"How Do You Paint Skellies?" Topic

Just finished painting this unit of skeleton warriors for Dragon Rampant—my Evil horde horde at last has some more rank and file.

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I was aiming for a simple "ancient dead" look: bleached bone, worn bronze/iron, faded crimson cloth, and dry, desolate basing. They're intended purely as gaming figures rather than display pieces, but I'm rather pleased with how they've turned out.

I'd be interested in hearing how others approach undead troops:

How do you paint your skeletons? Clean bone, grimdark, verdigris armour, glowing eyes?
Do you base undead differently from your living troops? Graveyard earth, dead grass, tombstones, something more fantastical?
For Dragon Rampant: what unit profiles have worked best for your skeletons? Heavy Foot, Bellicose Foot or something more imaginative? I think I'll want these as Light Foot (you can't get more 'light'….)
Do you prefer uniformity in undead units—or a more mismatched, scavenged look?

Prime white, stain wash brown, dry brush white.
Swords, shields, armor your way.

White base, sepia wash dry brush lightly with off white. I prefer my skellies as just bones with weapons although I do have many with ragged clothing, I always think that the dead would have been stripped of their armor.
Paul

Prime white. 100% strength bone/linen/French vanilla. 50% chestnut wash. 10-25% black/charcoal wash. Light white dry brush.

"Evil"? How judgemental!

Flat white base covered with a yellow-brown wash.

Prime black, dry brush bone color. Give it a minwax "dip".

Spray ivory, paint details, 'dip' Tudor or Walnut

Skellies are my comfort painting option: when I need to just paint something fast/easy to motivate me to paint more complex figures, I used to paint up some Skellies…

1) Prime them with cheap gray automotive primer (optional -- see below).

2) Paint the entire figure with craft "Sunflower" (very light tannish colored paint).

3) Paint the non-bone bits as needed (weapons, clothes, etc.).

4) Brush on a dark brown (usually some variant of Walnut) Minwax Polyshades Urethane Stain, let dry/bake at 170-200 F, for 30 minutes to speed-cure the solvent-based urethane-stain.

5) Spray matte clear coat, decorate the base, and done!

Here are some examples: 54mm plastic Skeleton toys (no primer, plastic was similar color to "Sunflower" paint, just painted bits that needed a different color); Halloween decoration 'Draco-Lich' conversion in progress (finished); more 60mm Skeleton toys converted; Reaper Bones 28mm Skeleton/Egyptian 60mm Toy Skeleton/54mm Cave Man/Hill Giant conversion (Egyptian Skelly and the 'Hill Giant'/Cave Man were bare plastic with only bits painted, stained); side-by-sde 60mm painted/unpainted + Reaper Bones 28mm; and, just for fun for D&D fans of Green Dragons who breathe Chlorine gas as a breath weapon.

I've painted far too many Skeletons… I have an Undead Army with, literally, hundreds of Skeletons in it -- too much 'therapeutic' painting. LOL! Cheers!

Print White then Armypainter Speed Paint, either Pallid Bone or Bony Matter.

Done.

Dave

Prime white. Either airbrush (especially for army painting), or hand paint an ivory color. I use GW Skeleton Horde contrast for the recesses, then drybrush titanium white (this is important…you lose the contrast over time, especially with prolonged exposure to sunlight). Pick out the details, done.

Damon.

One upon a time I did an experiment. I primed a skeleton with black and dry brushed white. I primed another white and did a dark wash. Both turned out great. Not sure what I'll do next time.

Pretty much the same as JMcCarroll and ZuluPaul.

I also prefer my skeletons to have little on them except weapons.

I'll make bleached bones or skulls more white when appropriate.

I think they are "light" troops unless wearing armor and bearing shields, then I guess I'd go with medium. I'm undecided if they should have a defensive modifier or not -- on the one hand, maybe they're fragile? On the other, no vital organs or blood vessels so you gotta smash 'em up to take them out. I'm inclined to make them a bit harder to damage than a fleshy counterpart. Plus they're presumably animated by some magic, so never check morale!

Those are terrific figures, ochoin!

Black primer, drybrush white.

I like the way the ones photographed above came out. Next time I'll try an initial drybrush of a tan color, then a lighter drybrush over the top of that.

Note that skeletons are one of only two things I primer in black. 1/6000 warships is the other. I use white primer for everything else, including objects I'm going to paint black, like the hullsides of 19th C. ships.

Here's my biggest problem with skeletons: I can't get them without fantasy panoplies.

I'm not a fantasy gamer, I don't want skeletons to fight anything. I just want to have period-appropriate status markers for Medieval and Renaissance gaming that evoke The Triumph of Death and other macabre art contemporary with the figures.

For that, I need unarmed figures in creepy, haunting, non-martial poses. I've found almost nothing. I've settled for figures with late Medieval panoply (heater shields, spears, swords, polearms, cloth-caparisoned skeletal horses, etc.) and got rid of all the archers and round shields.

There are some nice "bare bones" (ha!) skeleton warriors sold by some Etsy sellers, 3-D printed plastic -- very affordable and come with various weapons. They paint fast. The downside is that they're very fragile minis and some will arrive broken (but seller always replaces those if you ask) and others will get broken by careless handling.

I'd also love to find a range of 15mm skeletons with a Dia de los Muertos theme, to use as status markers in various games set in Mexicon (Mexican American War, French Intervention, Mexican Revolution(s), etc.). Sombreros, ponchos, rotting apparel, maybe some with instruments and other civilian items like canes and baskets and stuff. Alas, I've never seen anything like this in any scale.

- Ix