Easy Tomb King Skeletons

 

From the very first moment I decided that Tomb Kings were the army for me to collect in the old world, I quickly decided that I needed a relatively easy, aesthetically pleasing and pain free way of getting them done, after all I would be painting potentially hundreds of the things before the army was "finished" (though, is an army ever really finished?). I trialed and tested a few different methods but I finally settled on this one in the end and they seem to have been a hit so I thought I would share how I went about achieving this look step by step. Also, I have opted to use grey backgrounds for my tutorial pictures this time, mainly because it is difficult to pick out details against my usual white background due to the lightness of the colours I use.

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Paints used in this tutorial:

• Skull White Undercoat Spray (Citadel)
• Seraphim Sepia (Citadel)
• Screaming Skull (Citadel)
• Wyldwood Contrast (Citadel)
• Contrast Medium (Citadel)
• Mephiston Red (Citadel)
• Evil Sunz Scarlet (Citadel)
• Thousand Sons Blue (Citadel)
• Calgar Blue (Citadel)
• Drakenhof Nightshade (Citadel)
• Corax White (Citadel)
• Apothecary White Contrast (Citadel)
• Skull White (Citadel)
• Retributor Armour (Citadel)
• Liberator Gold (Citadel)
• Agrax Earthshade (Citadel)

The Bone

Step 1. Undercoat the miniature using Skull White Undercoat Spray.

Step 2. Wash the model in a layer or two of Seraphim Sepia.

Step 3. Highlight with Screaming Skull.

The Wood

Step 4. Paint the wooden areas (spear shafts, backs of the shields etc.) with a 2:1 mix of Wyldwood and Contrast Medium.

The Base Colours

Step 5. Paint the red parts (shields in this example but I have also done this on my bows and quiver straps on my archers) with two thin coats of Mephiston Red.

Step 6. Paint the blue parts (headbands, but also quivers for archers and accent colours for decorative shields and banners) with two thin coats of Thousand Sons Blue.

Step 7. Paint the metal parts with two thin coats of Retributor Armour.

Shading

Step 8. Coat the metal sections with Agrax Earthshade. Whilst you are on this step, recess shade the red sections with Agrax Earthshade as well.

Step 8. Recess shade the blue sections with Drakenhof Nightshade.

Highlights

Step 9. Highlight the red sections with Evil Sunz Scarlet.

Step 10. Highlight the blue sections with Calgar Blue.

Step 11. Highlight the metal sections with Liberator Gold. You can go one step further with this by creating score marks into the metal with random brush strokes across the surface.

Whites (Bandages and Scripture Papers)

Step 12. Base coat the section with Corax White.

Step 13. Paint one layer of Apothecary White onto the white section.

Step 14. Highlight with Skull White.

Final Step

Step 15. Base your models in whatever method you see fit and you are finished!

Finish unit of Tomb King Skeletons!

- D J Driver