Building and Painting Skeletons

I am currently in the process of painting a bunch of skeletons for my “Revenant Horde of Dark Hallow” army.

I thought I’d go behind the scenes, as it were, and discuss the process.

I’ve always thought Skeleton warriors were pretty gnarly, wow I haven’t used that word since I was sixteen years old haha. I first saw them come to life when I watched Jason and the Argonauts with Dad when I was a kid.I could not believe my eyes. They were old, rickety, kind of clumsy but pretty bloody creepy. I purchased my first plastic skeleton miniature when I was about twelve and, considering I didn’t really know what I was doing, I did an ok job. It was when I first discovered dry brushing. I painted the mini black then carefully brushed across the little bones with skull white paint. I was well chuffed with my efforts. I remember showing Mum and she asked if I painted each individual rib and I lied and said yeah haha. She was happy, I was happy.

I’ve wanted a small army of Skeleton warriors ever since.

Feeling, somewhat, anxious about the building of the mini skeletal structures I did what any good man does and procrastinated about it for some time. After all my fingers are big and clunky and nowhere near as nimble as they were when I was a kid.

I’ve got to be honest, putting together the GW Skellies was quite annoying, fiddly and not enjoyable in the least. However, I pushed on and was happy with the end result. I didn’t do too much in the way of conversions, just an arrow here a headless mini there. Then I went on to the Mantic skellies and found these much easier to put together.Their poses are a little same, same but I made some slight adjustments so there weren’t too many repeats.

Since putting them together they have been abandoned in a zip lock  sandwich bag in my metal locker (miniature storage space) while I concentrated on zombies and ghouls and other projects entirely.

I did, however, research and research and research bones, skeletons and dead things to get the right colour for my miniatures. I’ve seen many skeleton minis painted well but often a bit too white for my liking. A bit too clean.

Others, many of whom might be reading this blog, have done extremely good paint work on their skeletons. More recently this guys…

I got 99 problems but a Lich ain’t one…

Also this chap, who actually did a brilliant tutorial on this very subject at my request…

https://azazelx.wordpress.com/2016/04/10/painting-skeletons-a-warm-bone-tutorial/

What I took, mostly, from this was the use of snake bite leather and/or browns.

Also, from the same artist…

https://azazelx.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/reaper-bones-ii-skeletons/

I went to the Museum with the family a month ago and was very excited to see the Dinosaur exhibit. When I walked in I felt like a little boy again but also a light bulb went off for me, not a frequent thing for me. I took some snaps of the dinosaur bones to study and reference. I felt like Indiana Jones with an Iphone haha. I was very inspired I must say.

Brown, grey, yellows etc…

Brilliant right?!

I also jumped on the Google machine, of course, but I had already started to formulate an idea of how I was going to go about painting these boney little freaks.

The next thing I needed was some flare for them. Something different to make them stand out but I’ll save that for The Revenant Horde of Dark Hallow – Part 10.

The summary:

1. The building was a bit of prick.
2. The research was fun and educational.
3. The painting has me more excited than PacMan at a Ms PacMan beauty pageant.