So our local gaming group is doing an Escalation league (I think that's what you call it when you start with a small army and build it up by chunks in regular intervals?) that will be hitting 2000 points by the time we're all done. We all decided to start new armies for this and so I picked Eldar. Originally it was going to be a wraithguard force but after some thought I opted for something a bit more mobile. Enter the ranger, jetbike (and Vypers) and warwalker scouting force. One goal for this project is to also utilize colours I don't commonly use and push my painting skills with some new techniques and tools. Some modelling may come into play as well but to be honest... I'm just terrible at it. Ok so without further ado here's the beginnings of my two ranger squads!



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The goal with the rangers is to have some dark Cloaks they'd use for hiding but I want to spot out some harsh colour where their armour is showing. For this force the armour will be: Bright. Flaming. Orange. Not literally flaming though unless it frustrates me too much and I decide that I'm going back to painting my chaos army.

Oh and the guns will be bone coloured, across the whole army. Kinda trying to show off this wraithbone lore where I can.

Oh and purple soul gems everywhere. This last bit is more a written reminder for myself to use purple cause I'm liable to forget and do something completely different from my original plan.

Looks like an interesting start. What colours were you planning on using? And any particular craft world or back story?

The main colours will be orange for the armor, bone for the weapons/undercarriages of the bikes and purple soul gems. I'm just putting the finishing touches on the ranger guns, will post that as soon as it's done. On the bikes I will be trying a new technique on the large flat hoods they have, it should look good mixed with some freehand.

As for craftworld I won't be following any theme. I'm personally a big fan of the exodites thing with the Eldar living almost like amazons or something so what I'm going for here is an Eldar civilization that survives by staying mobile and quick. Hence they are all either Rangers that can sneak around or on a jet bike of some form, very guerrilla hit and run force. Oh and war walkers because they seem like a ranger's heavy support

For this league we will all be writing back stories and I will post it here once I have it fleshed out.
Thanks for checking out my project thus far!

Sounds cool. As someone who has orange eldar, I suggest undercoating white and using a watered down orange paint as a wash. Then using a very weak black wash to give a little definition to the armour.

The black robes you are doing can be done using several heavy black washes over the white undercoat.

Bone can be done using a mud and sepia wash over the white undercoat, or using a watered down bone paint and a light sepia, mud or black wash on top.

Alright guys so I decided to do one test model to completion and here is the results. I think I'm quite happy with it, just need to figure out what kinda base I want to do for them. Lemme know what you think!

Looking pretty cool. The dark robes would go well with an urban base - it would help make the orange really pop to have a base which blends in with the robes, as well as for regular guardians (if they are going to be orange).

Looking good!

Love how the dark cloak compliments the orange armour. As for the bases I agree with SilverMK2, an urban them would look good with the bright orange.

Alright then an urban theme it is! I'll be doing some research to see what I'll be doing for that but any tips and tricks you guys want to give me here I'll gladly look into!

I got my farseer mounted on his bike btw and had my first foray with green stuff. Not exactly happy with how the gs turned out but I'll post a pic up here tomorrow and you guys can let me know what you think of the Farseer.

Thanks for checking out my project log guys and hopefully I'll have some entertaining picks to show you in the coming weeks of this armies progress.

There is a good tutorial on urban rubble here.

nice start - who doesn't love orange and black Eldar? ; )
If you want to beef up your orange areas, maybe try a final wash of yellow to pick up the highlights and to give it more depth. Keep it up!

Hey, nice stuff.

I like the idea of an eldar scouting force loitering around a city.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
There is a good tutorial on urban rubble here.

Wow that vid was really helpful. My first plan for how I was going to accomplish the rubble was a lot more difficult than that method. Thanks SilverMK2 for bringing that vid to my attention. I'll have to go buy some cork today and try basing the one guy I have completed.

I've also found this: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/604249.page#7008563 And I believe this is going to be the pattern I use for the hoods on my jetbikes. Except instead of blue I'll make it my obnoxious orange. Thanks for the tip on the yellow as well. I will have to purchase some yellow next time I'm in the city (the closest gw to me is a 2 hour drive away). Sorry I didn't get my Farseer posted yesterday but it was super busy. I'll post him today after work though I promise.

Thx as always guys for checking my project out and posting any ideas and tips you have!

Nice paint job. I love the color scheme.

I do like that water patterning for the vehicles - I'd have an experiment on a non-essential model first though. Using blues is going to be very different to using oranges. Blues tend in my experience to be quite opaque pigments, while reds, oranges and yellows are much more translucent. This means that the difference in the colours that you use for the orange can't be too much, otherwise you're going to be stuck with a red base, with orange on top which I'm guessing will be too dark. Try dark orange, orange, and yellow for the stippling, and then yellow+white and white for the final linework.

 finnan wrote:
I do like that water patterning for the vehicles - I'd have an experiment on a non-essential model first though. Using blues is going to be very different to using oranges. Blues tend in my experience to be quite opaque pigments, while reds, oranges and yellows are much more translucent. This means that the difference in the colours that you use for the orange can't be too much, otherwise you're going to be stuck with a red base, with orange on top which I'm guessing will be too dark. Try dark orange, orange, and yellow for the stippling, and then yellow+white and white for the final linework.

I've got 4 jetbikes I got from a friend for 10$, they have no riders or bases so they will be my test models. For the colours to try this out with I will be using jokaero orange as a base, then fire dragon bright then move to troll slayer orange then a mix of troll slayer orange with skull white and then skull white for highlights. I'll finish off with a wash of fuegan orange. Once I get a yellow pot my second test will be done with a yellow instead of the troll/slayer/white mix then white highlights. At the end of the day if I don't like that I'm gunna go back to freehand designs like my original idea was.

So as promised here are the pics of the farseer. It's my first attempt at green stuff so it's a bit... warped but It's passable I think. Trying to figure out if the pose makes him look like he's casting some sith force lightning on some poor shmuck or if he's reaching down to pull someone onto his bike...

Nice. I like how it looks like the farseer is directing it's psychic energy at something below it.

Very good looking gs work there!

Alright they're not quite finished but I figured I have enough done to kind of give you guys an idea of what they'll look like as a unit on the table. I've just got some detail work to get done and then a metric ton of soul gems to paint. Once completed that'll be my two scout squads I will be using as objective campers done. After this will be getting my squad of jetbikes up and running and then the vypers. For those wondering this is my starting 500 point force.

HQ- Farseer on jetbike with singing spear
Troop- Windrider jetbikes (4) with (1) shuriken cannon
Troop- Rangers (5)
Troop- Rangers (5)
Fast- Vyper with brightlance
Fast- Vyper with brightlance
Fast- Vyper with brightlance

The idea is that this will be an Eldar force surviving by hiding in abandoned settlements and urban areas. Always on the run and staying one step ahead of the enemy with the help of the precognitive powers of their farseer leader. They specialise in surprise, ambush, guerrilla and blitz attacks with an emphasis on speed and stealth. This is the first time I'm playing Eldar so I don't know if this list is all that competitive but it seems fun to play. At any rate for now it's what I bought so I'm stuck with it. Our league will go up by 250 points every month once we start up to 2000 points by the end so I guess i'll have time to try it out and see how it fares. The plan is in the future to add war walkers aswell (to infiltrate with the rangers) and to bolster the existing units with either larger squads or more of them. Currently I'm liking the idea of more rangers and using the windriders as the farseer retinue but the lack of variety amongst the ranger 5 man box set is deterring me since they'd all look the same from box to box. Anyways guys thank you as always for checking out my project and I really appreciate your comments!

These guys looks great. Love the fluff you have going for them.

Ok time for another update! Sorry for the blackout guys it's been super busy here and it took me much longer to finish off them Rangers than I initially hoped. With that out of the way I have officially started painting my bikes. Will update with a pic once my test bike is complete (I got distracted by trying out a paint scheme for my SoB army). So far I have the base colours on the bike and tonight I will start the water effect trials... in orange (surprise surprise)! Also started digging around to find some magnets for my Vypers because I have every intention of making the weapons swappable. I've also signed up for an Escalation league at a GW store 200 Km away and so I have official deadlines now to have a fully painted 2000 point army. Starts at 500 points in October, I'll be ready long before then for that. One requirement for it though is I'm supposed to make a 2x2 army display board. Never made one of those before and seeming as I will be doing urban basing this gives me quite the opportunity to get quite creative. I am both excited and scared s**tless of this part of the project. So without further ado I give to you my completed (and not yet based, so I guess not technically completed but I say technicalities) Rangers. TAH DAH! "Applaud Please"

Despite my complete lack of modesty all comments and critiques are greatly appreciated and all critiques will be taken to heart and help me cry myself to sleep at night... I mean thank you for your comments and I will take them to improve upon my work and hopefully impress you guys with future or present projects. So watcha guys think? Yay? Nay? I've wasted my time and should find a new hobby, maybe knitting? Thanks for checking out my stuff guys and have a great night!

Knitting is awesome, but I think you should probably stick to this for the moment

I think they're looking pretty cool - nice consistent paint job, good colour choices = thumbs up.
I'd consider doing the faceplates a different colour to the orange, just to make them pop a little bit more, and the same for the eyes. I'm tempted to say to use the same purple for the eyes, but that might be a bit too much... Deep red face plate and green eyes? Or perhaps a deep blue plate and light blue eyes...?

Looking good anyhow - keep it up

The purple, black, orange and home work really well together. With urban bases these guys will look great.

And props on a 200km commitment to getting a game in! That is pretty extreme but I guess Canada is quite spread out. Is there nothing more local?

Yeah I fought with myself over the faceplates for quite a while and in the end my indecisiveness made me just stick to the orange. Sadly I have no blues whatsoever but if I did have them I woulda made the eyes blue. For now black will have to suffice. Either that or I go with purple eyes. Honestly the eyes are so small I don't think it'll be the breaking point of too much purple. I'll look at some colour choices but I know I want to avoid black faceplates for fear of making them look to halloweeny (that's a word now). I do like the deep red idea, I may have to dig around and see if I have one that will suit.

And yeah sadly the closest GW is 200km away. I play weekly in my hometown with friends but for organized play that's the closest I got. And short of ordering online that's how far away I have to go to get models/paints. Some times I get stuck for weeks without being able to make a trip and get that one stupid colour I need. It'll be fun though I got a buddy who signed up with me so we will go in together and make a day of it. It'll be my first time playing in organized play too. Up to now only played in basements and garages. I'm gunna get whupped lol. Cool side note: one f the prizes of this league is the GW store will display the winners army in their cases for a month. My friends are like "So let me get this straight... You win and the prize is to have your army taken away for a month so you can't play with it?" I'm like "Yup" It's a pride thing I think. Oh and yeah you get more points for the painting challenges and having a fully painted army than you do for the actual games. So the person who wins should theoretically have a nice looking army, even if it doesn't perform well. Style over substance, just the way I like it!

Hmm now that I think of it maybe the faceplates will look good if I give them that "bone" colour I gave to my rifles? Then do red eyes? I think that might look good to be honest. Lemme know what you guys think. I'll juggle ideas while I get my jetbike test model done up and hopefully by the times it's finished I'll know what I'm gunna do.

As always thx for the comments guys, helps me to get ideas fleshed out and motivates me on this project!

I quite like the faceplates as is. Perhaps a black wash to !make them slightly darker and more stand-out-ish?

Painting the eye lens white then hitting with a bliue ink would look good IMO.

If you go to the gallery on the below image and zoom in you can see how the white shines through the blue on the dome of the lens, and the ink gives a gloss finish.

I considered bone for the face plates, but would that potentially blend them into the weapons?

SilverMK2: I love that idea! Consider it stolen. I'll be in the city on Wednesday and I'll pick up some blue ink. All your techniques are belong to me. As for the faceplates I never considered hitting it with a black wash... I have one and wouldn't take long, it'd definitely make it a different shade. I'll have to consider it as well. Currently I'm too scared to touch them because I like how the rest of them turned out and I'm worried about messing something up and then "accidentally" dropping them into a jar of brake fluid. I wish I had some spare helmets that I could do tests on. Sadly I do not.

Finnan: That is my biggest concern with doing that. I feel the bone faceplates would look good without a doubt but since so much of the focus is on the weapons (who'd of thought I'd be able to say that considering that safety vest orange!) the heads and guns might just look... samey. I've got plans, you and Silver have definitely given me some things to think about. Thank you both.

So onto more pictures!

DISCLAIMER: This is either a horribly misplaced image or the worlds ugliest Eldar. Either way this is what has distracted me for a few painting sessions. The goal with this model was to do a paint scheme that was incredibly quick and super simple to replicate on an army wide scale. I am a reallllllyyyy slow painter and so I was challenging myself to speed paint (note to self, easier to speed paint when you don't have to come up with a colour scheme as you go. Oh well lesson learned.) and to finally come up with the colour scheme for my SoB army. To be honest this is not the quality of work I'd normally aim for but the whole point of this model was to step out of my painting bubble. Important points were as follows: A) Any individual model must be able to be painted from a primed starting point in 20 minutes or under. B) Must use a minimal amount of paints to avoid getting caught in going overboard with details. C) Must be an intriguing scheme that stands out on the table enough to give the look and feel of a unified force when fielded.

Overall I'm fairly happy with her with only a few gripes. Maybe you guys can help me out with those. So firstly the paint is layered quite thick, a by-product of my indecision in what colours to go with. I basically used a colour looked at it and said "nope" then painted a new colour over top. So yeah that why the paints terribly layered and not smooth at all, most notably the gold on her gun. So first issue: Her hair, I like the white hair in the showcases but they are usually in black armour, not sure if the silver really compliments her hair very well. Should I just make it black? Not to mention I'm dissatisfied with how the white turned out, I know I was going quick but really, I expect better of myself. Secondly: Her gun. I want to do coloured plates on the guns, my CSM army just has battered silver bolters and I want variety amongst my armies. The last layer was gold but before that I had bright red (old GW blood red, don't know what it's called nowadays) Then I did black and finally gold. Any thoughts? Honestly I liked the red but since her tabard is red and the =I= logo is red too I felt it was too much. Black with a simple highlight looked good but I felt was too boring since the model has very little colour anyways. Any ideas you guys have on that would be greatly appreciated. Lastly the tabard and gloves: I don't hate them... But that's just it, I really can't say I love them either. They look good from my goal's perspective, the dark red looks fine, black gloves though I'm not sure about. Just thought doing the gloves the same colour as the tabard would be overkill.These last two items are honestly the least of my worries. Also she looks a lot better under "normal" lighting conditions. I find the super bright condensed white sun I call a lamp while I paint has washed out the variance in the shades of colour on her armour and tabard in particular. It also makes the hair look almost luminous, and not in a sexy shampoo commercial way. It's a shoddy excuse for poor painting but hey I'm trying to cut myself some slack on this one. Thanks in advance guys for any ideas you throw my way.

Ok now on the main event. I have the hood cover from my test bike done. To be honest I don't know what to think of it right now. I almost feel I won't know how I feel until I see it on the completed bike with all the other colours and bits attached. I didn't have sponges so I had to improvise on some bits. Keep in mind the wash is still very wet in this pic and I think the final outcome will be fairly different from this. I will post a dry pic tomorrow. In the meantime how do you guys feel about the technique? Think it's worth continuing with at this point or maybe I should go back to the drawing board on how to make these otherwise bland hoods be interesting.

Always a pleasure Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you once again for checking out the project thus far!

I'm liking the orange water effects : )
It is looking a bit flat though, so I think you might need to use more yellow for the last highlight colour to make it really stand out (the issue being that oranges can look quite brown depending on what shade/highlight colour you use. If you want a really strong, bright orange, I'd lean more towards the yellow side of things). The white ripple lines are looking very nice indeed though.
What colour wash did you give it in the end?

Like you say, it's looking a bit odd because you don't have the rest of the bike attached. Is the rest of the bike going to be black? That would certainly give the orange something contrast against.

