Tutorial : Mantic Skeleton Warrior

The first set (of many to come I swear!) of Mantic Miniatures arrived last night. I was so excited that I built up a 20-man unit right away. Here I will go through a step by step on how I painted my Mantic Skeleton.

Before I begin, I must first explain why I have chosen to paint my skeleton as such. And the choice of undercoat and painting style.

Most would opt for a white/bleached bone primer for their skeletons. However I went with black as I did not want to spend too much time painting over the cloth and armour sections. As you can see, the mini is 70% armour & cloth (as in the case of Mantic Skeletons). Therefore I decided it would be more time efficient to use black as it would have already created the shade I needed for reverse black lining (will explain more later).

1) Here I have undercoated the mini in black.

2) Next I fully painted the bone areas with astronomican grey.

3) Devlan Mud was carefully washed into recesses and areas that needed to be shaded. I realized that spamming washes usually produced undesirable and messy outcomes. So I made sure no wash got onto areas I had no intention of shading.

4) Skull white was then painted onto all bone area. Making sure to leave not only the recesses alone but also some parts still in astronomican grey. This allowed me to have a Devlan Mud (deepest), Astronomican Grey (mid-tone) and finally Skull white (highlight). By doing this I have created a 3 tone shade for my bone areas in one go.

The cloth was then painted with Liche Purple. Carefully leaving the recesses with a black line to create a layer of shade. This is where reverse black lining comes into play. Normally you would paint an entire area a certain colour once. Then go back to painstakingly apply a thin black line in between shades. I have always found this method much more time consuming (not to mention mad stable hands/skill) to execute well. It just seems so much easier to leave to black line in there. Thus reversing the process and saving you that additional 2-3 steps.

5) Next up is the armour. I fully painted these areas with Chainmail. Once again leaving a thin black line between colours. All armour areas was then washed with Badab Black to shade and add dulling tone to the metal areas. No further highlighting is required. The metal parts were complete in 2 simple steps (utilizing reverse black lining in the process too of course).

6) A mixture of 50/50 Liche purple + Bleached Bone was used to highlight the purple areas.

Adeptus Battlegrey was used to highlight all black areas.

7) Finally I based the miniature and tried using Clump-Foilage for the first time in my hobby career. And I must say I am very pleased with the results!

There you have it. A completed skeleton warrior in 7 -steps.

~In case you have not noticed I went for a "white & clean" look for my bone. Instead of a darker brown to bleached bone look. I wanted to have a very "fantasy" look and I have always been extremely impressed with people who have "clean" undead armies. Instead of the usual "I just crawled out of the grave/mud look".

Although some might argue that this looks too comic-like and unrealistic, well to each his own. We are playing a Fantasy game after all!