Eldar Guardians

It's been a little while since I've posted. Painting has slowed a bit but I still have a backlog of photos to share. This is one of them.

I started painting these guys ages ago but only finished them in April. I have a masochistic streak so every gem that wasn't on the gun was painted as a gem. I am beginning to regret this approach as I have a lot of infantry still to paint. Sadly, there is no going back now.

Different angle of the second group.

 

Given these are just rank and file, I didn't want to do 20 close up shots, so I just picked a couple of the more interesting ones. 

There's still the weapon platforms to do. When I get them finished and get a HQ done up (that farseer does not actually belong to my army), I'll do a family photo of the whole lot.

Until next time, happy painting! 

Farseer

I decided to have a go at a traditional colour scheme for this farseer. I pinched the spear for a conversion for another model, so decided to give this farseer a wriathblade sword instead.

I'm really happy with the bright, vibrant red on the inner robe. It's a combination of burgundy and traffic red acrylic paints from Molotow, cadmium red oil paint with blue mixed in for shadows and yellow and white for highlights (I think it was a blue). I decided to redo the final highlights in acrylic (once dry), with whatever bright red, yellow, and white I had to hand (used sparingly).

Until next time, happy painting!

Bejewelled Eldar Rangers

Aaaand we're right back again - this time, I hope, for good!

With 10th edition 40k around the corner I have now successfully failed to play a single game of 9th. That sounds depressing, and it is. However, after visiting Warhammer Fest this year I am more inspired than ever to get into regular painting and finally get an army completely, 100% painted. Hopefully that army will be my Eldar.

I have no idea if Troops are even required anymore, but I've been working on two units of rangers for a long, long time and I've finally finished them. Best of all, I've got a basing scheme for the whole army!

I'm also toying with a new way to display models - video. It's such a pain trying to get photographs of entire units (because I haven't learnt how to image stack to make everything in focus) so - drumroll please - in all their motion picture glory, I present my Eldar rangers!

First time taking video and since I already had my DSLR out I just used that. I think next time I'll try out the GoPro, see what the difference is like. In any case, it wouldn't be complete without a few select shots.

As you can see, I made life hard for myself by painting everything that could be a gem as a gem (a big part of why these models took so long). I just can't seem to stop! At least it makes them stand out from most other armies you'll see on the table.

I currently have some shining spears on my painting table, but before you see them there'll be a dive into disease as I show of some Nurgle models I've completed in the recent past (and just got round to photographing).

Until next time, happy painting!

Wave Hi!

I mentioned earlier that I've been working on my Craftworld Eldar army. Most of this has been preparing the bases (I'm making fancy craftworld bases, you're going to love them!) but I did also manage to paint a couple of transports to go with my bikes. Wave hi to my wave serpents! (I'll see myself out):

There are actually two wave serpents photographed above (the last image is the second model) but as my light box is fairly small it wasn't possible to get them both in the same shot (and I wasn't prepared to break out my old photography set up just to take pictures of two models that are, more or less, the same).

These models were a great mix of "fun to paint" and "oh god kill me now this is sooo boring". I had a lot of fun airbrushing and painting the gems (I like painting gems) but trying to wash and the edge highlight all the grooves was such a pain. Next time I have an Eldar tank to paint I'm going to push the highlights with the airbrush more and forego the edge highlight - that should help a lot. 

This is also the second (or maybe third?) time I've used GW's gemstone paints (on the canopy, not the gems - gotta do gems right). It's not as clean as it could have been but I'm pretty happy all the same, and it saves me having to paint the inside of the canopies which I never plan to do. I'll probably never use gemstone paints for actual gems, but for stuff like canopies or shiny metallics I think they have a place.

Anyway, hope you like them. There'll be more Eldar stuff in the future but next up it's some more dwarves.

Until then, happy painting!

Guardians of Ulthwé - Finishing Part-Painted Models

This is exciting - I am running out of half-painted models!

I have two big concerns with my miniature collection. First, about two thirds of it is unpainted and/or unbuilt. This is a daunting prospect. Second, for a very long time about 30% of my models have been in a semi-painted state.

I get bored easily. I start a lot of projects, assembling, undercoating, and even base coating models before deciding I'd prefer to be working on something else and setting them aside for later.

Later is usually a very long time coming.

So, over the years I've amassed a collection of models at various stages of painting. In my quest to have all the miniatures I own painted, that pile has been a priority.

With this post, my half-painted pile has shrunk to just two units and a character!

I didn't realise how close I was until I had to go hunting for already undercoated models to paint. Rummaging around my boxes of miniatures, I eventually found my old Eldar guardians, sprayed purple as a base coat for my old Eldar colour scheme. 

I don't plan to field guardians in my army so, rather than painting them in my new colour scheme (and to give myself a break from painting blue), I decided to make them in Craftworld Ulthwé colours.

Three days later, said unit was fully painted. For me (an infamously slow painter), it was a goddamn record.

They're not as sharp as the newer plastics, but I think overall they're still some pretty fine models that don't look out of place among the more recent sculpts.

Painting black with an airbrush was a breeze.

I started with a mix of black and German Grey (Vallejo), highlighted with German Grey, then with Pale Greyblue (Vallejo). Doing everything with the airbrush made the transition from dark to light very smooth, but they looked a little bright for my taste so I gave them a heavy wash of Nuln Oil (GW) to bring back the black.