I know what you mean about not being satisfied with colour schemes you're not happy because you haven't nailed the scheme. It took me a long time to find my Craftworld colours, and they certainly weren't what I expected them to be. Once you find them, it does make things a lot easier. My self-imposed Eldar colour rules are: two main colour blocks, and two highlight/detail colours, that way things don't get too fussy - so for me, orange/yellow and black (with red highlights) are my main colours, and bone and light blue are my detail colours. Good luck trying to find yours! (Although, I don't think you're too far off - you have your orange, black, bone and purple... maybe it's just your faceplates that are missing something... maybe black with purple eyes to tie into everything else?)
enough rambling... ; )

Just a small update to show the hood on the (currently only base coloured) bike. I have two more hoods based and ready for the test effect but will be done a little differently. The orange bits on the bike itself will be done in the same effect that I use on the hoods. I think the seats will stay black but receive hard highlighting to mimic leather. Also considering a brown for the seats. The handlebars will be... will be... handlebars. I haven't figured that one out yet. Once I get the other two hoods finished I'll post a comparison pic of all three side by side to pick out the best. Keep in mind I'll also be painting up the two large soul gems on the hood in purple to tie in with the rest of my force. I just haven't done that yet since there's no point in painting them on a hood I may strip later.

Finnan: Sadly I have no yellows. I head into the city tomorrow and will pick up some new paints and yellow is on my list. The wash I'm using is Fuegan orange.

I think yellow will do the trick - I've found Fuegan to be definitely on the brown side of things rather than a deep, rich orange.

Alright guys I've finally got the new paints and whipped up two new test hoods to see what I can pull off and here are the results! The far left one is my original trial. Not sure why it's still so glossy looking, I used the same wash on all three... The middle one is done using my new yellow for the shine lines and I used thicker under-current colours. The far right one is again with the yellow but it has thinner under-current coloured areas. So watcha guys think? I'm personally leaning towards the middle hoods design myself.

Oh and btw Finnan I looked but couldn't find another wash at GW I felt would give me the desired effect. Sticking with Fuegan then since I'm on a deadline to get these finished and I still have vypers to complete too. Not to mention my Farseer whom I have yet to even touch since building him.

Lemme know your thoughts/comments/critiques, I look forward to hearing from you all soon.

I concur, the middle one seems more balanced.

Don't worry about any glossiness... that can always be arranged when the model is finished and you seal it with satin or matte varnish.

 Meph wrote:
I concur, the middle one seems more balanced.

Don't worry about any glossiness... that can always be arranged when the model is finished and you seal it with satin or matte varnish.

I've actually never used any form of varnish on any of my models. And to be honest I've never had any chipping problems. Having said that I don't have any pewter models other than my Adepta Sororitas of which I only recently started painting. I know it may be different in the UK from Canada but what brands should I look for that are good? My biggest fear is putting some varnish on to protect them and having it change the look of the model.

Nice! I don't mind either of the two new ones really, so maybe just do a mixture of the thick or thin as your fancy takes you? The oranges are much softer too, which is working a lot better. Good work!

Thanks! I'll be working on getting all the hoods done today and at bare minimum basing the bikes aswell.

On a totally unrelated... nope wait this is totally related. Anyone have any good tips on how to strip paint off of plastic models? I'd rather strip the reject hoods down than paint over them for fear that it'd getting thick and ugly. I'm gunna look up right now some paint stripping tips. TO THE INTERNETS!

Yeah middle one is the best for sure.

It's a really nice look you've got.

Alright update time! Now that the pattern is settled on I decided to try and get a bike completed. Sadly I wasn't able to get it 100% done but I got pretty damn close. Minus a rider of course because... ummm... ghost bikes are kool ok?!?! Anyways here's how it looks slapped together. Basically the only other thing left to do is like a bajillion purple soul gems all over the bloody thing. And the rider. But he can get done later cause I don't think I'm gunna glue him on. The riders are definitely what shows the age of the bike model and I'm not a big fan of them. Unfortunately I don't have the cash to go out and by guardians to convert into riders and honestly at this point I need to focus on completing these things not finding ways to make them more complicated to build and paint. Anyways ladies and gents have a peek and lemme know what you think. I'm vouching that a full squad of these on the table ought to look pretty badass. They bloody well better otherwise this would have been a waste of time lol

Finally finished my bike! not much to say here short of: I hope you guys like it! The rider will be cake to paint from here so I'll save him for later, I've got more bikes, and 3 vypers to complete before October 1st so I'm gunna get crackin.

The purple on orange looks fantastic.

really nice. I thought they looked great, and then the gems pulled everything together even more - thumbs up

Thx for the awesome replies guys, it's good to know that they're being well-received. Makes all the hard work very worthwhile. So nothing too special tonight but I did sit down with some friends and we had a hobby night so here is the fruits of that labour. I'm really excited to finish these three up so I can get to work on my vypers. I've got the colour and patterning down so they should come together quite quickly. I think the only thing I need to really smooth out is my technique on the gems. I thinks I got the right colours and shades going but the shapes for the colours and highlights seem off to me, I want to work on blending them better and smoothing them out. Other than that I do love them and I agree they go a long way to bringing to whole model together.

As always guys thank you very much for checking out my stuff and I hope to have more good stuff to show you soon.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
I've actually never used any form of varnish on any of my models. And to be honest I've never had any chipping problems. Having said that I don't have any pewter models other than my Adepta Sororitas of which I only recently started painting. I know it may be different in the UK from Canada but what brands should I look for that are good? My biggest fear is putting some varnish on to protect them and having it change the look of the model.

Oh, I never paint any model without at least a few layers of varnish.
Gloss varnish before inks& washes, and before and after applying decals, before and after weathering, and finally to protect it all against the test of time.

Well, I'm actually in Belgium, it's just that our company's proxy is in the UK... *ahem*cough*cough* 0:-)

For Gloss varnish I use Johnson's Klear, cheap but high grade floor polish which works brilliantly as varnish. Apply with airbrush.
Here's a good page foir foreign equivalents: http://www.swannysmodels.com/TheCompleteFuture.html

As a final finish I always use satin varnish. I used GW's for years but recently switched over to a high-grade non-water-based satin varnish spray from a DIY shop. Takes hours and hours to dry but does look better. And seeing as it's for the final, protective layer, time doesn't matter.

One thing when using satin varnish. Shake it, and shake it well. Shake it long, shake it hard and when you're done, shake it some more. I'm talking 3-5 minutes of solid shaking, not the obligatory 30-seconds-and-done shake. Satin varnish consists of two components,; gloss varnish and matte varnish and these have to be mixed perfectly with the propellant in the can. If it's not shaken well, it can produce horrible, horrible frosting that can ruin a model. Hence; shake it like you're single...

Wow meph that post was very... descriptive lol. Had quite afew good laughs trying to read it all! Anyways thanks a ton for the info, i'll check out the link you posted and see what's available here. I'm headed into the city tomorrow to pick up supplies so I should be able to come back with some by sunday.

I had no idea varnish was used so liberally. I just assumed it was a "ok models done let's give it a coat and put it on the shelf" type of thing. Man every time I think I have a good handle on this hobby someone posts a tip or I see a video of someone doing a new technique for either weathering or basing or anything and my mind is always blown. Its such a creative hobby with some of the most creative minds I've ever seen or heard of. I'm quite glad to be a part of it all.

That's enough waxing poetic for one post thanks for all your tips, critiques and knowledge guys. More work to be posted tonight!

gems: they're not my favourite thing to do because they're so bloody small and fiddly, but when they're done right, I do get a sense of satisfaction from them.

I've actually worked out that it's easier and quicker to start off with your brightest/lightest colour and then do the shadow, rather than working up from dark to light with highlights. It just seems a bit quicker, and the gems come out brighter.

I do lots and lots of thin layers on my work so I can get a nice soft, smooth transition. On the gems it doesn't make too much difference as the paint dries so quickly because it's thin.

I'm sorry for the really long radio blackout there guys. Life hit like a sack of bricks and I haven't had much hobby time lately. Good news it I did manage to get some work done on the bikes. Notably, I finished them (sans riders). To be honest I'm a bit disappointed, I screwed up the wash on them, ended up getting silver splotches on the bone gun on one of them after it was finished (seriously there is no silver anywhere near the gun!) and I managed to tip over my paint pot of purple while painting the gems. You can see where the paint met it's final demise in the pic below. Having said that I'm finally done these bikes and can move on to the vypers.

Finnan: I used your tip and started with the light colours first on the gems. Wayyyyyyyyyy easier. Thanks for the tip buddy I really appreciate it.

So let me know what you think of these bikes guys. Think they'll look good as a squad zipping around the field? Any comments and critiques are much appreciated. Well I'm off to sleep, thanks for checking out my project ladies and gentlemen.

your photography skills much be much more forgiving than mine I_F, I can't see any problem with the wash, I think they look great.
I'm sure we've all knocked over a paint pot or two in our hobby lifetimes... I seem to recall dropping an open pot onto a pale-coloured carpet in my teenage days... my dad wasn't impressed.

There is no "skill" in my photography Finnan, I just buy my iphone dinner and serenade it romantically prior to asking it to take a picture for me.

In short one hood has a strip where you can see my brush stroke, wash musta gotten a bit tacky before I finished spreading it evenly. I also had to put on two coats of wash on the 3 non-cannon bikes cause of a stupid mistake I made by not shaking the hell out of my wash prior to applying it. Those three bikes came out darker and the highlighting doesn't pop as much.

For now I'll leave them. I got a deadline to meet and they are passable atleast. Tomorrow I move onto the vypers and and I hope to have them finished by the end of this weekend.

Looking for a bit of advice too, I've been mulling over the robes on my farseer, I can't quite think of a good colour for them. His bike will be painted like the ones above. Initially it was to be orange but I think that'll be an orange overload. any sugestions you guys have I'd love to hear.

I suspect you might be being a little hard on yourself - they look fine, and you've been extra cunning in choosing a paintjob that has variation built into it, so one of them being a bit darker doesn't stick out at all.

Orange robes might be a bit too much, I agree, but you can never go wrong with some stripes at the hem to give a bit of spot colour.

I'm very hard on myself but I don't see it as a bad thing. I have to be my own worst critic because it gives me the drive to constantly try new things and strive to always do better than my last model completed.

Having said that, I realize they don't look all bad, in fact having them all on the table together does still give me some pride. The nice thing is now I can apply the lessons learned here on the Vypers.

For the Frasier I was thinking maybe painting his robes like the grey ones I did for the Rangers and then painting a big Eldar rune on the flat section in layered orange. Maybe that or mimic glowing runes on his robes?

I've always been a bit wary of runes on robes myself, mostly because a lot of the folds are quite deep and the rune would be warped by that. Having said that, if there are reasonably flat areas, give them a go - I'd suggest undercoating white, drawing the rune outline with a pencil, do all the orange over it (you should still be able to see the outline through it) and then CAREFULLY doing the dark grey around it. You'll get a much brighter result than trying to do orange over the top of the dark grey. Don't try and do the grey outline in one go - water down your paint and build it up.

Well I had a fairly productive night. Went over to a friends house to paint with him and officially started the vypers. I'm having a lot of fun with them so far, I think this'll be good and I'm already looking forward to adding more to my army. Then about an hour into painting another buddy showed up. He is brand new to the game and just started a tyranid force. He was excited to start painting and had lots of questions for me so I put my stuff aside and gave him a hand. It was lotsa fun, I'd hardly consider myself worthy to be called a teacher but it was kind of kool getting the opportunity to help someone into the game. Hopefully we can have a small 500 point battle this weekend too. Bonus is he let me play around with some paint I bought and haven't had an opportunity to try out yet. Blood for the blood god sounded like a good idea at the time. Just never had a force I wanted to apply it to, well I finally got a chance to give it a shot. Anyways here's tonights pic dump for you guys. I opted to take photos at every stage to show my methods a bit I guess. I have no photo of the hood with wash applied since it was still wet and weird looking when I started packing to leave. Comments and critiques are much appreciated. Hope you guys enjoy!

Finnan: Yeah I'm wary of the runes right now, I'll keep brainstorming on this one cause I want to make sure I have a battle plan prior to setting about painting him.

And just as a small bonus: My very first attempt at making blood effects on weapons, I also painted this scything talon to show him how I would paint it with my colours and then how the same theory could be applied to almost any other colour palette.

Did some more work this evening. Didn't get as much done though because between work and buying a second house I'm feeling pretty exhausted. Anyways here's some shots of the steps and where I'm at so far.

Did some more work tonight. Nothing terribly exciting. I'm hoping to maybe have one of these suckers done by tomorrow night. No riders again of course since I will be doing them all in a batch. The wash isn't dry so colour will change a bit before final assembly.

I think they look rockin'.
... the graphic designer in me wonders if the larger vehicles could get away with some sold areas of the black just as contrasting shapes? I kinda want to see a black stripe on the wings or down the centre of the canopy... of course, I could be talking crazy-talk...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(and: DAMN - you're fast!)

I was thinking that the size of these bikes might allow for some designs or something too. I've got a few things working against me on that though. A) deadlines B) Given that I want to have the water pattern over the bike as a sort of energy field looking thing if I do the designs I'd want it to carry over the designs. Not impossible and I have an idea of how I could do it. I'm just not sure what designs to do (I'd try for something a little more elaborate than just a stripe). All of this brings me back around to problem A).

I'm hoping that once I get the details in and especially the purple gems it'll break things up enough to make them look better. I've got till october 1st to get this army fisnished (only the pilots/gunners on all the bikes and my hq to do now, oh and basing. All this after the vypers get finshed). That'll be my 500 point entry into the league. Then 250 pts a month after that. I'm also thinking that I'll enter my chaos space marines into the armies on parade thing going on the 25 of October. My chaos army is ok but they are showing some signs of their age (I think I'm a much better painter now than what I was when I devised their paint scheme.). So I think I'll try and find a way to make the army look better with some additions to their existing scheme. Particualarly I want to do something with their white parts. I just don't know what yet.

I got another buddy coming over to paint with me tonight (he's joining the league with me with his farsight enclave and only has his models based, I don't see how he'll have them painted in time for the league but oh well I guess that's his problem lol) and I'm thinking I might focus fire one viper to get it done and have a proof of concept before I move any farther on the other 2. Or maybe I won't. I don't know, depends on my mood I guess. At any rate, more pics tonight.

Finnan: You think I'm fast?! lol. I'm sitting here going "oh man I gotta pick up the pace it's 2/3 of the way through the month and this isn't done yet. I'm going borderline panic mode over here.

As always thanks to anyone checking out my stuff and especially to Finnan cause you've helped talk me through a lot of this project. Comments and Critiques are always welcome.

New stuff time! Nothing exciting sadly, just a few progress shots. Enjoy.

Sorry for the radio silence. Been busy and fighting off a cold and bought a new house. Painting is still getting done but posting it took a back seat for the time being. Any ways here is the pic carpet bombing to get everyone caught up on the progress.

It's been a long haul but I finally got my 500 point force completed! With exception I guess to the drivers of the vypers, they are base coloured but no detail because I ran outta time for the deadline of the league I joined. I'll get those wrapped up later.

I now have till the end of October to get my next 250 points finished, and 250 points every month until I hit 2000. I guess I gotta do basing too but since I'm outta time for September's project I'll do it this month.

So now comes a tough part... naming. Given the colours and backstory this army has (read earlier posts for that, and the fact the Eldar are a dying race that's best defence is to never be seen/caught) I decided "Autumn Ghosts" would be a decent name. Now to translate that into the Eldar language. Anyone here fluent in Eldarian? Given what they use so far for the big craftworlds I couldn't quite find a consistent system to it. So I went to the interwebs and decided Japanese would be a good place to start for mshing a name up. So far this is what I've found that may be helpful:

Aki no sora- Translates to "Autumn's Voice" Felt this was good cause I let my rangers "speak for my army
Aki kaze- Translates to "Autumn wind" This one works cause I'm fielding some windrider jetbikes and vypers. As skimmers they could be assumed to "ride the wind"
Aki no kure- Translates to "Autumn Dusk" Appropriate cause the Eldar are at the dusk or twilight of their survival in the universe, probably the least appropriate for me cause I'm already trying to use autumn to describe this.

