Well-painted Skaven??

[Mortarion]

I am thinking of taking up WHFB again. I played it years ago (early 4th ed) but quit because I didn\'t like the rules with over-powerful characters. Now I like the rules alot more and I\'m thinking of starting playing again. And I\'m thinking of a Skaven army. But then the thought struck me...

I have never seen any really well-painted Skaven!

Some of the Eavy metal Skaven are OK but you almost never see them at golden demon or other painting competitions and when you do it\'s allways Lord Skrolk or Plaguemonks.

Is it really impossible to paint the little rat-men?

Opinions?

Mortarion

 

[supervike]

dirty little creatures....

I have seen a few on this very site that were \'excellent\'. Sorry, i can\'t give links, but maybe if you use the search feature...

BUT, the skaven, being rats and all, really do lend themselves to a \'dirtier\' style. So maybe that is why they are not dominating the painting competitions.

 

[supervike]

me again...

Just a quick search showed some of these recent entries...


26902 (bloodbowl ratogre)
26893
26338

an A \"golden toadstool\" winner
24571

There were about 9 pages of skaven, and quite a few qualify as \'well painted\'.

Good luck with the army!!

 

[freakinacage]

i have only seen a few well painted skaven (mind you i haven\'t done a search yet, but hey - i\'m lazy ) but they seem to be easy to paint ok but hard to paint brilliantly. i think thats where the skill lies.

anyway, you don\'t want to paint skaven, you want to paint chaos, CHAOS!!!
BWAAHAHAhahaha lol

 

[Chrispy]

Well painted orc, skaven, and nurgel things are hard to come by because people think \"It\'s supposed to be dirty, so it doesn\'t matter how well I blend\". Don\'t get into this trap, though as even dirty things need to look diry, and not like paint was slapped down. You\'d need to find someone that paits clean, but it\'s dirty. Confusing, I know but if you look at any of Cyril\'s nurgle marines, you\'ll understand what I mean!

 

[Mortarion]

Thanks for the replies.

Supervike: I did search for Skavens on this site and sure, there are some nice looking Skaven. However... If you disregard the Lord Skrolks, the large scale scratchbuilt assassin and the warlock engineers (which I won\'t include in the army. It will be almost pure Eschin) you end up with models with a score of 7.5-7. This is a quite good score. BUT... This site contains minis from the best painters in the world. So if the best painters there is can only paint skavens to a score of 7.5...

Freakinacage: Well... I thought about Chaos but I already have a Chaos army for 40K and I am working on a second one...

Chrispy: I agree.

Maybe I can see the skaven project as a challenge. To paint skaven clean but dirty and make them look good...
Looks like it will take some work...

Mortarion

 

[syco-pyro]

i have a clue

it seems like im the only one here that actually has painted scaven. and coming from experience i can saw scaven paint up great assuming you are a good painter that is. if i had a digi cam i would post em\' to show you but i dont so sorry

 

[syco-pyro]

im back

i just painted their feet to look like they had been walking through mud

 

[aon14]

4th had too much magic.
With 6th, it\'s a pity Gav is involved as he\'s a lot less capable than Tuomas.

I play skaven.
The new plastics don\'t have huge amounts of fiddly bits but they paint up pretty easily to give good results.
Brilliant results, I couldn\'t be bothered with nowadays. You need hundreds of the blighters to make up an army so it\'d take forever. I\'d never get around to the tomb kings, finishing off darkest africa, the hundreds of ww2 20mil figures, the other 4 races of 10mil pendraken...

Paint a clanrat really well, stick it up on CMON or your site and tell us how long it took you.
I\'d definitely be interested.

At the moment I\'m finishing a bunch of goblins converted to carry skaven swords as slaves. When I finish the batch of skaven includes the rats whipping these I\'ll post a picture on my web site at least.

 

[iemagic]

For a long time I thought there were few well-painted skaven because they are a horde army, and who is going to paint 200+ models to an 8 or better? You see very nice orcs and goblins all the time though, so this nixed my horde army theory.

After having painted an army myself, however, I find there are two reasons why you don\'t see demon-caliber skaven, and, if you do, why they tend to be plague monks or globadiers:

1: Skaven are covered in fur.

This doesn\'t lend itself to being blended very well, and will never have that nice \'smooth\' look. And how high can drybrushed models score? This is the reason orcs and goblins paint up nice (in my theory) because in the least their skin is smooth to begin with. Same for plague monks. They are 90% robes, which helps them be smooth and well blended.

2: Skaven have tails.

Tails suck. I haven\'t painted a skaven model in nearly a year, and I still loathe them. Their mold lines don\'t come off well, and, having so many sections, they are painful to highlight. This may not be as big a problem for single figures, but it doesn\'t help either. And it certainly detracts from painting, say, twenty of them (which for GD you have to paint a legal unit, no? which is why many skaven units will not compete: their min size is often huge.)

These are my theories anyway.

aon14: I like your slave unit concept, I\'ve done the same with a block of 5th ed lizardmen, save I\'ve sculpted all of them to be shackled, or have ball & chain (yes, I\'m crazy for converting dozens of 2pt models.)

