Painting the Skaven Verminlord

Our Verminlords are finished, yes-yes!

 

Backing up a bit... I don't think I ever posted pictures of the Grey Seer from my Screaming Bell. I had painted this little guy back in 2019. He was the last bit of the Screaming Bell kit that I needed to finish. Prior to that I was just using a regular "on foot" Grey Seer, standing on the bell's lower platform. Now the Screaming Bell has its proper occupant riding atop the bell tower.

 

I built my Verminlord with all of the options either magnetized or pinned so that I could field any of the five different aspects. You can see how I converted him in my modeling tutorial: The Versatile Verminlord Part 1 and Part 2.

My initial plan for painting him was to speed-paint the entire model in a day, but working on all of the modular components really slowed things down. Here's my setup for the day-long painting blitz:

 

 

This was where I realized I wasn't going to make it. I had started at 11:00 am, and after three hours of painting (plus a lunch break) I had only finished drybrushing all of the fur and painting the horns with a gradient and picking out all the little ties on them.

 

 

By 6:00 pm, I had finished up the horns with several layers of Agrax Earthshade, and painted all the skulls.

 

 

After dinner, I did some more work, and finished the bells and bits on the horns, and completed the Corruptor and Deceiver heads.

 

 

On day two, I spent about two hours painting the remaining faces. At this point all of the heads were finished. 

 

 

I basecoated and washed the skin on the body and all of the arms. By this point, I had abandoned taking hourly photographs, and I put the whole project aside for about a week.

 

 

Finishing the Verminlord took three more painting sessions– A couple hours to blend and highlight all the flesh on the body; several hours to paint the arms and all of the armor; and finally, about five hours to finish up the green warpstone bits, the base, and the tails. (I'm SO happy that I cut off all those tiny spikes running along both tails!)

 

 

For the base, I cut up some classic Rat Swarms to fit around his feet and the rock.

 

 

At long last, my "speed" painted Verminlord was finished.  Here's a look at all of his aspects:

 

'Til next time!