The plan is to use parts of one of these Japanese terms and bastardize it so I'm not using it word for word and then call it "the Eldar translation of Autumn Ghosts". EX: Aki no sora turns into Akora'Sino. or you know... something like that. Whatcha guys think? Stupid idea? Got any sugestions that will help out? I'm all ears. Not literally of course, that would make painting or typing awkward but you know, figuratively... Its 2AM here. My humour may be a bit, dry.

In other news my very first game with this army, and as Eldar in general is today. man I really hope I don't fail miserably lol.

Ok well I'll stop stalling and show you guys the pics now. Lemme know what you guys think. Would love t hear some comments and critiques. thanks all for checking out the project!

Good stuff, man, good stuff. That's a neat looking force, and the pattern really suits those bikes nicely.
And kudos for the orange, it needs some love!

I used Welsh for my Craftworld and associated Eldar names.

Autumn Ghosts would be: Hydref Ysbrydion

Thx for the comments guys! Yeah I'm loving the orange, it did come out darker than initially intended but I think that fits the "Autumn" aspect of this army better.

Welsh eh? I never thought about that before, to be honest I think I like the dialect (is that the right descriptor in this case?) of it better, it does seem more Eldar-ish than Japanese. I'm running late to get to my game (got a 200 km drive to get there) so I wont be able to finalize the name right now but when I get back I'll do some research in to bastardizing welsh too Thx for the suggestion Finnan.

I'll take some pics of this force on the tabletop at the game and hopefully they wont be as poor quality as my pics last night... I blame 2AM and my cell phone, I really should invest in a proper camera and a photo booth thingy.

Meph: I`ll be honest I didn`t quite understand the pic at first, but when I did you can bet you a$$ I almost fell outta my chair laughing, well played sir, well played

Well had my first battle with the army yesterday and even though I lost by one VP I still feel pretty good. In short my opponent only won because he had a 20-man CSM squad with a lord hunkered in mid map in ruins. His warlord trait (from crimson slaughter) gave him and that squad shrouded. So CSM in mid-field with 2++, yeah no amount of firepower was moving them for me. He took out one squad of rangers giving him first blood. By turn 5 I had two options A) Assault him with my bikes and hope for a miracle or B) Use bikes to get linebreaker and hide the rest of my units and wait for the game to end to get a tie. Since turtling like a coward waiting for the end of the game sounds boring I opted for the kamikaze charge just for giggles and it went about as well as you'd expect.

I'll be honest his strategy made perfect sense and it was very effective (defensibly speaking, he only killed 7 rangers all game) but it was boring to fight against. Oh well it gave me a good chance to learn how to play my force without having to really counter-strategize.

Anyways here's a pic I took after the battle of my force in some nice painted terrain. The war walkers have been ordered and are on their way right now, I'm stoked to keep this project going.

Ok ladies and gents I know I have been radio silent for a good long while. Sadly buying a new house will eat up your time faster than spilling coffee on the time machines control panel... not sure where I was going with that joke but can I get a pity laugh please? Ok anyways I haven't stopped working on the project, just slowed a bit. I'm back in the swing now though and I've got my 1000 point force in the works. For tonight here is some update shots, they don't show the step I'm currently at but will let you now the direction I'm taking. Going from 500 to 750 I've added 3 war walkers, 2 jetbikes and 1 jetbike with shuriken cannon. Those jetbikes went fast, had lotsa practice in the 500 point force to get the pattern down faster. Those war walkers though... taking forever to paint, I can honestly say they are one of the very few models I enjoyed building more than painting. Hopefully once I get over the hump of patterning them out and have three completed I'll see the end result and be motivated to get the other 6 done...

So here some shots, I'll try to post more tomorrow that should be where I'm at just prior to sitting down to paint. Thanks as always for checking out the project.

Cool, kudos on the house! Be sure to claim you man-cave beforehand. And make it one with a window, and install a couch+telly so the missus can join in the background whilst painting.

And good job on the factory assembly line, those ELdar keep turning out great.

Don't worry Meph the house is being utilized very well I'm now the proud owner of two houses, my old house being used as rental property to generate me some extra income. For this house I have a huge open concept basement that I can easily fit 3 or 4 gaming tables in comfortably so I can start hosting our 40k nights here. We don't have any FLGS here (the closest is 2 hours away) so we're all basement commanders. The plan is to put up a projector downstairs for movies and save the 60" flatscreen upstairs for vidji gaming.

I got a workshop in the basement too (it's a fair size with work bench and cupboards and a vice) that will be my more permanent setup for painting in the future. Sadly my girlfriend won't be joining me in the house for a while. She is living in the city 2 hours away currently. She moved there to pursue her tattooing apprenticeship. She should be moving back in about 2 years I think. Visiting her does give me a good excuse to drop by GW once in a while though to play a game or pickup the next models I need so it's not all bad.

Once I'm off work today I'll post more pics, I got some updates on the soul gems I spattered all over the war walkers. Oh and a first time project of mine with my vypers, I'm stoked to post that update too.

Ok update time! Just a small one for now to show off the war walker progress. Hope you guys like it! Also after much deliberation I think I may have settled on a name, lemme know what you guys think.

Ys'Ibryef (Is-eye-bree-eff)
Here's the breakdown. I took Finnan's advice and used a welsh translation of Autumn Ghosts which turned out to be Ysbridion Hydref. Chopped it up, re-arranged it and voila. So does it fit and seem Eldar themed enough? if you looked at a list of armies signed up for a tourney would you think just by the name alone that this name could belong to an Eldar force? Also is it stupid? Would you re-arrange the two welsh words in another way?

Alright got a fair amount of pics to post here for my finally completed war walkers and the special project I worked on.Starts off with the work I did on the war walkers then to my first forays into magnetization! It was quite the learning experience but in the end I believe it was completely worthwhile, now I will be painting up all the different weapon options and magnetizing them as well so that I can have a very versatile force. Hope you guys enjoy and comments and critiques are welcome.

Ok it's been one heck of a long time since I last updated this log. Honestly I'm quite disappointed in myself but I guess RL and house renovations come first right? Anyways the project hasn't been dead, far from it truth be told. I've managed to increase the force to now include:

1 Farseer on Jetbike
9 Windrider Jetbikes, 3 with shuriken Cannons
10 Eldar Rangers
6 Vypers (Magnetized Weapons)
6 War Walkers (Magnetized Weapons and Pinned)

I've also managed to carve out a section of my new home and transform it into my fortress of soli... bomb shelt... panic ro... place I do painting and modelling in! It's not finished, got a paint-pot rack to build, got the parts ready to assemble for a fan exhaust system for my priming box, would like to build a photo box aswell. But for now she fits the role well enough and I have been hard at work making this a force to be reckoned with! I did go back and re-work my war walkers too, I wasn't quite happy how they turned out so I re-painted some sections to add more visual variety without compromising the feel of the army and hopefully lead the eye around the model more. I've also begun work on my most ambitious unit to date, I'll be updating with pics of them in in the very near future and hopefully you guys can let me know if the new unit is solid looking or a waste of time. So without further ramblings I present to you the first update in a long while and most certainly not the last. Please let me know what you guys think so far, your words of wisdom, encouragement, critique and admonishment keep me motivated, focused and give me great advice on how to move forward with the force!

I'm a bit envious. I've not had a good painting are in nearly 2 years. One of the most underrated things about the hobby.

I like how your army has turned out so far. Very nice looking color scheme and execution. It has a decent variety of shooting and extremely mobile. You just need a Wraithknight now to get you to 1500 points.

Thanks for posting. It's an enjoyable Eldar blog.

 Sarigar wrote:
I'm a bit envious. I've not had a good painting are in nearly 2 years. One of the most underrated things about the hobby.

I like how your army has turned out so far. Very nice looking color scheme and execution. It has a decent variety of shooting and extremely mobile. You just need a Wraithknight now to get you to 1500 points.

Thanks for posting. It's an enjoyable Eldar blog.

I completely agree, having somewhere dedicated to the hobby where all my stuff is either setup already or very accessible has made a world of difference. I'm glad to be in a house that grants me the space (as un-glamorous as it is) to have this. Thank you very much for checkin out the log, I appreciate you taking the time to comment. The idea has always been to be either fast or sneaky (skimmers or infiltrate/scouts) and so far the army fits that design, I'm happy to say it even performs very well for me on the tabletop. I won't be purchasing a wraithknight for this force as I don't feel it exemplifies the theme (as much as I'm dying to assemble and paint that gorgeous model!) but I do plan to purchase 1 or two wraithknights for a future wraith army I'd like to build, I've been working on lists involving plenty of guards/blades assisted by knights, lords, hemlock wraithfighters and of course seers. That's a future project though for after this one is complete and I take some time to work on my CSM forces. I'm currently working on the next 250 points that'll bring me to 1500 and have 4 of the 10 models built, I'll be posting update pics on those tomorrow.

Thanks again for commenting, I really appreciate it.

Quick update tonight with my latest additions to the army... Striking Scorpions! Or I guess counts-as striking scorpions to say the least. This is my second foray into kitbashing and my first time ever using GS! The Farseer doesn't really counts cause I had a lot of help with him lol.

So I wanted to stick to my theme and infantry that didn't mix well with my rangers just wouldn't cut it, so I had to come up with a new idea. I have nothing against the GW Striking scorpions, I think they are quite cool, however they just didn't fit the style of my army. The idea behind these guys is that they sneak and get into positions much like the rangers do, the main difference being the role they play. I wanted to represent how they function with the models themselves so there was no question as to the unit they count as. To that effect I am giving 9 of them chainswords, an obvious choice given their basis. They also have the mandatory shuriken pistols but with one small change, since I converted these pistols using shuriken catapults they have the full-size catapult magazines. My reasoning for this is that since I couldn't think of a good way to represent the mandiblasters I needed something else to show they have the extra attacks in CC. So my lore for this is they use high-cap mag shuriken pistols set with a burst-fire mode for in tight combat. In melee they use the burst fire from their pistols to essentially get extra attacks in CC just as the mandiblasters would normally give them. Watcha guys think of that, too cheesy perhaps? Not clear enough or noticeable? Any other ideas for representing Mandiblasters?

I only have four made so far as tests but I am really at a loss for making my exarch and especially his scorpions claw, any ideas on how to build a counts-as scorp claw? As always thanks for reading and please let me know what you think.

Just a small update with my army in action since I got to have a match this afternoon against a tyranid buddy. It was a very decisive victory for the Eldar, his MC couldn't stand up to my plethora of shuriken cannons, star cannons and bright lances. The termagaunts died in droves to my jetbikes and eldritch storm from my farseer. he did make it into CC at turn 4 though but it was too little too late. We had a great match though and had tons of fun.

Your eldar are carrying rather brutal looking chainswords. Nice conversions.

Nice conversions. The chainswords look much more menacing than the normal Pansy, I mean Eldar ones. The SMG style pistols look real nice too. My thumbs they go up.

 Warboss_Waaazag wrote:
Your eldar are carrying rather brutal looking chainswords. Nice conversions.

Yeah unfortunately I couldn't find any easily accessible smaller chain swords. The storm guardians kit on the GW site is like 22$ and only has 4 chain swords, 4 regular swords and a couple special weapons, flamer and fusion gun I think. Needless to say I'd have needed 3 packs to suit my needs and that was 66$ just for chainswords, not something I could afford. On the other hand CSM chain swords is something I have in spades. I know they look kinda big on them but I figure that can help represent the +1 strength they receive with them.

Thanks for commenting guys, I'm glad my first true conversions weren't met with confusion and disappointment. If anyone has any ideas for making a scorpion claw please let me know, I've been diving through my bits box and so far no inspiration has hit me.

Might I suggest looking into daemonettes. Huge assortment of claws on similar sized bodies, or look into the dark eldar line. Dark elves might have something as well. A little bit of greenstuff and you could make it work. without the pieces in my hand to draw inspiration it's hard to say.

Well this isn't exactly an Eldar update but I'm excited for it nonetheless, I finally got around to making a gaming board!

My criteria for what I wanted was something that is easy to transport, durable, simple to use and set up and affordable.

The cost of materials was 30$, I was thrilled with that.
The cost of my textured spray paint and sealer was 60$ (3 more cans than expected to coat the board properly)
Total cost was roughly 90$ and roughly 2 hours work (not counting drying times between coats)

Started with 2 4x4 sheets of 1/2" osb and cut 6" off each one. Sadly the only hinges I was able to get that would work were not the style I wanted but beggars can't be choosers right? I toyed around with having the hinges on the bottom but then when I rest the board down it would bulge in the middle. Having played on it now the hinges don't get in the way nearly as much as I feared they would so it'll do. The handles were an on-the-fly decision to aid in transport since I knew I had 6" on either side to play with and I felt it would aid in moving it around, I'm glad I cut them as when it folds up they line up nicely and make moving the board very convenient. I have a small car and with this board folded up it fits just perfectly in the back with a couple inches to spare so it doesn't shift around too much at all. After 5 cans of textured spray paint spread over 3 coats I finally got it covered nicely and just popped some sealer on there to protect it from chipping or losing texture. I'm thinking of adding some snow flocking to add some variety to the board and make it a bit more visually appealing, any ideas on how to do that well?

Total board size is 4x7 so I have 6 inches on either side to put models that have been killed or are in reserve. I only have it lined out right now but I'm planning on either painting yellow caution striping on it or doing little cute parking stalls with yellow paint and even a little handicap parking stall reserved for Tau Whatcha think guys? Parking stalls or caution striping? I can get some yellow road paint we used at work to mark out real parking stalls so that bit will be free. That's enough blather from me, here's the pics and lemme know what you think!

I vote parking stalls. Caution stripes are overdone.

Alright folks I finally finished my very first major conversion project! I'm super stoked on how these turned out overall. I know there is tons of room for improvement, there always is, but since this is my first true kit-bash and use of GS I'm happy with the results. I have to work a lot harder on trying to smooth out the GS where I can, I think that will come with more practice, I already noticed some discrepancies between my initial batch of GS scorpions vs. the later batch I did.

As for the Exarch, I'd like to thank Tastymuffintop for his suggestion to use DE parts to make one, I used a wych CCW that resembled a claw (more of a punching dagger I guess eh?) and I think it looks pretty good. It doesn't explain the x2 strength very well so my reasoning is that it's such a precise weapon used with such skill and grace that it finds the holes and chinks in an opponents armour and is driven where it will cause the most harm, hence the AP2 and double str.

Ok I'm gunna shut up now and let the pics speak for themselves. Please let me know what you guys think. Your comments, critiques and verbal abuse keep me motivated! Thanks you.

Well it's been quite a while since I've updated this, I wish I had more to show for it but unfortunately with the firefighter competitions going on right now, training leading up to said competitions, beautiful weather, vacation, catching up on my xbox game backlog... blah blah blah excuses. Anyways painting is slowly progressing on the striking scorpions, I have the armour mostly done short of a few details. The cloaks are based, just need highlighting.

The plan is to paint the guns and swords in the bone colours I've been making all of my weapons to date. My concern is for the teeth on the chain swords, should I make them bone as well or perhaps silver, maybe do bronze teeth? Any ideas ladies and gentlemen, right now I'm on the fence about it so any input would be greatly appreciated. The pics here are at a couple stages, one is based, then layered and highlighted pre-wash then the final post-wash pics. I wanted to show the pre and post-wash pics cause I find the difference it makes is astounding. Hopefully the pics can do the change justice. Without any more pre-amble here's some process steps of doing the orange armour.

Ok I lied, more pre-amble: After looking at the pics I found the colours, especially after the wash, look really drowned out. I swear that is not the case, I blame my poor photography. The closeup of the post-wash makes the model looks like it's hyper-highlighted (wow direct sunlight makes a huge difference over a lamp or room-lighting), which is not the case either. I really need to get myself a lightbox and learn the take proper photos... sorry guys.

Well it's been a long time since my last update. With summer in full swing the painting has taken a back seat. Took me way longer to finish these guys up than anticipated but I finally got them to a point where I can field them happily. I'll likely go back and do touch-ups on them later to pick out more details but for now they are painted. As with everything in the army I will hold off on basing them until I have all 2000 points ready as I'd like to just mix one tub of the rubble and apply it army-wide.

Let me know what you think of my first major conversions, it was quite the learning experience and I'd appreciate the input/critique.

