Sessioni's project eternal: Skeletons, first batch

[Sessioni]

Hey guys!
I thought starting a paint log is a good way to finish my army sooner :) I had a VC army in 6th edition, but they don't really satisfy my eyes anymore, and since I'm lazy removing the paints was not an option. So I started from the beginning again. There's still 20 ghouls to be assembled, as well as 5 more hexies and 10 black knights (to be converted) plus spirit hosts and various other small units. so here's what I got so far, I hope you'll enjoy!

"Hold still" *cheese!*
http://i.imgur.com/B27GscV.jpg

So this will be my ethereal scheme
http://i.imgur.com/p7fBSCU.png

Corpsbulance ;)
http://i.imgur.com/UPolNyG.png

My beloved screw-ups
http://i.imgur.com/LSyAD2Al.png

Skeleton warriors, 10 of them is almost ready!
http://i.imgur.com/wkQKy02l.jpg


'Goylies
http://i.imgur.com/61fJbMm.jpg

Wolf
http://i.imgur.com/4oYnMAC.png

These are some of my characters, going to re-paint them all
http://i.imgur.com/TkIKOfx.png

My black knights, converted
http://i.imgur.com/FuZzYgy.png
http://i.imgur.com/tVfx0pg.png

Thought about making some grave guards out of these, but I'm still not sure if I want to ruin them :D
I love the old pikemen models and maybe I want them to be untouched, too bad I've got only 12 of those.
http://i.imgur.com/5XFb5RS.png

So there you have it :) The links should work, I wasn't sure if the pics were too large to be posted with img-tags, I don't wanna break the rules since I'm a newbie here.

My army's color theme would be red/gray. What do you think about wolf's red fur? I think it'll work. Spirit host's will be converted using dwarves, skaven and dark elf -figures because most of the time I play against those three.

 

[Tjhammer]

First off, love the wolf. Before i saw it, was at little worried about a red main but you nailed it. This will be a smokin army when you are done. I also like the idea of the spirit host. Nothing like a themed dig at your opponents. Keep up the good work.

 

[Sessioni]

Thank you, good sir! I still have four days of christmas holiday left before I have to go back to work, I hope I'll get something ready for you guys to show. Today I continue my hexies.

 

[Sessioni]

So I based them a little. I think it needs a little snow, what do you think? Looks a little too plain maybe.

edit.

 

[Sessioni]

Hello again! I hope I manage to keep this blog interesting, it's up to me and I am very slow painter :)
I am working on many different units at the same time to keep myself inspired. I'm trying to paint these lil fellas faster than I usually do.
Here's my wip coco-zombos:

 

[Mad 'At]

I quite like your painting style. The skeletons looks really nice and the cold red works very well on them.

Regarding the hexwraiths I can agree with the bases looking a bit plain. Snow might work, if you do go for that I can recommend a technique using sodium bicarbonate. Mix it with roughly equal amount of PVA glue and a little bit of white paint until it makes a thick milky paste and smear it over the bases. When dried it makes for a very cool looking snow effect. You might want to try it on some test bases first though, to get the proportions right. Another way to contrasts to the bases is to ad bits of bone to them, or scrap metal and other stuff.

 

[Sessioni]

Hey, thanks for the tip! I might use that snow effect, actually I'm not sure if I have already used that same technique a long time ago with my Empire bases. When I started this hobby again there was Citadel's snow available, so I bought that and it looks okay I guess, haven't really used it alot though. I actually found a picture of my old empire pistolier with some kind of a snow effect (so no need to comment about thick layer of this model, I painted this about 8 years ago :D)

 

[Sessioni]

I started basing the zombies, the only thing left to paint is the clothes and gore/guts, I hope they are ready after the weekend, so no partying this time ;)
Sorry for the bad picture.

 

[Adam_Barrow]

Man, you work fast. Keep it up!

 

[Sessioni]

I'll try :D


Unfortunately I haven't progressed too much, well my zombies skin tone is now ready I think.
First off, sorry for the bad picture, I'm taking photos with my phone and something happened to the main camera, so I can't get photos for a while. But here they are.


After these comes vampire, Heinrich and necromancer.

 

[Sessioni]

I'm ashamed since my plog hasn't progressed much o_o
But to show you I'm still working, here's what I'm planning to finish this weekend!

Black knights, very easy conversion from bretonnian knights + skeleton warrior's heads and lances from the actual black knight box.


I love the new black knight models, but I really prefer to use bretonnian knights, I don't really know why, maybe for the elegant feeling they provide.

 

[Sessioni]

Still WIP I'm afraid, but it's something I guess :D

 

[Shadespyre]

Elegant is the right word, and I like the ethereal horses - I think they'll look good alongside your hexwraiths.

 

[Sessioni]

Thanks, yeah I like the ethereal horses too, it's part lazyness and part something I wanted to try out, after all Black knights have spectral steeds :D
The black clothing and red parts are not ready yet as you can propably notice. I hope I get them ready this weekend, as I said last weekend.. But I'm a busy man :D

here's a group shot:

 

[Hutobega]

What is the paint used on the ethereal? Personally I think it a "bit" too bright please don't take it personally =P but everything else is great! I'd like to know what paint because it would be a great highlight for my ethereal creatures as mine tend to be too dark I need a happy medium haha

 

[Farmer7574]

@Sessioni Nice work so far and good progression, what's your recipes for your skeletons' bone color and zombies' flesh colour?

