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Ok so decided to try out WHFB and after winning an unpainted High Elf Army on ebay (still waiting for it to turn up:ireful2: ) bought some spearmen to make up a larger unit.

So onto the test scheme, here are the first 3 painted elves. I've tried to use a really muted pallette completely at odds with my normal painting style but I'm quite pleased with the results (well I was till I saw I'd forgotten the gem on the back of the hand holding the spear).

I like these well enough. However, consider the following:

You may go crazy painting all that white.

With such a limited color palette and low contrast, making special units and characters look special will be more difficult.

If you can overcome these, you'll be good to go!

whatisntart wrote:You may go crazy painting all that white.

There doesn't seem to be much shading/variation in the white, so if that's the color he primes with, it'll be a snap, so long as he stays "in the lines" while painting the rest of the model.

Not sure if I'd call bright white and shining gold a "muted palette," but if you're happy with it, it isn't a bad look, by any means. A very High Elf look, to be sure.

One thing I definitely do not like about these guys are the eyes. They won't be a focal point of the face, with the helmets obscuring most things from most angles, so I'd try and keep them simple and subtle. Right now, I wouldn't see them on the table, but if I picked up that middle model to look a bit closer, the "crazy eyes" would kill it, for me. If you want to detail them, try and get a bit more consistent. The left hand model is acceptable, if a bit on the oversized "anime eyes" side. The right hand model, though looks good - the eyes are properly sized and shaped with a nice, neutral expression. Shoot for that when you're painting you other models.

One final point - the metallics. I assume you were trying to use the silver to highlight the gold, probably by drybrushing? Silver on gold can definitely work, but right now it looks muddled. I would still probably drybrush the scales for expediency, but try and be a bit more subtle about it - less paint, more passes, and a bit of consistency in the direction of stroke. For the rest, I'd lean towards edgelining with a mix of gold and silver, followed possibly by a few extreme edges in pure silver. The point is to use silver to simulate brighter reflections, not to change the color of the metal, which is what it's doing now.