My undead army arrived a couple of weeks ago and I've been busy getting it painted up. Here's the first unit I completed.
First off, I have to say that these are amazing models with bags of detail and a definite Oldhammer look to them. At just over $100 for the whole army they're a real bargain too, seeing as $100 will barely get you a Games Workshop 10-man squad.
Anyway, on to the painting. I decided to go with a pretty basic scheme of black and red for these chaps, but I kicked off by painting all the horses first. After a basecoat of Forest Flesh I ran thinned Skeleton Horde contrast all over the bones to add shading, and then gently drybrushed them with more Forest Flesh before highlighting them with a light drybrush of Screaming Skull. I've said before that I don't like painting bones, but these came out looking really good, and I used the same technique on the wights.
All the horses are wearing leather... cloaks? I can't think of the right word. Anyway, they were painted Black and then drybrushed with German Camo Black-Brown to which I added some Chocolate Brown for the highlights. I did pretty subtle highlights as I wanted to keep the leather looking as dark as possible.
As for the wight, his armour is just Iron Warriors and Ironbreaker washed with Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil. For the reds I used Khorne Red, Mephiston Red and Evil Suns Scarlet, each layered over the other to try to get some depth of colour and transitions between each shade. I think it worked pretty well.
As I cannot stand painting all the minis in a unit in the exact same colours, which is why I don't have a Space Marine army, I gave each wight a different look but using the same reds. This does have the slightly unfortunate side-effect of making them look like medieval Night Lords with the red bat wings, but it was worth it.
I am so ridiculously proud of this banner. It's just layer upon layer of the reds with some Averland Sunset added at the final stages around the bottom. The skull was done in the same way with the bone colours. Layering does take time and can be a bit boring as you're just going over the same areas over and over, but the results are well worth it.
I did try a bit of freehand on the bottom of this chap's shield, and if you can tell what it is please let me know as I don't have a clue.
You can see what I mean about the Night Lords look from the shield and giant bat wings coming off his helmet. Oh well, I like it. And of course it's at this point that I'm wondering why I took the pics the way I did and blocked their faces. Duh.
With the wights done, it was time to move onto the other units. My vampire and necromancer are both painted, as is the unit of dire wolves, so expect posts on them soon. I've almost finished the bone gargoyles and after those I'll be doing the zombies and, finally, the skeletons. I'm leaving the skellies till last because I have a feeling they're going to be pretty boring to paint, but at the same time I'm looking forward to them.
Till next time!
