It's been over a month since my last post.

"Well, why is that?" you might ask, and the simple answer is The Dreaded Painter's Block. It isn't that I've done no painting at all, it is just that I keep losing interest and leaving things half done.

However, I have found a way to actually complete a few things, by painting things that are simple and have very few stages from undercoating to completion and here are some of them;

Firstly, above are eight Skeleton Warriors.  I actually really like painting Skellies. They are a quick win, which is why I dug these out from a box of odds and ends and got working on them. I hoped that they would kickstart me into doing a few more things, and they have. Below are a few more quick wins, a giant snake and two small dinosaurs;

I'm working on the basis that one day I'll need a giant snake and a couple of small dinos.

I bought all the above from Bad Squiddo. Annie occasionally goes through her stock and sells off odds and ends that she no longer wants to keep in the catalogue as sale items. It is worth checking regularly to see what she has in her Bargain Bin. Remember though that once these things are gone, they probably won't be restocked.

I've got a few other things nearing completion, so they will be another post.

North Star plastic Undead Encounters figures

I've had these figures lying around for about a year now. I assembled and undercoated them last September and then set them aside while other things leapfrogged them in the painting queue. However, I did do bits of work on them here and there and just before I went away on holiday I set some time aside to finally finish them off.

First, here are three Zombies, four Ghouls, a skeleton erupting from a grave, a skeleton Giant Rat and a marker. I enjoyed painting these, lots of scope for decaying skin tones and exposed rotting flesh and organs. 

Secondly, here are ten skeleton warriors. These were also fun to paint, with a liberal application of Light Rust wash which is actually intended for vehicles, but looks pretty good on their weapons and armour.

All these figures started off with a coat of Army Painter Skeleton Bone spray and the rags and skin tones were built up with blended colours. Armour was gunmetal, brass and copper dry-brushed onto black. Finally, before finishing them off with rust wash, they all got an inking with Windsor & Newton Peat Brown. Once everything was dry, I did the bases with black railway ballast, which was dry-brushed in pale grey and then they were spray varnished.

Undead army for Warband Fantasy

OMG! The figures are getting smaller!

My latest completed project is something I started planning last year, but it got sidelined by other things, mainly my Saga 2 Late Romans. Still, I managed to get the delayed project completed in a couple of days recently while waiting for a parcel delivery that eventually turned up a day late.

Last year, some of us at the club got talking about Warband, the fantasy ruleset published by Pendraken, which uses 10mm figures, also produced by Pendraken. I thought that I'd get a project going to produce a single army that I could play a few games with. It seemed to me that the quickest one to paint would be the Undead, and this turned out to be the case. I bought the basic army deal, plus some extra packs of figures to allow me some variations in my army, and also to add extra figures to the various stands of units.

In Warband, units are mounted on 10 cm x 5 cm bases, and damage is recorded on a D6, which should ideally be included on the base, so I bought some suitable dice and little dice holder squares at the same time as the minis. You can see these in the pictures. First, a command stand (with the banners), plus three stands of Skeleton Warriors;

Next two stands of Skeleton Riders;

Here are the ranged units, Skeleton Archers and stone-throwing catapults, plus a unit of Zombies with a purple-robed necromancer using dark powers to send them shambling into battle;

And finally, the magical attack force, comprising a stand of Wraiths and Spirits, being conjured from the Beyond by another Necromancer, plus a stand of Necromatic Wizards with their defensive entourage of Warriors and a couple of magical altars;

These were all remarkably easy to paint and, for their size, rather nicely detailed figures. Everything was glued to the MDF bases (dice holders having already been glued on) and then sprayed with Army Painter Skeleton Bone primer. Then, the parts that needed to be coloured, weapons, shields, robes etc were painted, everything was dry-brushed and then inked using W&N ink. I used green and yellow inks on the Wraiths to give them a ghostly tinge (influenced by Ghostbusters, obviously) and a brown ink to bring out the details on everything else.

I'm not sure that I would want to paint up figures as small as this with a colour scheme that required a lot of detail, hums for example, but I suppose that it is a challenge I might rise to at some point in the future.