Been a long time since I've posted here. I have a few projects still under way but I had to move the Eldar force to the sidelines to make space for real life stuff.

Here's something I had a lot of fun with though: Grey knights. Or more specifically a single little knight.

A friend of mine recently decided to start a Grey knights force. He acquired 25 power armoured knights to start and I may have "liberated" one while he wasn't looking. This friend is a great guy but he is woefully notorious for always starting to paint his models but never finishing. I felt I would do him a favour by not only starting but to also finish painting this model for him. It is a shame he never told me what colour scheme he wanted first though so I had to only guess what he wanted. I'm fairly certain that this is EXACTLY what he was looking for

So I now happily present to you: Sir Terrynce Von Mannfredd the 3rd!

Please enjoy and let me know what you all think. I've also added a shot of him in his "natural environs" valiantly standing vigil over my front yard.

Reminds me of this

Yeah a buddy of mine reminded me that leopard print is far from original, emperor's children did it first.

When I returned this model to my friend he was pretty shocked but said he liked it a lot. I offered to paint his whole army in this scheme for him but he refused.

It's a shame he seems to want to paint them in more traditional colours. Honestly what's the worst that can happen if a chapter of grey knights decides to go with an alternative army colour and rock out their individuality? Self expression is very important to marines in the 40k universe isn't it? lol

So I decided to sign up for this years Armies on Parade at a GW location 200km away from me. A friend of mine who plays Necron and myself will be going and seeing if our forces can hold a candle to some of the talent out east. Since we are so far away from them we've never seen what talent were up against so hopefully my adequate painting and small conversions can not get too embarrassed.

With that said we've been hard at work getting our 2x2 boards ready. We asked if we could be displayed side by side and the staff at GW said yes, with that confirmed we opted to do matching boards so it looks like our forces are facing off against each other.

Working with what we got we opted to make the standoff in a ruined imperial city. I bought the sector imperialis box set over a year ago so I figured I'd finally get the pieces painted for this event.

Below are some shots of the buildings I've done up, all drybrushed save for the splotches of seraphim sepia I used to dirty up the walkways. I've also finally based my models! The rangers and Striking scorpions are done now and while I didn't follow through with my initial basing plan I feel they still came out looking pretty good all the same. As I progress on the table I'll add some shots of it that should give you all an idea of the plan there. In the meantime let me know what you think of the buildings and basing thus far. I look forward to hearing what you all have to say.

Great looking Eldar.

I found that Grey Knight story a hoot, I hope he keeps that model in that paint scheme and paints the rest normally, he can tell people that the purple marine is just going through a phase...

D

 evildrcheese wrote:
Great looking Eldar.

I found that Grey Knight story a hoot, I hope he keeps that model in that paint scheme and paints the rest normally, he can tell people that the purple marine is just going through a phase...

D

Thank you very much for the comment! I look forward to continuing my work on basing more of them this evening. War walkers are next up on my list. The table should also be mostly complete by this evening too if all goes to plan. I'll be posting pics of those later tonight or tomorrow afternoon at the latest.

My friend is indeed going to keep his Grey knight as it is. We had a chat recently and apparently it's really grown on him lol. I look forward to seeing what he does with the rest of the force cause I have a feeling that Mannfredd will be quite the standout character in almost any paint scheme he's likely to give them.

Work continued this evening and progress was made. Firstly I have the basing started on my war walkers, I'll be painting that tomorrow, shouldn't take too long I figure. Secondly is the "flames" for my table. I have some flickering light tea candles that I made inserts into the table for. The plan is to have these lights in those inserts and flickering light up into some rubble piles I've made and in the windows of one of the buildings. The circular cutouts are dryer softener sheets that I lightly sprayed with my black primer. They'll go over the lights to diffuse them. This serves two purposes: One is to diffuse the light and make it less harsh when it lights up the terrain and secondly the cutouts help to mask the lights on the table. Even if I don't have the nicest table at the event I should at least have the nicest SMELLING table! A table that smells of lavender should be worth points to voters right? Lastly is a shot of the name-plates I made up for both mine and my friends table. Nothings special but it helps to harmonize the concept. I'm sure you can tell which one is for my Eldar table and which one is for his Necron table lol.

Lemme know what you guys thinks so far, especially on the lights idea, I hope to have some action shots tomorrow to show you guys my vision for these lights and maybe they'll make more sense.

Ok so not a huge update tonight unfortunately other than that my table for armies on parade is now done. It's been a long road, learning a LOT along the way. It's a whole new set of skills to make a table as opposed to building and painting models. At times I felt I was 6 years old again doing arts and crafts at school. Other times... well other times I wanted to flip the very table (as small as it is) that I was trying to make. So tonight all I have is the pics of the final two tables for myself and my friend. Overall I am not really happy with them, the drybrushing technique I used didn't work at all and left everything all streaky. I'm out of time to try and fix it up now so I'm stuck with them and I can only hope that my buildings and army stand out enough to distract from the flawed tables. Tomorrow I'll insert the candles with the last bits of rubble and see how the lighting is gunna look, of course I'll post pics of that too so everyone can see the last shot of it before the big day.

On a bright note I feel my bases for my war walkers look amazing. I have no shots of them yet though cause the wash is drying and it's not representative of the final results, I'll post that tomorrow. Here's the shots of the two tables without any extra terrain on them, hopefully they dress up nicely.

This is it, the big day. As I type this I watch the clock near 12AM and come to the realization that in 3... 2 minutes it will be the day of Armies on Parade (or at least for the GW stores a few towns over it is). In less than a month my friend and I were able to conceive, design and implement our ideas to a display board for this event, and in the busiest month of the year for us both as well. He had a total of 3 evenings to dedicate to this and while I had more evenings to work on it I had to share this time with both my practical and knowledge based exams for my firefighting course this month. I learned a lot, and know what I will change for next year, sadly the implementation of the board underwhelmed me and I can only hope my army stands out on it. The lights, while a neat idea, don't camouflage enough for my tastes and they don't offer enough illumination in a well-lit room to be incredibly noticeable. Overall I'd say it's a valiant first attempt at this side of the hobby and one I hope to improve upon next year. Even this very evening felt like it was working against me as the time I wanted to dedicate to finishing this up was interrupted by a garage fire. Ah the life of a firefighter, I wouldn't have it any other way

The photos I attach here are the first time the elements of the board have been all put together, taking these photos was the first time I had seen the board at this stage myself, I won't see the board completed until tomorrow while it is on display. I also have the bases for my war walkers posted here too, the pics made the contrast on them look deeper than they are in person. I'm very happy with them and feel they turned out great. Wrapping this up now it's just past midnight and I must sleep, I have a two and a half hour drive to get the GW tomorrow for setup. I hope for the best (I have no idea why I want to win a medal so bad, they are gorgeous medals, but I'm not normally a competitive person) but I'm sure I'll have a fun day seeing other hobbyists work and meeting new people. Of course I'll take photos of the event as well and post here so anyone interested may see the final results.

Sorry it's taken me so long to get the latest update out. I ended up spending the night out of town and came back late sunday. Monday's work kept me busy and so now here I am.

I'd like to start off by saying it was an amazing trip and I had the opportunity to meet with some really amazing people. Had my Necron buddy and another friend from our group drive in with me and we spent the whole day at the event. Great news was that my Necron friend took home the Bronze for the event and as a first for myself my Eldar managed to beat his Necron as I took silver!

Without further pre-amble here's the pics of the event. I apologize for the really really really terrible pictures but if anyone is interested I can snag the higher quality pics from the facebook page of the GW that hosted the event.

Those are some lovely eldar.

 War Kitten wrote:
Those are some lovely eldar.

Thank you very much for commenting

I'm a bit torn on my next project. I still have 3 more war walkers to do as well as 3 more vypers. I did finally break down and purchase a wraithknight, I'm still contemplating how I intend to paint him up. I'm not sure I'm sold on doing the same pattern on the WK as I did for the vypers, jetbikes and war walkers, I'm anxious to try something new. I also have a Tempestus Scions project I'd love to get started on. Too many models, not enough time lol. Any preference on what you guys would like to see? Or if anyone has any sugestions for the WK I'm all ears, this is by the the biggest model I've ever purchased and I'd love some ideas on how I should make him look awesome while still tying him into my army.

With Halloween come and gone now I set about painting up a little special model for the occasion. This was a fun little side project to break up all the 40K stuff I've been doing and to challenge myself as a painter. I snagged this special edition model from the Kingdom Death website last year and finally felt prepared to tackle it. I know a few areas I could improve for sure, notably I haven't the slightest idea how to effectively do skin. I looked up some tutorials online but unfortunately I couldn't quite nail the techniques. I will certainly practice more on future models (I have a box of dark elf wyches I could practice one, tons of skin there) and I'd also love to practice more on large cloth areas like her cloak. I was fairly happy how the cloak turned out but I know I could do better if given a shot to do it again.

I must say though I was very happy with this kingdom death model and the detail and cast on it was really good. Only one small hitch where one leg connects and it left a small gap across her butt cheek, I'm sure you can see where I had to fill it and try to mask it (first time using liquid green stuff too). I wish that my painting could have done this model justice but I think I did fall short. Oh well, only one way to get better right? Anyways this model is finding a new home today as I will be gifting it to my girlfriend, Halloween is her favourite holiday and I hope she likes this little gift.

Lemme know what you guys think. As always your comments and critiques fuel me greatly and I love hearing peoples thoughts on my projects.

Good day Ladies and Gentlemen. It's been a while since I've last posted anything but I did manage to knock out one project and have continued work on my Eldar and even started a new side project as well as a small commission project. I'll be busy for a while but I'll be keeping this log updated and hopefully you guys will like what I'm doing. So here's my latest project that I just wrapped up, a small 500 point SoB force. Very early in this log I posted a pic of a test SoB model I did and after a long break from them I decided to go back and finish them all up. My goal with this force was to try and speed up my painting techniques, to attempt to train myself to hurry up on the areas I can be sloppy on and to quickly and efficiently get little details out of the way. It was a fun little project to try and train myself with and I hope you guys enjoy it! Please have a look and let me know what you think, I'd love to hear what you guys have to say!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'd also like to apologize for how absolutely horrendous these pictures are, I'm still stuck with a phone camera at the moment. I really should get onto building a light box as well. I'm really sorry guys and gals.

Here's a re-taken pic of the army shot. trying to get rid of some of the glare in this one.

I want to start out by wishing everyone a happy new year. I hope your holidays were fantastic. I saw this done in a different thread and I thought it was a great idea so I'm going to do it here as well. Think of this as a sort of Hobby Resolution for the new year. I'm sure many of us are guilty of buying way more models than we tend to finish in a year and I'm certainly no exception to this. What I'd like to do is finish all the models I currently own and only then allow myself to purchase more. 2015 was a great year for me hobby-wise, I got more done than in any other year and I even managed to pull a silver at a nearby Armies on Parade for my work. I'd like to see 2016 be even more productive so this is my new years list of things I gotta get done!

Eldar:
Wraithknight
Shadow Spectres
Spirit Seer
Wraith Seer
3 Vypers
Magentize and paints all the extra weapon options for my Vypers and War Walkers

Dark Eldar:
2 units of Wyches
Bloodbrides
3 Raiders
Succubus
Haemonculus

Tempestus Scions:
3 units of scions
1 scion command squad
1 Valkyrie

Terrain:
4-5 GW building ruins
6 Explosion craters
2 GW Rubble barricades

Commissions:
Deathwing Terminators
Librarian
Captain
Vindicare Assassin

Looking at that list kind of worries me but I hope I can whittle it down quick enough. I also have a TON of chaos space marine stuff but to be honest I won't touch any of it until we see a new codex. I'm so dissatisfied with the current chaos dex that I shelved my marines and haven't played them at all this year. If the new codex looks great I'll put brush to model again and finish them up if the new chaos dex is as depressing as the 6th edition dex then I'll likely just sell them off.

Thank you guys for your kind words and advice throughout 2015 and I hope to be able to improve and show off more of my stuff in 2016. Thank you and may all of your 2016 hobby wishes be fulfilled

Well here are some pics of my first bits of work for the new year, some Dark Angels for a friend of mine. Trying to mimic the official colours here as best I can, so far I think I'm not too far off. I haven't been as detailed as I'd like to get with these guys but despite some messy lines and a lack of depth in some areas they look good on the table, they just don't hold up to inspection as well as I'm used to. Anyways I hope you guys like them and let me know what you think.

Just a small update here, adding the Dark Angels Terminators that I finished last night. I was really hoping to get the chance to do them in their traditional Deathwing cream colours but the guy I'm doing this for liked the green of the basic marines much more.

These are done up to a simple tabletop standard just as the rest of this force. I got to say it's hard having to reign yourself in and not pick out every single detail or add those extra highlights. There's so much more I know I can do for these to make them so much nicer but specifically toning down and doing simpler paint jobs is the goal here.

Anyways I hope you guys like them and as always let me know what you think.

Got the first of the two characters done. Here is the Librarian. Still just tabletop quality but was fun nonetheless. Let me know what you guys think. Only one more to go!

Well I finally knocked out the last model for this Dark vengeance box. he's nothing special, just a quick paintjob to keep him stylin on the table but nothing fancy at all. Also included a shot of the full force all together.

Not painting related but I thought this was a funny picture I'd share with everyone. So my good friend, Tatsymuffintop, stopped by the other night and we decided we would tackle down some of the unclipped sprue bits he has that are cluttering his house. Sounded like a fun way to just kick back, do some hobby housecleaning with a friend and feed my OCD by getting to organize bitz. Well then he showed up with his unclipped sprues and... oh man was there a lot. He makes my plastic crack addiction seem so minor in comparison. He had sprues for SM, DE, Orks, Necron, Tau, CSM, IG, SW, BT, IK, Dwarves and fantasy humans. Well we spent the evening clipping and sorting and while we got a lot done, by 2AM there was still about half the big blue bin left. One more night should see us through it and should see a lot more space in his home and hobby areas. Below is the boxes he brought over, all full and overflowing with leftover bitz from his built models. You can see my little dread in the bottom right corner for scale. Hope this is worth a chuckle to some of you, I know I laughed/cried when he brought this in my door.

Holy plastic god, this is pornography !
Thanks for sharing !

 KernelTerror wrote:
Holy plastic god, this is pornography !
Thanks for sharing !

Haha you said it! The bitz we have now sorted are a converters dream, pretty much a smattering of every 40K army and then some fantasy on top, vehicles, MC, weapons and infantry you name it it's probably in there. Tatsymuffintop is huge on conversions so hopefully this being all organized will help him out and keep him busy for at least a year lol.

Alright update time! So I haven't died yet and my work continues. Since my last post my work has been quite possibly the most random eclectic mess as I've ever had. Can't seem to focus on just one project since wrapping up those Dark Angels, of which I hope the commissioner comes to pick them up soon but it's understandable since work sent him away for a while. So the new news is that my current projects are as follows: I'm working on a mercenary force of Tempestus Scions that I will use to ally with any of my friends with IoM armies for team games. A friend of mine picked up some Eldar and Tyranid models from a guy on Kijiji and so I now have a unit of Dark reapers to wrap up, much earlier than I expected to get a unit of them but it was a good deal I couldn't pass up (I got 20 hormagaunts, 6 ripper swarms, a Trygon and 4 dark reapers with exarch reaper for 65$ Canadian. Can't complain there at all. I have an Eldar special character that I've been spending a lot of time getting painted and I must say I'm pretty excited to show him off here when he's ready. I've also been asked by a friend to paint up a gorgeous Raging Heroes model to be used as a counts-as vindicare assassin for his inquisition force, below is a photo of the WIP. At the end of the month there is a painting competition being held at a GW store 200 Km from where I live, I've decided to enter it and hope to take home another medal (or two! ). This one is divided into 40K open, AoS open and FW open. Since I ordered a wraithseer a long time ago and haven't bothered putting him together since I wasn't ready to start on my wraith side of my eldar army I've decided now was a good time to break him out and I'm getting him ready for the end of the month. the wraithseer and my Eldar character will be entering into the comp in the FW and 40K categories respectively. I've also magnetized one of his shoulder-mounts for weapon options and pinned the wraithcannon to the other for easy removal for transport or if I'm not using it, gotta make sure I keep all my weapon options open . Oh! My airbrush and compressor just showed up today and I'm very excited to try out airbrushing for the first time once I order the paints I'll need. Hopefully it opens up a whole new set of skills that I can use to improve my craft!

