The Year of the Rat Begins!

OK, so I'm three weeks late starting 2012. I blame it on Skyrim. BUT! I've not been completely idle on the hobby front (just "mostly idle"). Over the past fortnight I've been steadily chipping away at a bunch of Clanrats (in between Skyrim loading screens...). In truth, I could have made this post a week ago but it'll look like I've done more work when I upload the next set in just a couple of days! Again, I blame Skyrim...

Anyway, I am determined to achieve my resolutions this year (although you know what they say about the best laid plans...) To start off, I got going on some Clanrats - I undercoated them at the same time as my first unit (way back in March 2011 I think) but forgot to glue the sand to the bases first. So that was the first job. Then the bases got painted with Graveyard Earth, and the real work could begin. Pretty simple really, just Chaos Black on all the cloth areas as per the Clan Rictus colour scheme.

The next step is painting all the metallic areas. In truth, that's what I've been doing this week and I've just got the last ten to do (like I said, I was just too lazy to put the pictures up earlier...). I should easily get those done by Saturday night/Sunday morning. After that it's on to the flesh on the tails, feet and noses. Then details, wash and basing, and we're done!

A couple of things I've considered while painting these (which I should probably have thought of when I painted the first batch, or I might have already thought of and forgotten...) Firstly, I'm wondering whether painting from a black undercoat would be easier (read: quicker) than the Fur Brown colour primer. My gut tells me it'll be the same amount of work either way, but it would allow me to use different fur colours rather than sticking to the same consistent Fur Brown on every rat (not that I don't have that option now, but painting different browns over the Fur Brown primer would seem to defeat the point of using the Fur Brown primer in the first place).

Secondly, I had thought about painting all the weapon arms separately, because I had some trouble with a few of the figures where the arms obscured nearly all access to the body of the figure. After some consideration though, the potential downsides seem to outweigh any benefit I'd gain from doing them separately, so I think I'll keep the arms attached...

So, on that note, I'll sign off. Expect another update on the Skaven in a couple of days. After all, how long can ten rats take me, right?