Stormvermin finished! Image showcase.

My Stormvermin Champion Fangleader ("The Pastel Predator")

 *Squeek*

Phew! Finally finished off these guys today (a national holiday in Japan - 春分の日- the spring equinox) and they are ready to join my warlord clan. These are the unit that readers decided I should paint next in a poll I had up earlier in the month - they were the top choice by a mile!

Pics below, followed by some hints and tips and a High Elf update:

I will post a painting guide in a couple of weeks (work is pretty busy at the moment) but some hints and tips that come to mind to remember next time:

1. Filing and filling. 
When assembled, watch out for pieces not meeting cleanly. Difficult to see with a black undercoat, but when painted this leaves you with very obvious gaps. Due to the models, these are particularly obvious in the case of stormvermin because the joins are in really visible places. The armored shoulders and the cloth robes being two good cases in point. Liquid Greenstuff should make this much easier to solve (before painting obviously!) than in the past.

2. Make the champ special. 
With good reason, the Stormvermin unit champion (or "Fangleader") is one of the most popular sculpts in the whole Skaven range (I think). I am glad I decided to do something different with him to the rest if the unit. I'd recommend this to anyone, as he makes a great Warlord model. Making him different from the rank and file means he looks better if you ever do decide to use him as a warlord. (From what I read, many players don't take stormvermin units, preceding to keep the extra points for more core, so this is quite likely.)

3. "Focus on the candy". 
Stormvermin models are pretty detailed, so to speed things up, consider only doing details (layering, edge highlighting etc.) on the command (champion, musician, standard bearer) and whatever other models will be at the front. Because stormvermin are highly detailed, with lots of spikes, nooks and crannies, they look absolutely fine (imho) with only basecoats and a Devlan Mud wash. Models with lots of flatter surfaces are harder to get away with for this I think, as they just tend to look too dark and there isn't enough contrast.

Let me know what you think!

In other news... 
...I spent most evenings this week working on my secret high elf project. I decided to go with white shields and green gems as they seem to work best. I might keep pure warlock purple shields for champions however as I think it looks very striking. That will match the warlock purple edging on the chainmail coat and should look pretty good.
(Models below have had washes, but no highlights or details - e.g. eyes aren't done)

 The problem with painting spear elves is the shields. Getting a decent white, even off a Skull White undercoat, takes at least 3-4 thin coats as far as I can tell so far. Doing 30 shields x4 coats each the other night nearly drove me mad!

TIP: As they are fiddly, and to maximize the speed, I started by mounting all the shields on either end of some pens using blu tack. I could then do one, rotate the pen in my left hand and do the other shield, set them down, pick up another pen and repeat.

Next up, Elven faces.

*Squeek*