Whew ok so with all that said I could really use your help Dakka! I'm really at a loss for what to do for my wraithseer, I know I want his colour palette to draw from my existing Eldar colours (orange, drak grey, purples and the bone) but I'm not sure how best to implement it all in an interesting manner. I'd love to try out some interesting techniques to really make him stand out and allow the painting to do justice to the gorgeous sculpt of this model. So do any of you fine gals and gents have any idea for how I could paint him up and have some interesting techniques used to make him really stand out? I'm down to hear any ideas as I'd love to use the communal force of the interwebz to brainstorm how this guy can be a real show-stopper. What I do for him will be the basis for all the other wraith units I use in my army such as wraithblades/guard/lords/knights/hemlocks and spirit seers. Any help is greatly appreciated!

'Nother update for all you fine folks. So I finished up the Raging heroes rifle woman for my friend. Just a little tabletop quality piece that he's using as a vindicare assassin. Let me know what you guys think. And I also got some colours blocked out on my wraithseer. Currently it's very messy and just the base colours but this gives me (and you) a rough idea of how the colours will parse out. I haven't decide how I want to do the face-plate or the tabard yet. I was originally gunna do the tabard in orange but that orange crotch guard is making me not want to do that. Maybe purple to match the soul gems when I get around to them? I'm still looking for any neat ideas for special things I can do to him to make him really stand out so if anyone has any ideas let me know. Anyways thanks again for checking my stuff out and please leave a comment or critique, I love to hear what you guys have to think.

Nice work on that raging heros mini.

I think the tabbard would look cool in a deep red (maroon ish) colour.

EDC

The Wraithseer is such an awesome mini! Yours is nice but perhaps you should work on the spear, it's kind of twisted !

evildrcheese wrote:Nice work on that raging heros mini.

I think the tabbard would look cool in a deep red (maroon ish) colour.

EDC

Thank you, I'm a huge fan of their sculpts but they are a bit of a pain given how tiny some of the pieces can be, the feet especially. really makes you realize how cartoonishly large a lot of the GW models bodies are. I have a unit of praying mantis' from them that I will use as daemonettes once I get them painted and I kickstarted their TGG so I have a small Iron empire force to build and paint as a side-project when I get a chance. Really excited for that one

I never considered a deep red for the tabard. I'll pull out my reds tonight and put some paint down to see what I think, thanks for the input! I have 4 other pieces of fabric to put on him but I'll do so after they're painted. It's two thin strips that'll go on his back and two ribbon pieces that I'll attach to his weapon. I'm also underway on getting all his weapon options magnetized, only 3 more to go.

RazgrizOne wrote:The Wraithseer is such an awesome mini! Yours is nice but perhaps you should work on the spear, it's kind of twisted !

yeah that was a bit of a learning experience. This is the first FW mini I've put together and I heard you can heat up some water to get the resin hot so you can bend it in shape. Well I tried that and wound up snapping the bottom third of the staff. I had to drill it out and pin it to get it back to one piece and that's why you can see it has a spot it "kicks out" near the bottom. After that I got kinda scared to try again lest I break it even more so I weighed my risk vs. reward and felt that having a warped glaive would bother me less than having a glaive snapped in three pieces. I have a unit of shadow spectres to put together too so I'll try fixing things again when I get to their guns which are all really warped too. I'm sad I wasn't able to get this glaive nice and straight but I learned a lesson and I'll keep moving forward. On a deadline for this guy too so time is not a commodity I have.
I also agree that the wraithseer is a gorgeous mini, I'm very fond of it's style. After putting this one together I know I will be purchasing some wraithlords for my army as aesthetically I think they're gorgeous.

Thank you very much guys to commenting, I really appreciate your input and critiques, you guys rock!

Did some more work on the wraithseer. Opted for the purple tabard. Dark red looked good but ultimately it didn't match with anything else in my army and so the purple blends better with the force as a whole. I also did the next layer on the cream bits then gave them a wash of seraphim sepia. The purple was layered up then washed with druuchi violet. Tomorrow will be finishing up the bone bits and hopefully the tabard as well. I also finished magnetizing the rest of the weapons so they're all ready for paint now. If only I could think of something cool to do for his faceplate now...

Got the bone sections finished and My brighter orange layers are applied. Gotta clean them up a bit and re-highlight after my wash. Slowly coming together, still just gotta find a good solution for how to make the faceplate look good...

The purple looks good, I think you've made the right choice.

EDC

 evildrcheese wrote:
The purple looks good, I think you've made the right choice.

EDC

Thank you, ultimately I think it'll blend in nicer too once I get the purple soul gems painted across the model. I gotta figure out what symbols I'm going to paint on it as well, likely the infinity symbol common to many Wraith units for starters and then I'll find more to fill the space from there. Deadline for this sucker is Saturday and since I have to pack up and drive to the host city on Friday night I have tonight after fire practice, Wednesday and Thursday to get him done. Shouldn't be impossible, all the weapons are now base coated and ready to paint, those will be easy since I've gotten painting this bone colour scheme down to a science now.

Maybe something purple on the face to tie in with the tabard? Something rich and dark, with either fade or a high gloss look?

YMMV, just some ideas.

 Nevelon wrote:
Maybe something purple on the face to tie in with the tabard? Something rich and dark, with either fade or a high gloss look?

YMMV, just some ideas.

I really like that idea actually, the colours will match my existing scheme, I love the idea of a gloss finish and fading and blending the colours would make for some excellent practice on a skill I seldom use. Thank you very much Nevelon for the idea.

Another idea I had was to do a marble effect for the faceplate. Gw made a really good tutorial on how to do that here -----> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0pGumGvczc

Ever since watching that tutorial I've wanted to try it out. Nevelon since you mentioned purple perhaps I change the greys Duncan uses to some purples instead, do a purple-tinged marble look to the faceplate? Either way this gives me a couple ideas for what to do for that part of the model. I look forward to getting there to try stuff out, I'll probably finish up the orange tonight and work on the tabards some more so that may be a project for tomorrow.
Thank you for your ideas.

Ok the competition is over and I have a couple finished models to show for it

So the Wraithseer turned out ok, I had a few issues with him, most notably I botched the faceplate twice (tried the black to purple fade and the marble texture, I really gotta work on my blending ) then ran out of time and had to do a quick dirty job just to get him done in time for the comp. That was disappointing to say the least. Having said that I'm pretty happy with his results overall though. With more time I would have liked to do a bit more work on him but sadly that just wasn't available. I have all his shoulder weapon options on the tray now, they're all done except for the gems. The bright lance is completely done since that's the one I entered him into the comp with.

There were about a dozen entries into the Forge world category that he was in and they were all amazing, honestly I didn't feel I held a candle to most of them but it would appear the voters thought differently cause by the end of the day I took home silver. So anyways here's the finished wraithseer, I'll post my 40K entry later today when I got some extra time.

Thank you very much guys for your comments and critiques, it helps me a lot to get my thoughts together and have confidence when I put brush to model.

Here's my entry into the 40K category, Illic Nightspear. He was given to me as a gift for x-mas and I felt I should really take my time to do this model justice. I also tried to match his proper colours as best I could as opposed to painting him in my forces colours. I'm failry happy with how he turned out, please let me know what you guys think.

Grats on the silver. We are often our own harshest critics. It’s easy to see what you were not happy with, what we could have done better, and what didn’t end up the way we wanted. Other people just see a cool mini.

Nice job on Mr. Sniper. I particularly like the way the cloak came out. Eldar rangers are so cool looking, shame they are mediocre on the table.

 Nevelon wrote:
Grats on the silver. We are often our own harshest critics. It’s easy to see what you were not happy with, what we could have done better, and what didn’t end up the way we wanted. Other people just see a cool mini.

Nice job on Mr. Sniper. I particularly like the way the cloak came out. Eldar rangers are so cool looking, shame they are mediocre on the table.

Thank you very much I think it is an indicator of those who strive to improve that they criticize themselves harsher than others, critiquing my own work very harshly gives me the drive to do better next time.

As for Illic I'm always shocked when people comment how they like the cloak. With my gaming group all the players say the cloak is their favourite part, personally it's my least favourite lol. I find it fairly flat to be honest, I would have preferred to get a bit more depth in the colours. But thank you all the same, I appreciate the comment.

Eldar rangers are also one of my favourite models in the range, the ten I have painted are still my favourite paint jobs I've done to date as well. I often run two units of 5 in my games and I actually quite like them, they generally get ignored in cover cause my opponents know they're typically gunna have a 2+ cover and with infiltrate they're usually sitting on an objective T1. They're cheap enough that I don't care if they get shot at and I've had pretty good luck wounding MC with them and manage to pick out special weapons guys often enough. I've run Illic in three games so far and in two of them I rolled a six on his to wound and managed to ID a hive tyrant in one game and a Hive crone in a different game. I know they're not top tier but I seem to get pretty decent mileage out of them in my meta.

Loving the Blog Inevitable_Faith

Must admit I love your rangers the most too, the combo of the bone gun, dark clocks and bright orange of the armour really works wonders.

As for using them I've never played with them in a game, always gone for fire dragons, warp spiders and one other to make an aspect host (normally swooping hawks). Don't you find illic not worth the points? Never taken any of the phoenix lords, you have to sink too many points in them, they should all be around the 150 mark!

Amazing job on your striking scorpions conversion work too, not the biggest fan of the sculp either. I'd be well happy if I'd commissions some work and received your Librarian, that blue really pops!

What are you working on next?

Thank you for your kind words

Yeah the rangers hit the mark I feel, super happy with them.

I use rangers quite often and I find them an excellent choice for something that is durable beyond it's cost (thanks to shrouded), can get forward objectives early game, can reasonably hurt MC or sometimes pick out a special weapon guy and they come in for such a low points cost that it's not a big deal to include them. They free up a lot of points for me to allocate elsewhere. I say all this of course knowing that scatbikes are amazing as they are but I'm a bit of a holdout on the old rules where they were only allowed 1 heavy weapon per 3 bikes. I felt that was reasonable. I also sometimes use my rangers to "counter-infiltrate". Essentially if I win the roll to place my infiltrators first then I place them where I think my opponent will want to place his, hence denying him the ability to place his infiltrators in a good spot.

As for Illic I find him not bad at all. He's one of the cheapest named chars we got at 140 points. Coupled with a unit of rangers he's pretty durable thanks to shrouded. No restriction on infiltrate gives him some wiggle room on where to be placed and my favourite part is every single shot himself and the unit of rangers he's attached to fires is a precision shot. He's tons of fun against many IoM armies where they have lots of special weapons guys or sergeants hidden inside the back of a squad. As I said above too I've been lucky that in 2 of my three games I was able to ID a MC with him. I wouldn't say he has a place in a very competitive army but he's tons of fun to use.

I'm very much getting into the aspect warriors now, really digging how they play. I don't have many yet but I plan to start getting some after my next project. That aspect shrine formation is absolutely amazing too. Thanks for the comment on my striking scorpions, it's my first honest attempt at converting a unit from kit-bashing and green stuff. I have lots of room for improvement but overall they look alright on the table.

That librarian was a pretty quick job, was fun to fit in something that wasn't green after that long stint of DA painting though. Glad you like him, it was my first time painting loyalist marines and I wasn't sure if I could remember how to paint anything but orange after doing my Eldar stuff. You ever want something painted from across the pond you let me know, I enjoy getting to paint something new every once in a while.

Next on the list is a unit of 5 Dark Reapers, got them based so far and will likely start painting them on Monday. After that I do have an autarch with wings and warlock on jetbike (my first new jetbike ) but I'll probably leave those for a bit to start on my Armies on Parade entry. AoP usually happens around October and this year I want to try and get a Dark Eldar Wych cult on the board. I have all the wyches, raiders and succubus purchased, just gotta assemble and paint them then come up with a scenic board to display them on. I also got some fantasy bits so I can convert a unit of the wyches to be Bloodbrides.

Can't wait to see the dark reapers. Will be great to see what you come up with. Mine are way down the list at the moment!

The plan is to try and stay as close as possible to the actually reaper aspect warrior scheme but put in a few things to still distinguish them as associated with my force. This will come in having wraithbone weapons as all my weapons are bone and I will have some orange spot colour throughout so they maintain my forces primary colour.

Ok so I totally got distracted from my initial plan and instead have decided to start my next major army project. It's about 6 months till this years armies on parade and I'd like to try and get a good head start on this years entryark Eldar! So I'm going for an equally obnoxious paint scheme as my traffic cone craft world Eldar and so hot pink is my new spot colour. Presented below is my first test model to test the colours on. The eyes I imagine as being simple black orbs for my DE so that's why I haven't put pupils in. What do you guys think of it? I'd really appreciate any comments and critiques you guys have before I move too far forward with the rest of the unit. The hair I'm still experimenting with btw. Thanks in advance for your critiques!

Line work is messy but as a test model I didn't want to work too hard, just getting the concept down.

Ok so I went ahead and changed a couple things, notably how I did the hair. I think I may have settled on this for my Wych units as their style. Please let me know what you think of it and where I could improve or make it more interesting. I just put together my unit of Mandrakes and will be basing them and putting paint on them this week. All C&C is very much appreciated.

I apologize for the super blurry photos, I'll try and post up some better shots soon.

Ok so started work on a unit of Mandrakes and I gotta say I'm loving the models. They are so finely detailed and have such an awesome concept. So here's the beginning of my work so far, the pants are almost done, just got a bit more detailing to do on them and pick out the extra spikes and hooks on them. Where I'm stalled out now is what to do with their balefire. I'm jumping between doing it in pink to match my wyches armor trim or doing it in the teal that my wyches have for their hair colour. What do you guys think? As for their hair I'm thinking I'll do it in white similar to the image shown in the DE codex. Your opinions would greatly help me decide how to proceed from here, let me know your ideas.

Ok so tried out my first test of the teal flame. Really haven't done flame before so I'm kind of making it up as I go along. Any tips would be much appreciated
I'm going to do the tattoos to match the flame but wanted to settle on a flame colour first. So watcha guys think, good or bad colour? Poor execution? Doesn't even look like flames. Personally I'm not in love with it but I don't hate it either. Gunna sleep on it and look at the model tomorrow and by then I might be able to make up my mind.

Edit: Really sorry here guys for whatever reason I can't get the photos to re-orient themselves right-side-up. They all appear upright on my comp but once I hit submit they bugger up.

Started work on my very first Raider. I must admit when I first looked at them I wasn't in love with their design but after putting one together and putting the brush to it the model has grown on me. I may even be able to say at this point I like it . So here you can see the true reason for the pink in my Wyches, it was all to tie into the cherry blossoms that would be scattered throughout the rest of the army.

My idea for this DE force is that they are a Wych cult that distinguishes itself from most other Cults in that they run a business much akin to the entertainment quarters of Japan in the 1800's. DE customers may come to the cults lavish parlor and partake of the music, drinks, gambling and of course many of the drugs that the Wych cults are famous for. Rather than having a large coliseum in which combatants would fight my Cult has a simple stage designed for 1 on 1 combat between two combatants. Often these combatants will wear long flowy and brightly coloured fabrics that will dance and wave during the combat and elevate the performance from a fight between two skilled combatants to a visual art. When coupled with the many hallucinogenic drugs offered at the establishment the fights on stage, with their many swirling colours, can be the most mesmerizing thing many DE will ever witness. The funds accrued from this business is used by the Succubus (no name for her yet) to fund Raids out of Commoragh and hire mercenaries to bolster her ranks such as Mandrakes, Hellions, Kabalite warriors, Scourges and Jetfighters.

So far that's about as far as I got for the lore but it's fairly straight-forward anyways. I'm trying to think of a name for the cult and so far all I've decided on is instead of doing the classic "Cult of (blank)" I'd like to go with a more oriental "House of (blank)" instead. If anyone has any ideas let me know.