Your ethereals look similar in colour to the army of the dead in the Return of the King film. Looks like they might even glow in the dark and cause sleepless nights :D

 

[Sessioni]

@Hutobega Critisism is obviously welcome too! Base color for the horses is about (try out different ratios) 50/50 skull white/dark green ink then I just gradually added more white to the mixture for highlights, first layer drybrushed. Very simple really, I'm actually thinking of adding just plain white highlight to them, but not sure yet :D I hope you find this helpful for your ghosts :)

@Farmer7574 Thank you for the compliments, altho I'm not happy with my progression, I have to speed it up :D
Bone recipe:
-bonewhite
-50/50 green ink/marrow brown ink (I use vallejo game color)
-highlight with bonewhite
-final highlight with skull white

I like to keep my skeletons mostly "clean" and white.

Zombie skin tone:
-dead flesh/bonewhite
-dark brown wash
-thin bonewhite drybrush

I really just experimented a lot while painting zombies, happened to work nicely. I must say that I'm not 100% sure about the mixtures, but fortunately there's some early progress pictures of the zombies, so you can kinda check it out in case you're wondering if the color's right.

As you can see, the black knights' and hexwraiths' ethereal tone differs from each other, this happened by accident, but I can live with that. And yes, I guess they do look a bit like Army of the Dead :D

 

[Farmer7574]

@Sessioni Cool, cheers buddy. I've been experimenting with a few bone & dead flesh variations for my upcoming VC project and am just gathering methods. Much appreciated :thumbsup:

And don't beat yourself up, your achievements over the past few months is pretty decent. I'm a pretty slow painter and get through about 10 every 2-3 weeks. (Can you imagine spending 3 months on zombies? :silent: I might turn into one!)

Keep up the good work!

 

[Sessioni]

I'm sure the upcoming summer is going to help me (and maybe you too) to paint more, winter is over and sun shines for the most of the day :) (Side note: I live in Finland) I've made a lot of mistakes when painting in bad lighting (or in artificial lighting generally), this is why I haven't shown you guys my newly painted Vampire yet :D

I am completely lost with the necromancers, I want them to be dark and evil, so this would call for a lot of black clothing I guess, but still I'd like them to be connected with the rest of the army's theme, which would be red/grayish (boring, I know).

Btw, check out this AWESOME necromancer I bought from sciborminiatures. It's a high class resin model, you cannot really see all the cool details from this picture unfortunately. It's kinda big tho, so I glued him on a 40x40mm base, planning to use him as a "unit filler necromancer" for zombie blocks. Not sure how it will work on the battlefield, but I tend to garrison my necros in a zombie bunker for the entire match anyways :D




I think that model is kinda cute, he truly loves them invocated new friends :)

 

[Farmer7574]

@Sessioni Nice Necromancer! If you want to tie the colour scheme into the rest of your army then I think black robes would work just fine. Dark brown would work fine too as it's a neutral earthy colour, it would work well with your zombies' dead flesh or skeletons' bone. If you want to include your army colours then I'd suggest going for dark grey robes and maybe pick out small details in red (I can't see any from your picture though).

 

[Sessioni]

@Farmer7574 Thanks for the tips. I guess I'll go with the black robes, I am not a fan of brown robes for some reason :D

Finished assembling my last skeletons, hexwraiths aren't fully assembled yet. A lot of painting to do, after black knights I'll continue my skeleton block.

(blurry) picture of my wip-army:

 

[Farmer7574]

@Sessioni Great looking army so far, can't wait to see it all painted! Brown robes might look odd because it may make him look like an evil Friar Tuck :lol:

 

[Sessioni]

Thanks @Farmer7574 , it's comments like this that keeps me going, painted some skellies today. But anyways, this might be a bit off-topic, but I got my gaming mat today, and it looks awesome. Bought it from deepcutstudios, I'm sure a lot of you guys are familiar with mats like these, but it's kinda new to me since I started the hobby again after a long break.

Se here's my battlegrounds, I live in a small apartment as you can propably see, using my kitchen chairs as support.
My old table was okay, but the sand layer really sucks when moving your units (If I got a penny for every standard bearer fallen, I'd have like... 5 dollars)
Fortunately I can storage the table and the mat in fairly small space, them being out of the way.




I apologize if the pics are too big.

 

[Farmer7574]

@Sessioni Damn I envy you hah. I'm dead keen to get my VC up and rocking again but have sworn to finish my greenskins army first (I don't like moving onto something without finishing the other). Nice table!

 

[Hutobega]

Nice looking full army you got there. I want to get myself that dragon model. But i wont until i am finished painting at least 3/4 of my undead army first! also as far as standard bearers falling over... I suggest MAGNETS!!!!! best investment I ever made. I can flip my units almost 90 degree vertical and they won't fall off (some are okay even upside down)