A Second Summer of Citadel: Enter Ratman

 

Skaven are probably the one range I've painted the least of. I have a handful of painted models in my entire collection. I think its dealing with the fur. I was never a very good drybrusher on the smaller models. Even so, I think I did okay today with this chap. He is from clan Skryre and is holding a poison wind globe. In fact this was how this model was often labelled in the later '80s early '90s catalogues. He was one of my dreaded 'unfinishables' and has sat for many months abandoned in my workshop, along with the model underneath. Having awoken early in the morning and with the rest of the household asleep I worked on these two figures for a few hours and....

Presto, some scuttering ratmen for the blog.

This second figure is much older than the Skryre rat. He was originally called Carver and his body is the basis of many variant figures, though for the figure above this is also true. Both were painted pretty speedily with this one being the second figure of the day. For whatever reason, I prefer this model's paintjob even though he only took an hour or so to complete. My process for skaven starts with a brown undercoat. A quick ink wash (this process was already complete months back, hence the speed) and then highlighting each of the chosen colours up. I drybrushed the fur with a worm out tiny brush so not to get any contamination on the rest of the figure. I used another ink/paint wash of Chestnut and Hobgoblin Orange to create the rust wash I put over the sword. 

Another two figures complete! 

This figure, and the following two are all restoration jobs from my recently returned collection. For some reason they were all thick with dust which had bleached out a lot of the colour. A good dusting and a little water did the job. This one's called Gwrack by the way and appears on a September 1987 flyer. 

This skaven is Vermyn and that is probably the most ratty name going for these chittering horrors. I painted this figure many, many years ago as part of a Slaves to Darkness Warband. The type of army when you roll randomly after each battle. I ended up with three skaven in my army and these are the two models that survived. You can see that they both still have their campaign names painted on the base. 

This figure started life in the same range as Vermyn but has the longer, perhaps more intellectual (for a skaven, anyway) name of Malis Manwrack. This figure was released in 1986 and you can see the poison wind globes clearly on his side. 

Skewer you will remember from last year. He was the last skaven I painted along with Warpeye at the bottom. The photos I took of these final models were on the naff side so I've taken some better ones for the record.