As for the painting of the raider itself I'm fairly satisfied with it so far. The cherry blossoms look not bad on the table and other than some cleanup I just have the sail and crew to do. I'm really hung up on the sail now too since I'm having a hard time thinking of what to paint on it. If any of you have ideas there too please let me know.

So here's the progress pics of the raider thus-far.

Small update. Things have been going rather slow on the painting front but with Armies on Parade looming closer I have to get myself in gear. Here's the WIP of the Raider crew, almost done tbh, just a few little details to pick out and a bit of cleanup to do.

Can't believe there's no more love for this thread!

That raider looks wicked cool, love the free hand motive. Crew are looking very nice too, top work all around!

EDC

Thank you very much EDC! I was staring to think that maybe I screwed up my posts somehow and it wasn't updating on the site or something.

Greatly appreciate your comments and taking time to look at my stuff

No worries! Consider me subbed, so keep those update coming, really liking how this project is developing.

EDC

Thank you very much EDC

I've just got a little bit left to do on this crew then I have a unit of 5 hellions primed and ready to go (I know rules-wise they're not good but they are gorgeous models so I had to have some) and I have a succubus primed and ready for paint (the new succubus model is gorgeous imo, easily one of GW best HQ sculpts if you ask me).

So which one to start next, Hellions or succubus? Decisions, decisions...

Okay little bit of progress tonight. The Raider crew is all done except for some tidying up (my armor highlight lines are atrocious), figured I'd do the last pic of them here before they get mounted on the raider. Speaking of the raider I've been experimenting with some techniques for how I'm going to do the sail. Currently doing a "water-colour" thing using washes, not sure if I like it yet. If anyone knows of any fun ways to paint the sails that'll go well with what I have I'd love to hear it. The first layer of edge-highlighting is done on the hellion skyboards, going to do the next layer tomorrow. Picked out some of the brass bits on the skyboards too since those are dry-brushed and hence would wreck the edge highlighting if I had done that first. The hellions are primed and ready to rock, so is the succubus. Trying to think of what colours to do her fur cloak in, so far I'm stuck on leopard print.

If anyone has any ideas for the Succubus fur cloak or cool techniques for me to try I'm all ears, I feel confident on the whole model except that one part of her.

Crew and boards look great.

As fir the fur cloak, you really can't go wrong with dry brushing and washes something as textured as fur.

You said about finishing 'in time', have you got an event deadline?

EDC

Ah I seem to have forgotten to mention the goal for this army (apart from having a DE force to play with of course) is for this years armies on parade. I managed to take home silver (locally of course) last year with my Craftworld Eldar and so I thought I'd keep the Eldar theme going this year with their Dark Cousins. October 15th is the deadline so I'll have to build up this force as well as make my display table. I have plans for the display already, currently sourcing the materials and will likely order what I need by months end.

I used a mixture of drybrushing and a wash for the fur on my SoB Cannoness and I was fairly happy with the results. I do believe you're right EDC that I can't go wrong with that. Thank you for your comments and advice EDC, they're greatly appreciated.

Super small update today as I didn't get much brush time in. Just the second edge highlight layer for this evening. It's super messy atm but I'll be cleaning it up at a later stage. Hopefully I can convince the girlfriend to sit down with me tomorrow night for an art jam and I can get some real progress in.

Another small update. Got some copper on the splinter pods and started the sakura leaves effect. Tomorrow I'll finish off these skyboards and be moving onto the riders.

Long overdue because [Insert excuses here] but I finally got the skyboards finished and am moving forward with the riders. Looking forward to seeing how this all comes together once both parts are painted and I can put them together.

Skyboards are looking great.

October seems a reasonable deadline, should be an awesome looking board by all accounts.

What's next, the riders of the boards I presume?

EDC

Thanks EDC

Yup riders will be next followed by the succubus. After that will be the board itself.

After the board is complete I have 10 kabalite warriors and a Haemonculus that I will work on. Making no commitments to have them done in time but if they are then all the better. Also trying to convince myself that perhaps a razorwing jetfighter may need to sneak itself onto the board too...

Had some friends over tonight for a painting session and was able to block out some base colours for the Hellions. Looking forward to getting to the details on these guys, there's so much that I'm excited to pick out.

Nice looking stuff here. Not often you see flowers/leaves on DE. Seems to be more a craftworld style. But you pull it off well.

Thank you very much Nevelon! Glad that the theme doesn't feel too "forced".

Inspiration came from the Asian opium dens/brothels. Often they would outwardly exude sophistication and class but deep down inside they're still the same den of vice as every other opium den and brothel. Very much a fan of "Beautiful creature on the outside, sinister monster deep inside" theme. I feel DE can fit this bill pretty well.

Looking forward to seeing where I can push the envelope on this theme, thank you for commenting, it's great motivation

Got some more work done on the Hellions tonight. Doesn't feel like I'm progressing very fast but I know once the skin gets finished they'll look a lot more complete.

Absolutely love the work on this thread especially the Dark Eldar, the thread is inspiring me but I have a fatal flaw, I can paint but I suck at picking colour schemes and spot colours, spent weeks studying colour theory but to no avail, fancied doing something with a black/yellow feel then saw it had been done to death and fancied something unique. Any reference points for inspiration for schemes??

Also subbed keep it up

Thank you Mace, means a lot to me that you like them. I hardly consider myself good at this but I can give a few simple pointers as to my general workflow.

First and foremost is that I tend to do way too much web-surfing and for every hour of painting I get done I'll tend to have 3 or 4 hours of browsing images of other painted armies. I've amassed quite the repertoire now of "techniques I promise I'll one day try". Some times these just sit and collect dust but other times I'll look at a model and think "I've got just the style this'll look good in!".

I was in the Art Institute of Vancouver for a year (taking 3d modelling but colour theory was also one of my classes) and I must say that I use only the simplest of lessons I learned in that class. I frequently refer to colour wheels for inspirations on colour schemes as well as the world around me. The colour wheel is an invaluable tool as it allows me to quickly identify complimentary colours, in short two colours that are opposites on the colour wheel yet make for a pleasing combination to the eye. An example of this is in my craftworld Eldar I used a yellow-orange and then complimented is with purple. While they are not direct opposites on the wheel they are far enough apart that they created contrast. For my DE it's the pink with against teal, also not exactly opposites but still far enough apart to create a pleasing contrast. Black doesn't count as it's a neutral colour. When choosing your colour scheme I would start with picking a colour you're enthusiastic about painting and then looking at the colour wheel to find a pleasing counter to it. Secondly I like to keep in mind that these are really small models typically viewed from 2 to 3 feet away at least so having high-contrast and vibrant colours helps the eye be drawn to them on the table or in the display case. I've glossed over too many nurgle armies with muted browns and greens because they don't subconsciously demand your eyes attention and I miss out on getting to see the amazing work that got put into them, I strive not to emulate that.

I've tormented myself trying to find a unique paint scheme that has never been done before but alas the sad truth is that almost nothing is unique anymore, someone somewhere has done it. Truth is though that everyone has a style and no two people will do the same project in the same by accident, use this to your advantage. In everything you do you'll always unconsciously be doing your own spin on it whether with colour choice, line work or placement, shading and highlighting. The important thing is to pick a scheme you're excited about and then do it, even if someone else has done it before. By the end of it your scheme will have your own flair and it'll still be yours.

For example my craftworld Eldar were totally not unique, I got the idea from this guy: http://mospaeda.blogspot.ca/2014/07/painting-tutorial-pool-water.html

After seeing that I knew I had to challenge myself to try it and thus I set to work. I chose orange though as I've always wanted to try painting orange and I wanted something that was very vibrant on the table.

For my Dark Eldar I had a backstory in mind prior to starting the project. Knowing where my themes and inspirations were drawing from (Asian opium houses and nature) I decided upon the general scheme. A quick foray onto google images netted me a ton of results of people that had already done the Sakura flower patterns on their models, mostly Craftworld Eldar though. Then about a week after I started this project I stumbled on this:
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2011/02/showcase-darkwynns-kabal-of-the-orange-blossom.html

He did a great job with that force and I was happy to see that the pattern does look great on DE models.

I love the idea of a Black and yellow army, in fact I want to doe a tyranid swarm army some day and I was going to do black yellow and red. In this case taking inspiration from wasps (many species of wasp indeed have some red on their body, often fading into the yellow from the black) and also pulling from the Starship troopers warrior bugs theme (one of the greatest movies of all time ). What army were you thinking of painting in black and yellow? Depending on that we can find other colours to add in the mix and build it up.

And look at me ramble on and on and on... anyways thanks for the sub and comment Mace, it means a lot to me.

Slow and steady progress here on the hellions. I feel I can get them done by the end of this weekend so I'll strive for that and then get to work on my succubus right away.

Man I really gotta find better lighting for these pics, their skin is absolutely glowing in these progress shots, really bleeds away any other colours I've done lol.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Thank you Mace, means a lot to me that you like them. I hardly consider myself good at this but I can give a few simple pointers as to my general workflow.

First and foremost is that I tend to do way too much web-surfing and for every hour of painting I get done I'll tend to have 3 or 4 hours of browsing images of other painted armies. I've amassed quite the repertoire now of "techniques I promise I'll one day try". Some times these just sit and collect dust but other times I'll look at a model and think "I've got just the style this'll look good in!".

I was in the Art Institute of Vancouver for a year (taking 3d modelling but colour theory was also one of my classes) and I must say that I use only the simplest of lessons I learned in that class. I frequently refer to colour wheels for inspirations on colour schemes as well as the world around me. The colour wheel is an invaluable tool as it allows me to quickly identify complimentary colours, in short two colours that are opposites on the colour wheel yet make for a pleasing combination to the eye. An example of this is in my craftworld Eldar I used a yellow-orange and then complimented is with purple. While they are not direct opposites on the wheel they are far enough apart that they created contrast. For my DE it's the pink with against teal, also not exactly opposites but still far enough apart to create a pleasing contrast. Black doesn't count as it's a neutral colour. When choosing your colour scheme I would start with picking a colour you're enthusiastic about painting and then looking at the colour wheel to find a pleasing counter to it. Secondly I like to keep in mind that these are really small models typically viewed from 2 to 3 feet away at least so having high-contrast and vibrant colours helps the eye be drawn to them on the table or in the display case. I've glossed over too many nurgle armies with muted browns and greens because they don't subconsciously demand your eyes attention and I miss out on getting to see the amazing work that got put into them, I strive not to emulate that.

I've tormented myself trying to find a unique paint scheme that has never been done before but alas the sad truth is that almost nothing is unique anymore, someone somewhere has done it. Truth is though that everyone has a style and no two people will do the same project in the same by accident, use this to your advantage. In everything you do you'll always unconsciously be doing your own spin on it whether with colour choice, line work or placement, shading and highlighting. The important thing is to pick a scheme you're excited about and then do it, even if someone else has done it before. By the end of it your scheme will have your own flair and it'll still be yours.

For example my craftworld Eldar were totally not unique, I got the idea from this guy: http://mospaeda.blogspot.ca/2014/07/painting-tutorial-pool-water.html

After seeing that I knew I had to challenge myself to try it and thus I set to work. I chose orange though as I've always wanted to try painting orange and I wanted something that was very vibrant on the table.

For my Dark Eldar I had a backstory in mind prior to starting the project. Knowing where my themes and inspirations were drawing from (Asian opium houses and nature) I decided upon the general scheme. A quick foray onto google images netted me a ton of results of people that had already done the Sakura flower patterns on their models, mostly Craftworld Eldar though. Then about a week after I started this project I stumbled on this:
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2011/02/showcase-darkwynns-kabal-of-the-orange-blossom.html

He did a great job with that force and I was happy to see that the pattern does look great on DE models.

I love the idea of a Black and yellow army, in fact I want to doe a tyranid swarm army some day and I was going to do black yellow and red. In this case taking inspiration from wasps (many species of wasp indeed have some red on their body, often fading into the yellow from the black) and also pulling from the Starship troopers warrior bugs theme (one of the greatest movies of all time ). What army were you thinking of painting in black and yellow? Depending on that we can find other colours to add in the mix and build it up.

And look at me ramble on and on and on... anyways thanks for the sub and comment Mace, it means a lot to me.

The rambling is fine, it means you have taken time to respond to my post and it contains detail, the scheme I wanted since I got my dark eldar was black and yellow, my ideas all stem from things like old school space hulk, the black/yellow on the chainfists, wasps/bees/hornets and just general society "careful floor wet" signs are yellow with black lettering etc

However I also really wanted to pull the dark eldar wych element (using slaves to feed beasts or fight in arenas) the street gang culture of the hellions

My mind is awash with ideas I just can't get it focused into a scheme

Love the Wych cults, by far my favourite of the three DE sub-groups. This project was initially intended to be a wych cult (it will one day, I bought 4 boxes of wyches) but for now it's going to be a little bit of everything.

I love the concept of black and yellow DE, It'll definitely look beautiful and demand attention on the table. In my mind I think a unique and contrasting colour in this case would be blue. Not a lot of it but just enough to be a great contrasting spot colour. What I picture is a Wych with the black bodysuit, yellow armour plating and then bright blue for her drug pump and feed lines. Blue agonizer for the Hekatrix instead of the usual green as well. Then smatter as needed with the coppers and silvers for things like knives and guns.

I find it's very helpful to look at other armies too to figure out colour placement, I had a lot of trouble with this with my Raider (still am cause I don't know what to do with the sail). I found this army that I like for it's high-contrast theme, it might be good inspiration for where to start thinking about your colour placement. Here's the link: http://natfka.blogspot.ca/2011/05/phil-kelly-talks-dark-eldar.html

Sadly caution striping looks a bit out of place on DE models but you can still get some really cool patterns on the raiders and venoms with harsh tribal style markings. Kind of like a cross between a Japanese Kanji and tribal tattoos. Those look really good on the vehicles and may be worth investigating.

I hope some of this helps to get the creative juices flowing and I'd love to see what you do once you get started.

Making good progress on the riders!

EDC

Gonna be an awesome army! The pink works really well.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Slow and steady progress here on the hellions. I feel I can get them done by the end of this weekend so I'll strive for that and then get to work on my succubus right away.

Man I really gotta find better lighting for these pics, their skin is absolutely glowing in these progress shots, really bleeds away any other colours I've done lol.

DE are looking good, glare and all.

Do you have a setup for photos? While it might not help that much for quick workbench snaps, if you want to show off finished work, or get a detail WIP shot for feedback they are very nice.

You can make your own with a couple of desk lamps, some parchment paper, and a cardboard box, or buy a nice folding one with a few whistles and bells for about $50 USD.

Nice write up on the color wheel, very useful. I’ve also heard that sometimes you work with colors that are more triangularly spread, not directly across, but forget the reasoning behind that.

Hey there I_F. Some really tidy stuff on display here. DE are coming along very nicely. Love the idea of the flowers and petal drifting Along the flanks of the transports. Sublime touch. Likeeeee!!!

@EDC Thanks! I'm liking how they're coming together and am super stoked to see what they look like on their boards.

@Sgt Oddball Thanks man, I'm glad you like the scheme!

@Nevelon Thanks dude! I don't currently have a setup for photos but I really want to get one. I keep telling myself one day I'll build one (I've looked at lots of guides on how to make them) but then at the end of the day I'd rather spend time painting. I'm thinking I'll just break down and buy a proper photo booth here soon. And you're totally right, looking at the colour wheel I do tend to work just to the left or right of the opposite colour. I should have stressed that you don't have to use the exact opposite colour on the wheel, often the flanks of it will produce nice results.

@Januine Thanks for stopping by Jan! Really appreciate it. I'm glad you like the flower petals, I'm still working at getting better at painting them neatly but I have enough vehicles that I'm sure I'll get in tons of practice. Your thread and the tips you've given me have been a great source of inspiration.

Ok big update here. The hellions are done!

Hmmm... On second thought maybe that wasn't so big.

Oh I suppose some news too. Today I ordered what will be the (terrain) centerpiece of my Armies on Parade display board. Shipping was stupid but c'est la vie. I've also ordered a small photo booth with lights, that should help me take some photos that will hopefully be able to show off my models properly. Or allow you guys to dissect them with better clarity to spot my multitudes of mistakes... honestly worried about that part.

