Painting Skeletons

By Assistant Doc Gorthag Skullcrusher

I have been painting seriously for several years now, and I have come up with several main painting schemes for skeletons, and bone in general. This
takes a lot of layering, but I can have a full skeleton regiment box from shrinkwrap to battlefield in about 4 hours, including the wasted extra points, errr, lovely shields required in 6th edition, all with straight citadel paints.

Step 1: Assemble the skeletons fully except for shields, attach to the bases.
Step 2: Full black primer - touch up unprimed spots with a thinned Chaos Black
Step 3: Bubonic Brown base coat - you can use the spray can for this if you have it.
Step 4: Flesh Wash or Brown Ink for earthy skeletons, Chestnut Ink for desert skeletons.
Step 5: Moderate Bleached Bone drybrush.
Step 6: Second moderate to light Bleached Bone drybrush.
Step 7: Light Skull White drybrush.
Step 8: Very light Bestial Brown or Scorched Brown drybrush for earthy skeletons, light Bubonic Brown drybrush for desert skeletons.
Step 9: Detail work - leather straps in Snakebite Leather and Bestial Brown, wood in Scorched Brown with very light Chaos Black drybrushing with the grain, metal in Boltgun Metal with light Tin Bitz drybrush
Step 10: Paint and attach shields - I generally use the crossed bones, and have the shield rims done with Dwarf Bronze.
Step 11: Bases - standard Goblin Green with green flock works fine. Also, Bestial Brown with brown modeling sand/gravel works great with the earthy skeletons, and Bubonic Brown either plain, or with similarly colored sandy/powdery flock from a hobby shop works great for desert skeletons (or just paint/drybrush Bubonic Brown over the white Citadel sand if you wish to go strictly GW products.