 

[aon14]

Originally posted by iemagic
<< sniip >>
2: Skaven have tails.

Tails suck. I haven\'t painted a skaven model in nearly a year, and I still loathe them. Their mold lines don\'t come off well, and, having so many sections, they are painful to highlight. This may not be as big a problem for single figures, but it doesn\'t help either. And it certainly detracts from painting, say, twenty of them (which for GD you have to paint a legal unit, no? which is why many skaven units will not compete: their min size is often huge.)
<<>>

Yep.
Tails are a bitch to get right.
I.... errm... compromise.
Fairly cleaned up is good enough for me.
I hide the flash I give up on with the paint job.
A tail probably takes as long as the rest of the model.

Which reminds me.
Some thoughts on plastic clanrats:

They\'re a bitch to rank up, make sure you try to rank em up as you build the figures.
I wish I\'d started collecting skaven later and realised UK pennies were magnetic earlier.
I\'d have based all my WFB stuff on pennies. I use mag basing anyhow.
Because they\'re circular, ranking em up would have been easier.
These are not the only problems with tails.
The damn things break easy.
Arrange your tails so the loops go upwards and glue the loop to the body.
This keeps em out the way and gives two attachments.

 

[Trevor]

This doesn\'t lend itself to being blended very well, and will never have that nice \'smooth\' look. And how high can drybrushed models score?

This annoys me. Yes drybrushing does not require as much skill as blending, it does look poor when used exclusively, but for certain things, like fur, it is THE way to do it (well I would wetbrush but thats a different story), you simply can\'t properly blend fur.

If the effect looks \"right\" and is well executed, then why shouldn\'t it score well.

I actually disagree about wanting smooth. I can\'t argue about the skill behind Cyrils painting, it is flawless, but to my mind thats a problem with his nurgle stuff, it just doesn\'t look like nurgle, its too smooth.

To my mind if the mini looks good it shouldn\'t matter how its painted, thats not saying it shouldn\'t be well painted, just that it shouldn\'t have to be of the \"ultra smooth flawless blending technique\" to score a 9 or 10.

 

[DennisMech]

here here!

I agree. I\'ve seen so many perfectly blended minis that just don\'t \"do\" anything for me. Then I see a mini done in good highlighting, and I\'ll see the color scheme and the detail and all kinds of things that make me give it a 9. No offense to Jason Richards, he is a fantastic painter, and I always eagerly await updates on his site, but these days his style has changed, and his mini\'s don\'t do anything for me.

 

[GraveRobber]

I think Jason Richards is a good painter, but I really dislike his use of colors, alot of his reds and certain colors always look really flat to me, with not much life, his conversion work is excellent though.

About Skaven, I have just finished my 5 man warband for mordheim, the cleaning of mold lines or flash was a real bitch !

Anyway, I am undercoating them tonight and plan to have them done in around 2 weeks ( its going to take me a while to get them neat and just right ). I plan to use tons of different browns, greens, reds and dark metals.

The tails are honestly NOT hard to paint, I know they seem like they could be hard, but there is a number of ways to get around it while keeping them looking nice.

There is a way to wet drybrush ( I know it sounds weird ) that works well for minis parts like this, after this you can do a very subtle pink wash over the tails, this gives a fairly realistic rat tail look when dry. Once I get them done It will maybe show you what I mean.

About the Fur, well jeez...if everything was blended, it would look like a cartoon, this depends on aesthetic tastes also, but I think fur should look as realistic as possible, and dry brushing is the way to go. Keep in mind alot of skaven models have a good area of no fur, such as their arms and heads.

All of their gear, clothing tattered rags etc have alot of room for blending also, I know the plastic arms have alot of fur, but the metal models seem to be 50/50.

For WHFB, yea...you need lots and lots of vermin but I do not see what would stop one of the top artists on here to sit down and paint a single Skaven to a top standard.

I have actualy done a search, and there is only about 25% of the skaven models up that could be cosnidered well done.

Give me a few weeks to get the motivation, I might be able to please a few people ( dont expect GD winning quality though as I am not some uber NMM master or Bobby Wong ).

 

[MaestroOfMayhem]

I\'ve been working to paint my Skaven to my best standard, it is really time comsuming. I\'ve only got about 15 done and 5 more on the way, not alot for the time I\'ve had them. I got bored of painting the same model so I bought some Confrontation minis to take a break. I\'ve got all the time in the world to get my Skaven painted.

 

[Taer]

Yeah, a whole skaven army painted to a really high quality would be a bitch. I think the secret lies in the color choices for them on the fur (steer well clear of the over-used brown and black), as well as patterning (is that even a real word ???). The tails are a chore to paint, I\'ve never head fun painting one. But, eh, I really haven\'t experimented that much with the little buggers so... Anyway, hope that helps a little. :flip::bouncy:

-edit: Maybe I should try to paint a clan rat and see what I can come up with. Hmmmm, sounds like a good challenge!

 

[atacam]

I have a HUGE Skaven army
But only a small proportion is painted

This has been done over 3 years, along with various other minis

I will dig out some pics with dates so you can see how the style has changed.lol