Anyways here's the Hellions, hope you guys like them.

EDIT: Ughhh my apologies guys these photos seem to be even worse than my usual drivel. I'll see if maybe I can set something up to get some passable photos tomorrow.

Niiiiiiiceeeee!!!!

Yeah, looking good!

EDC

@Januine I'm worthy of 7 i's?1 Wow thanks dude

@EDC Thanks dude, I'm fairly happy with them. Lots of room for improvement but to be honest when isn't there?

Got a bit of work done on the succubus last night. Not really much to show as I'm currently just blocking out base colours (got the first layer down on the skin though). I ain't gunna lie this model has me nervous as hell, I don't wanna feth it up.

Have faith, you will do fine.

Looking at that mini and the axe/halberd things she’s holding, I feel she needs giant 80’s hair.

Although that might just be the Jain Zars I’ve painted talking...

Thx for the vote of confidence Nev

She does have a pretty big pony tail flying behind her that you can't really see in the photo. Personally not a fan of GW's era of 80's hair metal band models so I'm thankful for the more toned down hair recent models have lol. Jain Zar was one of the biggest offenders of this depending on which side of the fence you're on

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Thx for the vote of confidence Nev

She does have a pretty big pony tail flying behind her that you can't really see in the photo. Personally not a fan of GW's era of 80's hair metal band models so I'm thankful for the more toned down hair recent models have lol. Jain Zar was one of the biggest offenders of this depending on which side of the fence you're on

Even if you liked the 80’s hair, there was no arguing about who the queen was. Painted a lot of massive dos back then. While I enjoyed that era, I will agree that we are better off these days.

Really great armies man, always been a fan of the Eldar and yours have got me itching to finally get some paint on mine. I look forward to more.

Cheers.

That succubus is a great fig though. really nice sculpt. Need to get one some day. The haemonculus is another one of the DE that they really did well. If you havent got him already - you should!

@Nev: Absolutely, Abaddon only wishes his hair was as lustrous as Jain Zars.

@Eldanari: Thanks man I appreciate you taking the time to look at my work. Glad I can help to motivate you to get some paint on your Eldar, the more the merrier.

@Januine: Totally agree about the Succubus sculpt, that's why I'm so intimidated by it, I want to make sure my paintjob does the sculpt justice. I know I struggle with skin so this will be a real test for me. And yeah I already bought myself a Haemy, love the new sculpt there too and just had to have one. That's another one I'm both excited and terrified to start working on.

I painted him a wee while back. Fun to paint but I'd make sure to paint him in parts. Especially I think it was one part of his coat and the arms .... I think. Otherwise they really obscure and get in the way of stuff.

Nice start on the Succubus, I'm sure you'll deliver the goods.

EDC

@EDC: Thanks for the confidence dude, I sure will do my best to deliver.

@Januine: Not sure if I mentioned it in your thread when you were working on that Haemy but after seeing it finished I decided I needed one too, bought mine that week. I knew I needed to challenge myself and see what I could do for a Haemy model after seeing yours.

Ok after a small break to spend time with my GF I finally sat down again to chip away at the Succubus. Man I wish I was better at skin, I just can't get blending down right and can never get the smooth transitions to make it look natural. I need a lot more practice

She's still a long way from complete but I'm starting to see the fruits of my labour. I took a page from Januine's book and since they sculpted this awesome leather texture under her fur cloak I figured I'd bloody it up a bit and make it look like a fresh (figuratively speaking) new coat. I have a photo of it but it's really hard to see it properly as it's in such an awkward spot to take a photo of. Also I'd like your guys opinion on the cloak itself, I'm not sure if I like how the fur turned out yet...

Lastly I spent some time resting my eyes to get some basing done on some second-hand Kabalite warriors that I'll be giving a loving home. They'll be getting primed tomorrow and then put on the back-burner. The last model on the side is a test model I built up to test out a possible build and paint scheme. Also as usual sorry for the poor quality photos, they make it hard to see the details properly

Anyways let me know what you guys think, your comments and critiques are always appreciated.

Cloak looks pretty good from here. Some shade, some highlights. I’d not mess with it too much more. If anything, just a little more wash in the deeps, or highlight the raised bits.

Skin looks fine, don’t beat yourself up too much over it.

Thanks Nev. I'm going to give the cloak some time to settle for me, see if my opinion of it changes over time. For now there's still lots of the rest of her to paint

Awesome work. I personally think the skin tones are looking good. You shouldn't beat yourself up over blending, especially when you're painting to a high standard already!

EDC

Thank you EDC for your kind words. I'll get it eventually, probably won't be on this model but one day I'll feel comfortable painting skin.

The way I see painting is (or any art for that matter) is to always strive for what you feel is just outside your reach. If you reach too far you'll be disappointed, if you don't push yourself though you'll never get better. It's exciting when I can paint something that I'm both excited and nervous for, something that I know I'll be pushing my skills and knowledge to try and grasp that next tier of skill. I feel like I'm close to "getting" skin tones but I'm still missing a couple key points.

That's the nature of this hobby though, there's always more to learn and improve. I'm very happy with the improvements I've made over the past two years and am looking forward to see what I can do next.

Not a progress update on my Succubus but I'm super stoked as I just had some mail show up. I think it may be time to learn how to take decent photos...

On a related note: for the time being I still don't have a camera so I'm still taking photos with my IPhone, anyone got any good apps they suggest for making the most of my IPhone camera?

Few more WIP pics for you fine folks. Tonight I worked on the pink armour, skull on her trophy rack as well as some bronze details and general tidying up. She's coming together slowly but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I also did a very small amount of work on her skin and I am happier with it now than I was before. The changes are so subtle I'm not sure if they'll show up in the photos, in person it just transitions a little bit smoother.

Looking good, the pink armour really pops and the skin is looking great.

RE: Painting and improving etc, I totally agree that you should always push yourself and embrace trying new techniques etc, but I think, especially in a hobby like 40k, where you have so many models, there's a point where you need to set a minimum standard or you'll never get an army on the table.

Also that fact that when the models are 2 foot away on the table a 'table top' and 'golden daemon' are practically indistinguishable.

I tend to do my characters and more durable units as my hobby show case projects and all my grunts get a decent table top standard.

EDC

Wow, she’s coming along nicely.

On the topic of photos and apps, Your camera, even on your phone, should do a decent job on it’s own. The most important thing is to brace it good, to avoid moving it while you shoot. The photo booth setup I got (which looks a lot like the one you have there) came with a little holder and tripod for phones. Setting the timer can also help with that, not sure if that is part of the basic camera program on your phone.

The only real post production mods I do are white balance and cropping. And frankly, since I switched to a booth setup, I don’t bother to white balance much; the lights give me a true picture by default. I use a (free) program called PhotoScape on my laptop to make collages and any major mods I need to do to pictures.

I put this piece together a bit ago to compare things:


Now, neither my “real” camera or my phone are anything close to state of the art. But with the proper basic techniques and a good setup, you can get good pictures even with a potato.

That Succubus is looking really good.

@EDC: Thx dude, I am liking how this model is coming together just a little bit more every day. I definitely put more time and care into my characters over my rank and file infantry, I think most people do. My Wyches, despite being a very similar colour scheme lack a lot of the depth and more than a few of the details that I put onto this model. Since this force is my Armies on Parade entry and I haven't even played a single game with them yet I'm definitely putting a little bit more stock on the paintjob I give them over my time investment currently.

@Nev: Thanks for the tips. I did get a tripod with my setup but it doesn't have a mount that will work with my iPhone, I'll have to track something down for that or jury-rig it. Using a stabilization device I think will help a lot and I got photoshop for some post-production editing. I love the way you organize your photos into nice multi-image setups and I also like Jan's border on his photos. I may have to plagiary... borrow some ideas from how you two set up your photos after they've been taken

@Aku-chan: Thanks for taking the time to have a look Aku, I really appreciate it.

Holy washes batman, felt almost like that was all I did tonight. It wasn't of course. The largest part I have left to complete is her hair. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it since the method I've used thus far for my DE hair won't lend itself well to how her hair is sculpted. I'd be grateful for any advice on how you fine folks might do the hair on this model. Anyways here's the update pics, hope you guys like her so far.

Looking good dude. I totally forgot this is for AoP, totally makes sense that each model gets a bit of extra love.

That whip looks cracking (lol), really nice choice of colours, perfectly contrasts the armour.

EDC

She's looking gorgeous I_F. Whip is great. Can you throw us a shot of her against a plain background - just a piece of paper of something. Hard to make everything out. Great looking job though

Looking very nice there!

What color do you have planned for her hair? I think it looks good white, although if you leave it that way, you might need to add a little shading.

@EDC: Thank you, glad to hear my colours are working out so far.

@Januine: Thanks, I may have some time this afternoon if work is slow to set up my photo booth, I'll see if I can get some WIP decent pics for ya today.

@Nevelon: Thank you very much. For her hair I was thinking of doing the same bright teal colour I used for the wyches but I'm pretty sure the method that I painted their hair won't work here. Since she's my leader I think if anyone is going to pull off having a different hair colour it'd be her so I'm open to suggestions.

I'd go either lary bleach blonde or blue.

Absolutely amazing work so far. First time visiting and my god are your Eldar cool :O

Thank you very much Possumcraft, I greatly appreciate you taking a look at my stuff

Bleach blonde is an interesting idea I hadn't considered. I may have to give it a shot, I may need to buy new paints as well since I don't think I have the colours to do Blonde hair currently. Thanks for the idea Possum!

When I want uber bright blonde I base with Screaming Skull, wash with Rakarth Flesh, do a deep wash near the roots with Dryad Bark then hightlight out with increasing mixes of white and Screaming Skull.

Inevitable_Faith,

Great painting log, I was most impressed with the Eldar and the speed in which you turned them out. Although now that I see the Dark Eldar I am not certain which I light better.

Cheers,

CB

wouldnt bother with photobooth for wips I_F. Just pop a blank piece f a4 in the backgroun. works a treat

@Possumcraft: I really like your technique on that Possum. I'm adding it to my repertoire now. I'll need to buy some paints as I don't have all the colours but the good news is I'll be heading out of town for the next 5 days and where I'm going they have a GW (my hometown has no GW, closest is a 2 hour drive away). I'll snag the paints while I'm there to try out this hair.

@Captain Brown: Speed? You must be reading the wrong plog my friend as speed is simply not a paint colour I own. Thank you all the same for your kind words and I really appreciate you taking a look at my stuff. I hope to keep you confused on which you like better in all my future projects as well

@Januine: I was looking for an excuse to try out the new photo booth anyways so I set it up on the kitchen table and took a few snaps. Still going to have to mess around to get the most out of it, really gotta iron out the backdrops as they're all full of seams from being folded.

I'll be gone for the next 5 days and I'm not sure if any updates will be posted while I'm gone but I am bringing my painting stuff with me to get some work done while I'm out of town. Since there is a GW there and I realize I have no Heavy support choice for this army I'm thinking I'll snag a model while I'm there. Thinking I might try my hand at a Talos. Or should I get a voidraven bomber? Agh options! WHat do you guys think?

So here are some new pics, no painting update with these, just trying out the new photo booth.

Ahhh she's looking great. Lovely colour choices - really work well together. I'd just watch your paint thickness on her skin. Looks a little clumpy on her sides. She's looking great though. Are you colouring her hair or keeping it white? I think the white looks brilliant - works beautifully. Great job I_F

Yeah I had some issues with the skin, it's an area I need to improve on. Part of the issue was I screwed up a couple times and had to restart a couple areas so I have more layers than I should, secondly I gotta get a new pot of Pallid wych flesh as the one I'm using is getting pretty clumpy and thinning it wasn't helping as much as it should. Overall though it's an area I need lots of practice in.

I was going to paint her hair but I've heard a couple times now that people are liking the white so that is another option to go with. Right now it's far too flat so would you have any tips on how to add some depth too it? Perhaps shading it in the recesses with a wash?

Yeah - I'd go with some thinned down mutiple recess washes. build up some shadows and shade in the hair with a few seperate layers of thinned shade rather than washing the whole do. I'd go very lighhtly thought to preserve that brillaint white. Shade with whichever colour you want the shadow tint to be.

Looking brilliant dude. I really like the white hair.

EDC

Looking real awesome here man, loving the white hair aswell, gives the model a real striking look.

Thanks for the comments guys

I'm back from my trip and ready to get back to work. I'll be attempting to finish off the succubus tomorrow.

My amazon order showed up too so I'll be starting the work on my Armies on Parade table very soon as well.

I bought a Talos pain engine while I was in the city too and used my only hobby night I had available to put it together. Once I get the table made for AoP I'll be working on him to see if I can add him to the force. Think of it as a stretch goal.

Love those Talos. Must get one. Soooooomeday!!!

So painting night turned into Kill Team night. Had lots of fun but gotta stay focused if I'm going to have everything done on time. Will be painting tonight but figured I'd show off what will be the centrepiece of my AoP display table. Got a lot of work to do to decorate it and fit it in but I think it'll be totally worthwhile.

Oooo shiny! The AoP board is gonna look awesome I think.

EDC

Oooh, that’ll be fun. I made a webway portal with something similar.

Is that a stormtrooper lurking in the background?

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
So painting night turned into Kill Team night. Had lots of fun but gotta stay focused if I'm going to have everything done on time. Will be painting tonight but figured I'd show off what will be the centrepiece of my AoP display table. Got a lot of work to do to decorate it and fit it in but I think it'll be totally worthwhile.

Inevitable_Faith,

The perfect access point to the Web Way.

Cheers,

CB

PS: And the photo booth really brings out the subtle transition between you colours from the base up to the highlight. Excellent stuff.

@EDC: Thanks, I'm hoping I can do a good job of it. Larger arts and crafts projects like this aren't my strength lol

@Nevelon: I'm pretty excited to get cracking on this portal, do you have photos of the webway portal you made? I'd love to see it. And yes that is a trooper in my living room. It was a gift from my girlfriend a few years back. The suit spends most of it's time on the mannequin but I tend to find the odd excuse to wear it such as birthdays, conventions, dinner out with the family and weddings.

@Captain Brown: Thanks you. I wanted to incorporate lights into my entry again this year and this felt like a great thing to use. And thank you very much for your comment. The booth was a very worthwhile purchase I feel, I'm very happy with the photos I can get using it and I'm glad you like the succubus.

Alright ladies and gents I present to you my Succubus. She's not perfect by a long shot but I'd appreciate your comments and critiques. Hope you like her.

Excellent work on the Succubus, I think the choice of colours work really well, I'm especially digging the white hair.

EDC

Thanks EDC!

Yeah I'm happy with the colours, I think they go very nice together. The white hair wasn't supposed to be white but so many people said they liked it when I posted the WIP with it primed white that I decided to follow that and try my hand at giving it some depth. Lots of room for improvement but I learned a lot on how to do white hair.

Sweet - she's looking sexy gorgeous viscous scary sexy again awesome. Great job and the white hair was definitely the way to go. Only thing I'm not sure of is the green rune/writing on the blade. Looks a little rushed. Great fig though. Top banana

If I’m being critical...
I might have done the hair highlight a tad lighter. The top pic especially looks like she dyed a strand. The purpleish skin highlight/shadow is also a bit stark.

But that’s my just looking for things to nit-pick in the closeup shots. She’s an excellent little whirling death machine.

RE: the portal

I built it for the previous LoER contest. There are some WIP pics over there, as well as some helpful advice. I start working on it in my blog here (auto-appended to the bottom of a longer post)

Could of done a lot of things better, but it was my first terrain piece.

@Januine: Thanks, glad you like her. For the rune on her blade what would you suggest I do to make it seem more complete? It is just some moot green carefully painted into the relief so I agree it could use a bit more depth.

@Nevelon: Thanks for the comment dude. I really appreciate the critiques. For the hair I totally agree, I had it much lighter but then it progressively got darker each time I touched up the wash to neaten it up. I may go back and redo it at a later date but since I'm on a deadline this will have to do for now so I can get working on the board. As for the skin I also really agree, I chalk this up to my inexperience doing skin. I'm not very good at blending and so just to get this as it is took me more layers than it should have and I fear that if I was to keep trying to perfect it I'd have ruined the model by glopping too many layers on her skin areas and drowning out her form. It's an area I really want to strive to improve in. So much so in fact that I picked up the new slaughter priest AoS model to practice on. Lots of skin on that guy and I'll just be painting skin, then stripping him over and over again until I'm happy with my technique.

