Pre-slotta skeletons

 

Sticking with the undead theme, some pre-slotta skeletons. I was strictly just painting models I had back in the day but really fancied getting a few of these done. They were prepped and undercoated anyway and it helps to clear the black pile (my undercoat colour of choice). 

Originally I was never too bothered by the pre-slotta stuff. It was before my time so I was never too familiar with those ranges apart from some of the images in the good old Heroes for Wargames book I picked up in the early 90's. I took a bit more notice when people started painting up their old models and giving them a new lease of life. Finally took the plunge and picked up a handful of skeletons some years back now. There are some fantastic models from this era and these skeletons in particular I think are among the best.

It was nice to do some armoured models after the bare bones plastics and getting to add a bit of colour was also a pleasant change. Initially I was stumped by the shields. They didn't seem to suit the bare wood of the ones I did on my plastics, and cheesy nightmare iconography whilst fun would have been out of place to my mind. I kept thinking of the skeletons in Skyrim and had the idea of these models being ancient warriors so I looked up Roman shield designs and anything related that might be suggested. Tried to keep it fairly simple and these worked out quite nicely. I eschewed my dodgy homemade transfer paint by numbers technique and freehanded these.

I've got a couple more undead on the go and two more painted models that I'll show later. Anyone following my posts on Facebook will know one of the models (bit of a rescue job) and that might hint at what the other three are. ;-)