any rivets ans into any crevices. The goal here is two-fold: dull down the metal a bit and darken the nooks and crannies to bring out more definition. I've only just picked a couple of these washes up. They're quite good and fill the nooks and crannies nicely. I'm not sure if the Armor Wash is ink or a glaze, I'm thinking the latter as it seems to dry reasonably flat.

Step 9: 10 minutes

Water on left, Glaze medium on right

Here's where the magic happens. The metallics still look a little new and shiny. No weapons or armor lying in a crypt for centuries is going to look like it just came off the forge so we want them to look a little rusty. For this I used VGC Parasite Brown which, when thinned, looks a lot like old rust. I started with paint thinned to a wash with water but I didn't like the results I was getting. So I switched gears after a couple models and tried some Vallejo Glaze Medium which I hadn't actually used before. This stuff is fantastic and gave the paint an excellent consistency that covered in a nice smooth, transparent layer without pooling. I'm definitely going to have to experiment more with this medium as it made a huge difference. Anyway, I painted this all over the metal bits, making sure I didn't lay it on too thick; just enough to tint the metal with the rust color.

Step 10: 30 minutes
Home stretch. There were two models with some unique bits. The musician had some drums so I painted the drum heads straight bone white. I then took a little VGC Cold Gray and tapped a little paint in the middle of each drum head to represent the marks made by the drum stick. Another model had a bit of armor on the torso held on with straps. I painted the straps VGC Charred Brown and then gave them a quick dry-brush with VGC Earth.
Finally I did the bases. I painted the bases with Vallejo Model Color Black Grey and did a quick dry-brush highlight with VGC Cold Grey. The color scheme is simple and matches some older skeleton models in my collection.

Conclusion
It took just under three hours to paint these minis. That's a record for me, quite honestly, but I wanted to try this and time my progress just to see how long it actually took. Following my own advice made all the difference. First, as I mentioned earlier, having a plan is paramount. If you aren't sure what you want to do, try your technique on a test model and work out the kinks. When planning your process, try to avoid going back to the same color over and over. Sometimes it's unavoidable but each time you have to reach for another color, drop some on your pallet and get it to the right consistency, you're interrupting your work flow. In the end, when doing this type of painting, speed isn't really the point; getting a batch of nice looking models is the point. But with some organization and planning, you can create a very efficient process and churn out good looking minis quite quickly.

So, that's how I do it (at the moment), what do you do when you want to get a bunch of minis on the table quickly?

Here they are in all their rotten glory!