Showcase: Skaven Clanrats from Skaventide

In today’s showcase post, I’m showing you three of the new Clanrats from Skaventide, which I painted as test models for my new Skaven army. I’ll also explain how I came up with my new colour scheme and where I drew my inspiration from.

Skaven are one of my favourite faction in both The Old World and Age of Sigmar. Over the years, I painted multiple Skaven armies and warbands. For my Fantasy Battles Skaven army, I used a muted palette with a lot of greens, based around a lot of colours of Citadel’s Foundation paint range, which came out before I started this army. For my Skaven Blitz Bowl team, I chose a striking orange, and for Spiteclaw’s Swarm I combined a bright cool green with petrol.

How to find a paint scheme

With the new models from Skaventide (my review of the box is here), I wanted to start a completely new collection, with the goal of first building a Warcry warband and then a Spearhead. So, a new colour scheme was needed. My previous Skaven models were always painted with lots of bare skin, similar to the ‘Eavy Metal Team’s style. For my new models, I looked at many photos of real rats and noticed that many rat species are completely covered in fur, with only a little skin showing on the nose, ears, limbs, and tail.

With a lot of dark fur, the clothing and other details like wood needed to be lighter. I arrived at the light and dark petrol tones after looking at the studio version of the new Grey Seer from Skaventide.

The three Clanrats shown here were painted as test models. Since Skaven are a horde army, I used the time-saving Slapchop technique (or in my case, more of a zenithal basecoating), which I enhanced with additional highlights. I explain this in more detail in this video, as I also wanted to take on the challenge of using “one coat” paints from all five major brands:

There is also a free step-by-step tutorial if you want to follow the process more closely, just click here.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with my colour scheme. The Vermindoom can come. However, when I expand the unit, I plan to introduce different fur colours and one or two more shades for the clothing. You can find more about this in the coming months on Tale of Painters.

Feel free to leave a reaction, or drop a comment below, I’m also happy to answer any questions on our friendly hobby Discord server. Thanks a lot, and happy hobbying!