By the way thank you for posting your webway, I'll definitely be looking at how you built yours for inspiration on how to move forward with mine.

I know I didn't comment on the rune but if it was me, I would maybe try a layer of shade on the edges and then a layer of green ink. Doing that will make the center portion of the rune "glow" in a way. Over all she looks great ^.^

I think the figure is excellent. Better than anything I could churn out.

Cheers,

CB

@Halflingg: Thank you very much for the comment, I always appreciate the critiques, no matter who gives them. Improvement is improvement after all. I'll have to see what I have in my inventory for a shade that would go well will this. I like the idea of working it up a bit more to make it have the illusion of glowing and I'll definitely be giving this a shot.

@Captain Brown: Thanks man, I'm glad you like her. And I wouldn't go so far as to say you can't do a model like this, I'm watching all three of your plogs and you put out great work.

Haemonculus next?! If you do half a good a job as you did on Lady Sexydeath there on him - he's gonna be awesome

Haha Thanks Januine. You know that's forever going to be her name right? Lady Sexydeath, has a nice ring to it. I'm at a crossroads currently about what model to do next, on the one hand I'm dying to try my hand at the Haemy but on the other I have a built Talos that's been whispering at me from my painting table to paint him too. Currently I've been chopping up plywood and foam to build my AoP table, it's hobby related but really nothing worth posting photos of yet, hence my photo-silence.

I may just have to take a look at putting my Haemy together tonight though. I'll put him up beside my Talos and let them duel to the death for who gets painted first

Talos!! That's the cool nasty death engine thingymajig right. Love those. Keep meaning to pick one up At some point but I have way enough plastic crack at the mo

Haha then the Talos it is! First the AoP board as I'll need my display for the event but then the Talos will be the next model to receive the blessings of the painting gods, right after I accidentally tip over a pot of paint as a sacrifice in their honour.

I been away for a while guys, feel really guilty for it but I needed to catch my breath. Had some real life things pop up that stressed me out, coupled with the fact that I need to build this AoP board (a feat I'm not particularly skilled at nor particularly enjoy, I'm simply a painter, not an arts and crafts guy) I just kinda burnt out. Anyways, enough moaning and on to the progress. I FINALLY finished the sail for my Raider. I kinda like it... I kinda don't. I'm on the fence but overall it does the job of wrapping up this vehicle and tying it all together. I do have some progress made on the AoP board, I'll update that part of the entry tomorrow so you guys can see my plan of attack. As always comments and critiques are welcome.

Love it!!!!! Great work on the raider - colour scheme, details, sails, sakura........fantiastic stuff

 Januine wrote:
Love it!!!!! Great work on the raider - colour scheme, details, sails, sakura........fantiastic stuff

Thank you very much Jan, I'm super stoked you like it! I've also started that Talos too, hopefully I can get it ready here quick, lots of hard to reach places on the model once it's assembled by the way, definitely poses a challenge.

Raider is looking super cool. Digging the work on the sail.

EDC

I think the sail fits the raider perfectly. It echoes the colors used on the rest of the model, but adds something more. Great job!

Looking forward to seeing what you are going to do for a board.

I can maybe see where you're coming from on the dislike but it looks beautiful and adds to the model as a whole. As usual the artist is seeing mistakes no one else ever would and therefore don't exist!

Honestly, the Raider is perfect.

@EDC: Thanks dude, glad it came together nicely.

@Nevelon: Thanks Nev, really appreciate it. I'm glad you feel the sail suits the raider. My biggest fear was that since the sail was painted in such a different manner it wouldn't "fit" with the raider and would just stick out as awkward.

@ChaoticMind: Ah the plight of the artist, truly we are our own harshest critics. That is, however, how we strive to always improve our work. I'm glad you like it though ChaoticMind, thank you for your kind words.

While I was definitely on the fence about it before I'm quickly turning around to liking the final product, still lots of mistakes I see, but overall I'm liking it more and more. Due in no small part to your guys comments. So thank you very much everyone for taking the time to check it out and comment, I really appreciate it.

Inevitable_Faith,

I think the sail on the Raider is great, a real straight from the void or webway themed picture.

Cheers,

CB

Captain Brown wrote:
Inevitable_Faith,

I think the sail on the Raider is great, a real straight from the void or webway themed picture.

Cheers,

CB

Thank you very much CB. I'm happy that the sail evokes the right themes. I think it was definitely the right call on my part then to put the raider aside for as long as I did until the right inspiration hit me.

Not too much of an update here but here is the very rough outline of my AoP board for this year.

Ooo very intriguing!

EDC

Outstanding freehand work on the Raider.

 aku-chan wrote:
Outstanding freehand work on the Raider.

Thank you very much Aku-chan. I see lots of room for improvement but it's one of my first attempts at it and I do have 3 more raiders to practice on

Board is put on hold since I rand out of materials and so I've gone back to putting base colours on the talos. It's truly nothing special right now but I'm almost done with the base colours then it'll be on to the fun parts like skin and detailing the armour plates. Not looking forward to painting all of the vials though...

Inevitable_Faith,

If it is anything like your Raider, Succubus, Hellions, etc. It should be just cracking.

Cheers,

CB

Good start!

How hard do you think it would be to have him gently holding an a flowering cherry branch in one of those twisted claws? Just thinking about details throughout your army.

(I’m big on impractical ideas for other people)

@CB: Thank you. The goal is to have him match the theme of the rest of the army so I do hope he delivers.

@Nevelon: Thanks dude. I'd imagine someone much more talented than myself wouldn't have too much of an issue making a cherry branch for him. Sadly I am me and equally sad is that anything other than paintings simply isn't one of my strengths. I agree however that impractical ideas for other people are the best kind of impractical ideas. That's why I have a friend who plays necrons that I've convinced to start working with LEDs

Small update for my AoP board. Man I really hate making these things. It comes down to two things: 1) Knowledge, I don't know what I'm doing and 2) Materials, it's like starting a whole new hobby and I don't have any of the materials I need.

I was having a really tough time motivating myself to do this and was thinking of pulling out of AoP but my wonderful (and patient) girlfriend sat down with me and helped me for 4 hours one evening to get things rolling again and make a battle plan. I seriously have no idea how she puts up with me.

That is why you should marry her. I married Mrs. Captain Brown because she had no issue with the hobby and I have never regretted it.

Cheers,

CB

Armies on Parade looms ever closer and as per my usual strategy I'm cramming as much work as I can right before deadline. Oh procrastination, you pretend to be my friend but every time you always let me down. Oh well no sense complaining about it now. So here's the updates on what's coming together. Board is almost done, just have the backdrop to wrap up, I also painted up a quick terrain piece I figured would look good with the rest of the board (made from an aquarium decoration). I put a crazy amount of work into my Talos in one sitting and literally painted till I was falling asleep at the table. As a result I'm sure to my wakeful eyes tomorrow I'll notice a million mistakes and stupid brush strokes.

Looking goof dude. The board is start to take shape too.

EDC

Talos looks good from this angle, and the board is perfect. Visually appealing but nothing overpowering and interesting without being impossible to place the minis.

I forgot they made the talos more organic. I seem to recall it more as a giant floating robot scorpion.

Looking good, both the talos and the terrain.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Oh procrastination, you pretend to be my friend but every time you always let me down.

Inevitable_Faith, procrastination is not your friend.

That Talos looks prime.

Waiting to see the finished project and model.

Cheers,

CB

@EDC: Thanks dude. It's looking a lot better than I thought it was going to look as I was making it. Man making this board has been such a steep learning curve for me.

@ChaoticMind: Thank you. I wish I could say the board was all of those things by design but that's hardly true. It's just the happy accident of me not knowing at all what I'm doing and how to accomplish it.

@Nevelon: Thank you man. Yeah the new Talos IMO is way better than the old one. It fits the theme of the other covens units much better. I remember years ago when I first started playing and a buddy brought his DE and he had the old Talos, I was shocked because it looked way more like a CSM contraption to me.

@CB: Procrastination is so charismatic and charming though! He shows up, with gifts, and we hang out and have fun. Then I realize how much time has passed and have to quickly kick him out of my house so I can get things done. I've gotten better over the past couple years at getting my hobby stuff done in a better timeframe but it's an ongoing struggle.

Well today was the big day, Armies on Parade and I... wasn't there. Due to some personal reasons yesterday I had to call in and cancel my entry. I had the time to get everything put together, in fact the archway for the portal was finished on Thursday night, I just had to mount everything up and do the last little bit of spray painting. The Talos could have been finished as well on Friday but since I had to cancel I got really depressed and couldn't bring myself to finish it.

Sorry this isn't a photo update post, I did do a bit more work on the Talos today but it was mostly just touch-ups to prep him for some washes, nothing worth showing. I'm just so angry and frustrated and disappointed that I wasn't able to make it, that all the work I've done since March culminated in... this. I know the models are done and I can always enter them in next year (with more stuff of course) but this was what I was building up to, this was the destination, the goal. I feel so defeated right now. Anyways, I suppose I just needed to vent. I'll keep plugging away at the army and be back to make some updates probably on Monday, the Talos should be done by then. I'll also throw the AoP board together so at least you guys will get to see what I was building.

/EndRant

Hope everything works out. Sorry you missed your deadline. But at the end of the day, you still have an awesome looking army to be proud of.

Thanks for the support Nev, wasn't a deadline issue but you are right I do have a force I am proud of.

And so as promised I did manage to finish the Talos tonight. This guy definitely crept way outside my safety bubble of things I'm familiar with painting. I really hope you guys like him.

Hey I_F - hope things are smoothing out and going ok. Have had a couple of sinking days myself recently and it's an absolute gakker :/
Anywho - the talos is looking fantastic. Really lovely job. Just love the juxtaposition of the cruel viscousnrss of the beast with the delicate sublime blossoms. Beautiful concept and execution.

Looking good IF. Anyway it's not about the destination, it's all about the journey and by all accounts you've pushed yourself and learned a great deal. Sure it's a kicker you didn't get to enter it into AoP, but you've got a kick ass force and a cool display board.

EDC

Nice work on the Talos. One thing I have a question about; Is the carapace articulated, or just layers? Obviously, the mini is a solid chunk of plastic, but “in world” how is it supposed to work? When you have freehand that crosses plates like that, it would only line up in one position if they flexed/shifted as it moved across the battlefield. The fact that there is a spine across the top implies that it is one solid piece, but just a thought while looking at it.

Also, with his more metallic and fleshy bits, how well does he fit in with the rest of your army? I suspect he looks great, but demand pics! Grab an army shot, let’s see what you’ve got.

@Jan: Thank you very much for your kind words. I'm perking up again now. Still disappointed I didn't get to go but I'm already looking forward to showing off a much larger force next year Those sinking days suck, but gotta do what we love everyday and wake up fresh the next day. Hopefully you kick all your sinking days to the curb whenever they pop up Jan. It's funny actually cause just as I finished the flowers on his carapace I held him away from me so I could take the model as a whole in (I was worried the flowers would be too much and wouldn't jive with him at all) and I just started laughing. Here I've got this monstrous vat-borne aberration built on pain... and I, not even as a joke, painted flowers on him. The irony wasn't lost on me. Overall though I agree, I think the juxtaposition does work fairly well.

@EDC: Thanks man, you're totally right. At the end of the day I am proud of what I've done and especially the growth in my painting skills (I'm less and less scared of flesh every day) and I look forward to seeing what I can do next.

@Nevelon: I'm honestly not sure if the carapace pieces in lore are articulated. To be honest from what I've read each Talos and Cronos engine are individual works of art made by a Haemonculus so it wouldn't surprise me if some are articulated, some aren't, some just have a decorative exo-skeleton frame and some are mostly flesh. Honestly with Talos engines I think we're limited only by our imagination and ability to modify the base model, the fluff tends to make them sound much more individual than GW's single model would imply. As for me I perceive this particular guys carapace to be a solid scalloped piece, no articulation. To be honest he hasn't made it with the rest of my force yet, he's still sitting on the painting tray. Getting some army shots together does sound like a great idea though. I've officially got a unit for each slot in a CAD so it feels like a good spot for a recap. Perhaps after fire practice I'll throw it all together and get some army pics in.

Ok big update here. I sat down to take the army photos like Nev suggested and that's when I realized: I've taken photos of any model I finished after I bought my photo booth but nothing pre-booth has proper photos. So what would have been a quick few snaps of the force all together turned into a full on session. Looking at it all too I really want to thank you guys for the amazing support, comments, critiques and motivation you've all given me to do this project (and my Craftworld Eldar project before it). I don't think I'd be where I'm at today if it wasn't for your kind words and brilliant tips/ideas. Thank you.

Ok enough gushy stuff. On to the photos!

Awesome work dude, they look great all together.

EDC

Thank you EDC. I'm currently planning my next addition. I have 2 more boxes of wyches and one box set aside for conversions into bloodbrides. I've got 3 raiders and a Haemy as well. I think I'll do a second unit of wyches and a raider to fill my second troops choice then perhaps move onto the bloodbrides for another elite. My goal is to finish what I have sitting in boxes before I buy anything new for the army. Having said that I'm tempted to buy another Talos kit and build a cronos this time around. This Talos was tons of fun to paint and I kind of want to do another one.

Great looking force. Looking forward to seeing it grow.

Well I was prepared to talk about the wonderful Talos, then you roll out the rest of the army. Fantastic work. Shock your opponent before the game begins with your army and forget about the AoP for this year.

Cheers,

CB

@Nevelon: Thank you sir. So do I

@CB: Thank you CB. If I show up to a game and my opponent likes the paintjob I've given my force then regardless of the results of the match I consider it a victory. I have an atrocious win record in 40k (no matter what army I play) and a friend of mine mentioned after a game once: "Well you don't always win but atleast at the end of the match you can always claim to have the prettiest corpse."

I think that's more or less become my motto for my 40k matches

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
@Nevelon: Thank you sir. So do I

@CB: Thank you CB. If I show up to a game and my opponent likes the paintjob I've given my force then regardless of the results of the match I consider it a victory. I have an atrocious win record in 40k (no matter what army I play) and a friend of mine mentioned after a game once: "Well you don't always win but atleast at the end of the match you can always claim to have the prettiest corpse."

I think that's more or less become my motto for my 40k matches

There is another side to that coin. When you are brutally having your teeth kicked by some nasty list in the hands of a skilled player, having it be done at the hands of a gorgeous army takes a lot of the sting out.

You just need to transition from “pretty corpse” to “at least I was crushed by a spectacular looking army”

And frankly, getting the good looking army is the hard part of that equation. Get more games in, learn from your mistakes, adjust as needed. You’ll be tabling people in no time!

Nice job on the Talos!

Your whole army is looking pretty special so far.

@Nevelon: Haha so true man! I must admit I never feel as bad about losing to an army that is gorgeously painted as opposed to losing to a wave of grey plastic. Pulling any victories with this DE force should taste all the sweeter.

@aku-chan: Thank you very much Aku! I'm glad you like the force and especially the Talos. I was very nervous about painting the Talos since it's out of my safety bubble but I'm glad it turned out well.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
@Nevelon: Haha so true man! I must admit I never feel as bad about losing to an army that is gorgeously painted as opposed to losing to a wave of grey plastic. Pulling any victories with this DE force should taste all the sweeter.

Inevitable_Faith,

And that is the heart of what the Long Painting War is all about as we do battle with the armies of grey, silver and black.

Cheers,

CB

Sir, you are an inspiration, making it very hard to resist starting a Dark Eldar army of my own.

 ChaoticMind wrote:
Sir, you are an inspiration, making it very hard to resist starting a Dark Eldar army of my own.

Thank you very much ChaoticMind for the kind words, means a lot to me. If you decide to start a DE army they have some amazing models and just the right amount of unique vibe to them that your style would suit them well. I'd love to see what you'd do with some DE models.