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So after deciding to attempt a Skaven army, and using Mantic Zombie figures as my slaves I've decided to ditch the rats (too boring to paint) and throw my lot in with the Vampire Counts which are far more varied!
To kickstart my army I have 2 units of Zombies which I was able to throw together in not much time at all really. I'm looking for a combination of being able to paint quickly, but still keep the figures to a standard that I'm happy with. So far so good!
Moving on I bought 10 Black Knights from a wargames show in Plymouth for the absolute bargain price of £15. They had been undercoated black so instead of starting them all over again I thought I would see if I could work with it.
Next I bought 10 Skeletons, still on sprues this time and made up some figures so I could run some 'test bones' to see what I liked. This is the method I have settled on. Personally I'm not a huge fan of white skeletons (I see them more as Tomb Kings skeletons) so decided to use a uniform bone colour
Spray - Army Painter Skeleton Brown
Spray - Halfords White Primer to Zenethal Highlight (spray from the top at 45 degrees all around the minature to create highlights)
Wash with Sewer Water
Drybrush the raised areas with Vallejo Iraqui Sands (same colour as ushabti bone/bleached bone etc)
After the Zenithal Highlight:
Washed with Sewer Water then light drybrush: Not the best example of the highlight in action, but you can see that his shoulders etc are noticably lighter than his feet, and the leg one at the front is lighter than the leg at the back. The white spray does most of the work for you:
Add some colour: Vallejo Air Paints Orange, Mahogony Brown, Dark Metal (Boltgun Metal) then wash the new colours (not bone) with sewer water
They look plenty fine, especially when you say that they are done very quickly Maybe the black knights could benefit with a little reduction of the amount of colors [green, red, blue, rusty - that's a lot for a single mini], but overall it's pretty nice Keep up the work and good decision with choosing undead over rats
Here's the tutorial I used to paint my Zombies.
http://diceandbrush.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/tutorial-speed-painting-20-mantic.html
The only real difference was that I dipped them in strong tone instead of dark tone.
When I do up another batch I'll probably try them in dark tone and just mix them all together for even more variation in the units.
I don't think I'll dip anything else though. It works and is very effective on Zombies, but with a couple of different washes you get more differential between the various shades. I tried it on a Skeleton and found that it looked a bit too thick. With zombies it doesn't seem to matter.
I think the days of undercoating Skeletons black have long gone :grave: It's Army Painter Skeleton Bone all the way now, then just throw ink/washes at them!
I paid to download a 'miniature mentor' tutorial on speed painting a while ago which was where I discovered about the Zenithal Highlight technique. I'd never heard of it before. It's simple enough really. You just spray the figure a darkish colour (something darker than bone would have been better really) then spray white or something light at a 45 degree angle from the top all around the figure.
After that the tutorial went on to continue to paint the figures using layers of glazes, but I can't be bothered with all of that so just a simple wash will do especially as the bone colour is fairly close to the white that I'm using over the top of it. I think in the demo the guy used black spray undercoat, then a white spray over the top. It works really well though. Some guys paint using 'source lighting' and just spray at 45 from the front but I think the back of the figure can look quite plain this way. If you pick up the figure and you've used the zenithal method then it looks highlighted/shaded from all sides. It's not strictly correct of course as our planet only has one sun, but for figures it works well enough.
I'm pleased with my knights. I'm currently finishing off my second rank of them. I don't think they appear that colourful really. It's only their weapons that really stand out when you look at them. When I bought them they were sprayed black, so I put some very bright colours over the top and threw ink over them to make them dark.
Check out the silver:
It's Vallejo Air Chrome. It's really smooth and that's a single coat over black. After that I darkened it by putting a heavy wash of secret weapon heavy body black. put a GW red glaze over the armour, yellow glaze over the barding, blue glaze over the blue, and a red glaze over the red then covered the entire figure with secret weapon sewer water. Quick and easy!
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Maybe the black knights could benefit with a little reduction of the amount of colors [green, red, blue, rusty - that's a lot for a single mini], but overall it's pretty nice 
