Weekly painting progress

I finished painting the Dreadmere Mercenaries by Reaper Bones Black. Sadly, I haven't managed to get a good photo of them, and this is as good as I've managed. They're in the colours of Anvilgard, The Living City and The Phoenicium.

Skaven test paints are continuing well. Here we can compare a Wraithbone undercoated model on the left and a Grey Seer undercoated model on the right. You can see the difference in the tone of the model despite the same contrast paint being used. I've also tried green or yellow eyes, and am really liking the green eye.

Here are the two undercoated in plain Grey Seer. I think that the one painted in Skeleton Horde on the left is nice, but I will probably leave that colour for contrasting with the main colour - like painting the hood of one or the robe of another in the plainer light brown. The Gryph-Charger Grey on the right is interesting, and I'm tempted to use it for Clan Eshin models when I get to them.

Now we get onto the super interesting stuff. Here's two models that had the Convertorum undercoat method I borrowed. Both colours look good, but I think the yellow model would have looked better if some of it had been painted with Skeleton Horde. Also, it doesn't look as good on the skin areas because of the mottling from the sponge effect. So, when I repeat it, I'll avoid doing it on the skin.

Also, I was playing around with blending contrast paints on the base. On the one on the right, I also did a wash of Agrax Earthshade once it was dry and drybrushed Wraithbone. I think I like that one better and I've found what the base of my models will be looking like.

I definitely prefer the weathered model to his smoother companion. Definitely pushes me down that route.

And here's a comparison between the yellows. There's less obvious sponging on the yellow one, and I think it suffers for it. Definitely prefer the fancy undercoat method, though.

I'm pretty sure what I'm going with, now. Yellow on clanrats, orange on Skryre, light green on Pestilens, blue-grey on Clan Eshin. But what colour should I paint Clan Moulder? Maybe off white? And Masterclan get purple spot colour...

On Sunday, I went down to HATE to drop off various bits I've been clearing out and selling. While I was there, I decided to assemble a few metal miniatures, which is hard to do at home due to my wife being allergic to nickel.

I started working through Operation: Wildfire, and got the three Nox Troopers and Mentor painted for the Shasvastii side of the starter box. I'm using the bases from the box as they now come with line of fire markings on them. I was super impressed with how well they went together - although some of the parts were tiny and fiddly, the contact points were snug and wide.

I also got the first Actual Model for my Skaven army painted. This Made to Order Grey Seer was actually a right pain to assemble. The base tab was tiny and wobbly in the base, and the head fell off more times than I bear to think about. If it had fallen off one more time I would have pinned it.

So, checking in on my quarterly goals, I've got three models finished out of a target of six (I'm not counting the test paints until all the test paints are finished). I'm well on the way to getting the Skaven test paint stretch goal done.

The Wildfire box getting started isn't on the stretch goal list, but it seemed barmy not to take advantage of an opportunity to get some metal models assembled when I had the opportunity.

I also got in a 1,000 point game of 40K at HATE's Wednesday club night - I'll report back on that later!