On the Painting Bench

In case anybody thought I'd forgotten about figure painting in the heady rush of running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, fear not.  My work bench is actually currently overflowing with the undead.  In addition to the "Men of the West" retinue I'm building for Dragon Rampant, I'm also building an undead retinue for demo games, which will make use of the wraiths I painted back in May.  As you may recall I got a stack of Reaper Bones skeletons back at Christmas time as part of the secret santa exchange; those are going to form the core, with each type of skeleton (swordsmen, spearmen, archers, two-handed weapons) being expanded out to create units of 12.

The other day at Just Games I picked up a half-dozen skeleton swordsmen, leaving me three short of a full unit, and I special ordered through them enough packs of "Skeleton Guardian w/ 2H Axe" and "Skeleton Guardian w/ 2H Sword" to complete a unit of Skeleton Berserkers as well as a Lich to lead them into battle, and an old set of Reaper set dressing, an "Undead Rising" pack, to flesh out the Lich's 50mm base into a little diorama and represent his "Summoner" ability.

So far I've washed and based the Skeleton Berserkers (a unit of Bellicose Foot with the undead "No Feelings" special rule), as well as straightened some of their postures and weapons with boiling water - though I notice some of the paper-thin zweihanders are starting to return to their original bent position.  I also washed the Lich, but didn't glue him down to the base; I did clean and prep the tombstone and emergent skeleton and, once I decided on positioning, glued them to a 50mm square base off a Fireforge sprue, the Lich's position traced on in Sharpie.

The Berserkers I'm saving for the August painting challenge at the Dragon Rampant Facebook group, but I started on the Lich tonight while the sunlight was still coming in the window.  I ran out of black while basecoating him; this has never happened before.  I got the tombstone and the rubble on the base painted, the Lich's robes are done and I made some good progress on the armor, which I'm hoping will end up looking like badly tarnished silver when all is said and done.  I'll post more pics tomorrow, possibly with more done on him; his staff and skin still need to be done, and the armor finished, and then the ring of skulls and the rising skeleton on the base.  I think it's going to look really good.