New Look, New Name, New Everything! Same Blog, Though.

Look! Everything's different!

Updating this blog has been a project in the background for a while. Finally some real headway has been made!

• The Gallery has been updated with lovely new photos and - if you're not looking at this on a mobile (because making it device responsive is proving to be very annoying) - a slideshow (for those of us who find clicking individual links a hassle)
• There's an "About" page if you've ever found yourself wondering "Jesus, why?!"
• The blog has a new title (and url)!

I've also added a "Followers List" to celebrate (or shame?) my readers. There are still a few bugs to work out - I'm trying to make the "Follow" button work so give it a click and I'll know if I've fixed it. (Ah it was worth a shot.) Actual bugs I'm working on are mostly to do with the mobile view, so bear with me as layout and images there are adjusted in the near future.

In the meantime I hope you like the new look - and new name! - and there will be another post with more new stuff very soon.

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!

Vylka Fenrika - Test Model #2

I really hope I can keep up this pace of posting. At least we're catching up on the number of posts I managed the last time I revived this blog. One thing I hope to do in the future is post more work-in-progress shots and maybe even some step-by-step guides, allowing me to eke out more material for my blog without actually painting more. (Although my painting process is less paint A, then B, then C as it is paint A, paint B, go back and fix A, maybe add some more shade to A, get bored painting C and start on another bit of the model until I feel like finishing C, and then fixing messy bits of A and B, and then C. I'm not sure this would be useful to anyone except as a warning.)

In the meantime, while I have recently completed some models and have one awaiting varnishing on my table, I also have a backlog of pieces of which I haven't shared any photos, and they'll carry the blog through at least another six posts. I will, however, make no further reference to the fact that they were completed some time ago, as this will help the blog seem more current and up to date. Ah, the magic of storytelling.

Right, onto the post (please imagine everything going wibbly-wobbly to the sound of a harp):

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A while back I painted a space wolf model for my brother, who has an entire space wolf army but doesn't like painting. The idea was to create a quick and easy-to-replicate colour scheme that I could either paint for him, or lay down the base colours and let him work on the details in his own time. This was the result:

Unfortunately, he didn't really like it. He wanted to move away from the 41st millennium colour scheme of the wolves which he thought was more than a little gaudy and cartoon-like. Fair enough. To be honest, while there elements of this paint job I really like, I have to admit there's room for improvement.

So, with 30K Vylka Fenrika as my inspiration and guide, I starting cooking up another colour scheme that was quick, easy to replicate, and reflected the gritty era of the Horus Heresy. It didn't take long for me to envision blasting various greys with an airbrush and then adding depth with washes. It sounded easy and I figured I'd have it ready the next time I saw my brother.

Several months later I dusted off the second test wolf and got to work:

Even the photos got better!

Despite the time lag I was delighted with the result, and so was my brother. I'm really happy with the grimdark, Christopher Nolan's Batman-esque vibe it has. It didn't even take too long to finish once I got started.

The greys were all airbrushed with two different tones (I think German grey and cold grey from Vallejo), washed with brown and black (GW washes), and edge-highlighted with a light grey (I want to say fortress grey, or whatever GW call that now). The bronze was warplock bronze highlighted with runelord brass and a little silver, with a brown wash somewhere in the middle. the rest was just filling in the details and making sure to use lots of dark washes to tie everything together.

Anyway, as soon as my brother gets round to giving me some actual units to paint, I hope to get a lot more of these guys done. Until then, happy painting!