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Well, after some time out I have decided to return with an Alaitoc Eldar build and a blog to keep it going!

I've painted a ranger/Pathfinder squad already. It took 5-6hours from primed to finish and it was my first time using Vallejo paints. So far so good.

I let myself down with a couple of mouldlines though..... must do better! (and pay more attention to the building part of it)


Next up is a guardian squad which i'll do as a bit of a WIP pics-wise as i'm using a few new techniques via an airbrush and during blending.

Nice painting.

How did you do the blue?

Arran

QFT. Blue is definitely striking. The camo is superb as well, you certeinly have some skills dude!!

Thanks guys.

I used a blue similar to UM blue and used really thinned down washes of that colour plus a lighter shade for 2 layers of progressively lighter highlights. I then did the same the other way for the shadows, two progressively darker washes which were a bit wetter to flow into the recesses a bit better.

The camo was done from a bleached bone all over basecoat adding 3 more colours each one darker than the last. I then added shadows using washes of thrakka green and devlan mud where shadows would be. I added a drop of varnish into the washes to help to avoid any nasty puddles forming.

Thats the guardians basecoated now then its onto shading/highlighting the blue. I've primed the helmets seperately so I can paint them with having to deal with overspray. I'll have a yellow contrasting panel on the 'face' part of the helmet with the remainder in blue.

I love airbrushes. It took 20 mins to basecoat the minis and i used a 3rd of one of those pots of pre-mixed/thinnned paint (50% paint / 10% alcohol / 40% distilled water). Basecoating is a joy and good practise on the airbrush for the next project (I'll be doing all my blending on my 2 Wraithlords using the airbrush).

I'll post up a couple of before and after shots tonight showing the basecoat and blended difference. Until then.....then.

Could i ask where you got that airbrush , i have been looking for a high quality one for quite some time now.

Thanks ~UnDeAd~

Looks pretty cool so far.

~UnDeAd~ wrote:Could i ask where you got that airbrush , i have been looking for a high quality one for quite some time now.

Thanks ~UnDeAd~

Its an Iwata Eclipse with a quick release connector for the hose to make life easy. Its really easy to use and strip for cleaning

Well, I did the highlighting and shading and found i brought the highlight up too high. I then decided to wash the model in Citadel Asurmen Blue wash to shadow the detail and tone everything down a bit. I'm not 100% happy with it but its hard to tell at this stage without any contrasting colours to compare. Once I paint up the weapons and details I'll consider whether or not to re-do the highlights.

I basecoated, roughly, the face plated with Iyanden yellow foundation paint also. I'll go back and re-touch the edges with a fine brush later. Thats all I got done today but I'll hopefully get finished up tomorrow.

I've already started building one of the Wraithlords so they'll be next.....

Thank you for replying about the airbrush , and may i say great job on your eldar so far.

Keep up the great work

~UnDeAd~

Great rangers.

Well, didn't get as much done during the weekend as I'd hoped but that's life (6 week old daughter being 'life').

I did manage to start on the bases of the Guardians and tidy the helmets a bit. i think I'll be ok with the blue scheme as it is, once I got the base painted my previous fears of dumbing the colours done faded. Most of my time was taken up prepping the Wraithlord. Off on a bit of tangent with that one and got carried away while waiting for PVA and paint to dry......

Here's a pic of my work area also, note complete lack of window nearby. I'll be moving it into another room soon with much better lighting which is good. I would've been stumped without my daylight lamp thats for sure.


Next time I'll have a pic of the finished Guardian squad. That'll be my target for this week, then it's Wraithlord time.

Well that's the Guardian squad finished. I'll have a few more of them to do and probably won't post any more Guardian pics up unless i do a group shot of all the squads.

I changed the colour contrast on the mask part of the helmets from the original yellow to black. I just wasn't happy with the yellow as it was a bit much (cartoony even). I'm happy with the black as it ties in with the rangers too. I did the black on the Rangers as they're supposed to be stealthy, not much point in a camo cloak and a yellow face! Mind you blue isn't exactly disruptive either

I'm currently prepping 2x Falcon Grav Tanks for priming and then airbrushing. I've decided to paint the upper parts of the hull in blue and the underside in black. I've also decided to paint these seperately using an airbrush to shade/highlight the panels for the upper hull. The bottom hull will be metallic black. I'm also using the Forge World Falcon type 2 hull extensions and vehicle upgrades as they look better IMO.

And while all this is going on I'll make the most of the airbrush being set to 'blue' and prep my Farseer squad, Dire Avengers and the 2nd Wraithlord. My first Wraithlord is already built and primed ready for paint.

One thing that's a pain is the FW falcon parts. I'll have to warm them up in hottish water to flex some of the components into the correct profile to match the hull. Not a big deal really but a pain none the less. I also had to remove a fair bit of resin to get them to fit squarely too, cue Dremel !

I SHOULD get everything prepped for priming and painting the blue base by next weekend. Fingers crossed........

QUICK UPDATE:

Got a lot more done than I expected to today. Weather was pants which helped The seperate hull bits on the left will be getting black airbrushed onto them ASAP (I ran out of black rpimer to do those bits!)

I'll get the Dire Avengers, Guardians and Farseer squad prepped during the wekk. Pressure's off now so i don't need to rush them

What did you use to create the shading on the guardians? you have the air brush but did you do anything else to it?

I brushed on with a medium sized brush heavily thinned layers (6-ish parts water to 1 part paint) of 2x shades first then 2x highlights concentrating more highlights on the upper body. In fact i don't think i highlighted the bottom half apart from the top of the feet. I suppose it would be termed as Zenithal highlighting. I prefer this method to the traditional GW fine-line-on-the-edges highlights as it looks more 'realistic'. It's also quicker.

