What am I doing wrong? (mass painting)

[gapton]

Few days ago I started a topic about how to paint a unit quickly.

Basically, spending the least amount of time and getting the best results out of it. While that thread became a bit focused on the use of wet palette I found an article online:
http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles/1619-speed-painting-lesson-2-step-by-step-mini

So I basecoated 28 Skinks after reading it and I tried to accomplish a good result with the least steps:


1 = step 1 , 2 = step 2 and so on

1) basecoat
2) drybrush a deep base colour
3) highlight 1
4) highlight 2
5) highlight 3

While the top one looks good enough to me, it takes quite long. With 28 Skinks this isn't going to be completed soon considering I only have a handful of hours per week.

The Skinks in step (3) looks very patchy. Light tones and dark tones are extremely jaggy and "unclean". The "pure-black" parts in the creases are especially ugly it seems.

What did I do wrong? I can use some tips/advice.

 

[n810]

You might just want to cover all of the black with a dark blue in the first basecoat,
this should help the shadows not be as harsh, also you could add in a blue wash for step 4.

 

[Sitzkrieg]

Try this:

- base coat (grey is the best for the color scheme you are using).
- deep base (one base color of your choice, for ex.blue/green) no drybrush!!!
- drybrush medium base (for ex. 3/1 base color/white)
- drybrush highlights (just one time) just add more white color
- wash with gw inks (on the whole model...like a dipping, but a little less ^^)

 

[forlustria]

I got a pretty good result buy base coating light sea blue (via air brush) over the whole model and then giving it a wash of druchii violet followed by a second wash(once the first one was dry) of asurman blue.
Then all I need to do is paint weapons/scales ect.

Reason I do this is im not great at highlighting and the double washes kinda work as a reverse highlight.
will try and get a picture up soon.

 

[Soteks Prophet]

Generally I go- basecoat, highlights, wash or basecoat wash layer.

I think if you can incoprate a wash into it after highlighting then you'd be ok.