For three days' work these guys are a complete triumph. I'm really happy with the result and am more motivated than ever to finish off the part-painted models on my table. The only question is, do I work on the character that I'm not terribly fond of, or the twenty-five skeletons that will take me an absolute age?

While I work on an answer, happy painting!

Dire Avengers

I do seem to be painting a lot of blue lately.

Dire Avengers are the backbone of an Eldar aspect army and were some of the first Eldar models I ever owned. (I don't think I'm ever going to get used to calling them Aeldari or Asuryani.)

I put my Dire Avengers together a long time ago, undercoated them, and never got round to painting them. (Although I did base coat my exarch.) As I've been having a lot of success airbrushing blues I decided now was the time to change that (the unpaintedness of the Dire Avengers, not my recent success in painting blue - long may it last.)

I'm pretty happy with how they look (especially the simple but effective bases) but will definitely change a few things next time round.

I'm not a fan of the GW's Gemstone Paints for painting actual gemstones. While painting them the old-fashioned way is time consuming, I think the effect is much, much better and worth the extra effort. Gemstone Paints are better reserved for things like vehicle screens or other unusual items.

I'm also disappointed with the Ceramite White (GW) I used to paint the cloth and helmets. I thought it would save a little time (because white can be so annoying to get right) but it took about as many layers to get the coverage I wanted as starting with grey would have. It doesn't flow like the other paints in GW's Base range, either - much less smooth and generally not nice to use. Next time I'll just go with my normal white recipe.

While my Craftworld colours are bone and light blue, I want to keep my a more traditional palette for my aspect warriors. (It's well-established canon that the Eldar's motto is "Fear the Rainbow".) I'm looking forward to getting some other aspects on my table and maybe take a break from blue for a while.

It does get a little repetitive.

Until then, happy painting!

Eldar Windrider Jetbikes

I have an Eldar (Aeldari) army. Actually, I have three. None of them are fully painted.

To be fair, most of my main army - Craftworld Eldar or Asuryani - is made of metal and I have had more of it painted in the past, but as I got better at painting I decided to strip them back to bare metal with the intention of repainting them. They are still waiting for some attention.

I am also in the process of creating Craftworld-style bases for all my Eldar, and moving them to 32mm bases as I think that looks much better. This has delayed my dream of a fully-painted space-elf army more than a little.

When Games Workshop finally brought out the new plastic Eldar Jetbikes I immediately added two boxes to my collection. After an embarrassingly long time on my "to paint" list, I finally settled on a new colour scheme for my Craftworld and got to work.

I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Here's a brief rundown of how I painted these -

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Most of the work was done by airbrush. To make life easier for myself I didn't glue the riders' heads on or attach the riders to the bikes until after painting. Everything was undercoated Grey (Vallejo Model Air Primer). 

Airbrushing - Blue (riders and bikes) 

I used the following paints in the following order to achieve my Craftworld colour:

• Magic Blue (Vallejo) - basecoat

• Dark Blue (Vallejo) - shading

• Teclis Blue (GW) - highlight #1

• ~2:1 Mix of Teclis Blue (GW) and Wolf Grey (Vallejo) - highlight #2

Airbrushing - Bone (bike pattern and helmets) 

The bone was also airbrushed where possible. The patterns on the bikes were created by masking off the blue and simply spraying over it. I toyed with the highlighting mixture a bit so it came out closer to Ivory in the end.

• Sand (Vallejo) - Basecoat

• ~1:1 Mixture of Sand and Ivory (both Vallejo)  - highlights

The remainder was brushwork and it didn't take all that long. To make the blue sharper I added a wash of ~1:1 Black and Dark Prussia Blue (Vallejo) around details and in crevices, and a highlight of Fenrisian Grey (GW) on prominent edges. I also shaded my airbrushed bone with Seraphim Sepia and Rakarth Flesh (both GW) to tie it better with the bone that wasn't airbrushed (which was basecoated with Rakarth Flesh because that might be my favourite paint ever). The gems are Liche Purple (old GW) highlighted by mixing with Ivory and shaded by mixing with black.

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One drawback to attaching the riders to the bikes after painting - some of the legs scraped paint of the bikes when working them into position. Luckily the damage was minor and easy to repair, but as I have other jetbikes still to paint (Drukhari and Harlequins) I might have to rethink my assembly strategy.

I also noticed something (I thought) was very odd while doing some touch-ups with the airbrush - lighter blues applied much more smoothly over the darker ones than the other way round. This is totally the opposite of what you get when painting with an ordinary brush. With that in mind, in future I'm going to try just airbrushing from dark to light (not middle → shading → highlighting) as I think it could be a time saver and would produce cleaner results.

Until next time, happy painting!

Last Post of 2011

While it's still December I thought I'd add another photo. This is a test model for my guardians and I'm quite happy with him. Now I just have 19 more to do.

Next up though I'm going to be painting about 90 wood elf models so keep an eye out here for the first ones over the next two weeks.

Happy new year!
Sam

Tabletop +1

Alright, so far I've only posted Tabletop Standard and I thought it was time to change that. Here are a couple of my recent pieces painted to TT+1.