I also used some red to darken the deepest shadows with out going towards black too much. The blue highlights can end up slightly chalky so I've been glazing the entire mini with Asurmen Blue from the Citadel washes. I also always use a white primer unless the object is going to be pure, or close to, black anyway.

The layers dry really fast so I do one mini at a time painting on a thin highlight/shade layer then moving on to the next. By the time I'm on the last one the first is done and i can crack on again. It takes time to build up a few successive layers for each stage but not as much as you'd think. I do the same for weapons and any other non-metallic part of the mini. I'm sure plenty of mini painters use this method already......

As for the airbrush, I will only use it for shading/highlighting on bigger minis and vehicles for now.

A quick hours airbrushing for tonight and pretty pleased so far. I put black on the Falcons lower hulls and underside of the turret, black on the crew chairs, brown basecoat on the weapons including the Wraithlord weapons and base coated the bases on the Wraithlords and some Death Company guys I happened to have handy when i still had paint left in the airbrush.

Saved a lot of time yet again. Its time to do the blue next so I'll need to mask off the upper hull panels individually and mask bits of the weapons and Wraithlords. Should be good though. looking forward to it and the paints mixed and ready for the mid tones/ basecoat.

I was going to build up my Dire Avengers , Farseer squad and another Guardian squad this week but I think I'll wait til I've done the Grav tanks and Wraithlord first. I'm off on monday (woohoo!) so i can do those squads then.

Cool work Ezekiel, i love my airbrush as well, it just speeds so much up!

Some good progress at the moment, well done!

And btw, aren't we all off on monday?!

Keep it up. What are the Space Marines in the bottom right going to be? Are you doing Flesh Tearers as a side project?

Thanks !


Alas, I am not off during most of the public holidays during the year but this one I am. I'll no doubt be given tasks by the other half to fill my day when I'd rather be painting !

Vet Sgt Ezekiel wrote:I'll no doubt be given tasks by the other half to fill my day when I'd rather be painting !

Nobody sympathises more than me on this point! I have to earn Warhammer time. Managed to negotiate four hours the other day in exchange for a non-grumbling (on my part) shopping trip for a pushchair.

Flashman wrote:Keep it up. What are the Space Marines in the bottom right going to be? Are you doing Flesh Tearers as a side project?

I'm planning on doing a Blood Angel army once my Eldar army is at a reasonable size (2000pts). The minus are the old Death Company ones that I've had for a couple of years and never painted. I ordered Sanguinary Guard and the new DC to use mostly for bits for the army as a whole. I've got a decent red recipe and some conversion ideas so I'm keen to get started soon (although I am considering buying a Revenant Titan first).

Lol, should have just looked at your sig really. Were you inspired by WD in the early 1990s? They used to focus heavily on Blood Angel and Alaitoc armies around that period (they had 'sister' armies for Epic too). It was a common match up for battle reports.

Yes, indeed that's the theme I suppose. I started out with Space Marine back in the day based on an epic battle report in WD which I still read from time to time even now!

I've got some interesting plans for terrain and making apocalypse sized forces for my Alaitoc Eldar and Ba/Imperial. Watch this space or blog even!

Blue is down (an hour of airbrushing the blue onto everything) and so's the masking tape for some highlighting and shading. Each panel will get done in turn.

The falcons were easy enough to do as the panels have very prominent gaps around them. 30 mins start to finish for both masked to what you see. I'll get started on saturday and should get all the panels done. I'll also shade some areas free hand.

Got the guts of the airbrushing done today and pretty pleased so far. I've still got a lot to do but stage one is done. A few mistakes that I can see but they're not that noticable really, fine for gaming.

More tomorrow ( 2x Falcons finished and the shading airbrushed onto the Wraithlords)

Wow ! they look great. A step by step on the airbrushing would be amazingly useful.

Thanks !

1: Spray the basecoat on.
2: Mask the panels so each one you are about to spray isn't going to overspray onto another.
3: Mix your darker shade and spary each masked panel from the bottom using less paint towards the top to highlight. Sometimes the bit you've masked will be shaped in a way that the highlight will be in the middle and you have to darken from top and bottom. Common sense prevails, if i make a mistake or it looks odd I can go back later and sort it using my base colour.
4: Once all the panels are done some of them looked 'offset' I basically had to freehand some shading to tie some panels into one another i.e one that were bent over a highlighted edge, the highlight would naturally continue along the edge rather than where you finish on an individual panel.
5: Spray black onto vents, exhausts etc.
6: Spray some varnish on ready for picking out the panel lines using diluted oil paint (brown usually). I've still to do this by the way !

Thats all I've done for the Falcons. You can do a highlight spray doing the opposite edges in from the shaded side (duh). I didn't do this as my base colour was a lot brighter than i expected and i used the shade colour to do all the work.

Points to note:
1: Paint dilution should be 10 water (distilled) to 1 part iso alcohol. This mix is then mixed with your paint of choice at least 50/50 with GW or P3 paints. This is really important.
2: Just put a small amount (10ml) at a time in the airbrush and flush it regularly with alcohol to ensure the needle doesn't get clogged. if this happens you'll use more air, nothing will happen then SPLAT! nasty mess of paint.
3: Gently build up the layers and take your time.

This man here inspired me to use an airbrush : http://akaranseth.over-blog.com/

Well, apart from highlighting the targeting crystal, applying decals and picking out one or two details in tinbitz the Falcons are done.

Should get the Wraithlords done or close to done tomorrow

Holy crap! This is the best eldar army I've ever seen. The blue is deep and rich and that's what makes these guys so amazing. I always hated the stock blues gw had.