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Gorgeous weathering dude. Love the runes on the vehicles, as well.

Great work on the raiders

Any tips on painting those runes? Did you sketch them out first or free hand them? I'm heading back to my raider this weekend, not looking forward to it!

Finished up the highlights and weathering on the main Raider hulls:





Glad to hear that this blog seems to be doing it's bit to get people painting! All your comments are a big help in motivating me to keep me painting and posting!

@kitch102: The runes are painted freehand while looking at a reference picture on my computer. Spray varnishing the hull before you paint the runes makes it easy to rub off any mistakes with alcohol (or scrape bits off with your fingernail). I've gotten confident enough in my skills / gotten lazier and tried to cut corners that I didn't do the varnish step for these Raiders. I just changed the design a little to cover up any errant brushstrokes. I've got to admit that Raiders aren't my favorite thing to paint, but I do really like the "flying boat' look of the finished models. I just wish that the optimum deployment strategy for them wasn't just to put them in a big clump with the ones in front turned sideways!

On a related topic, I've been watching the recordings of the NOVA Invitational tournament matches while I paint. Watching people play with fully painted armies really helps make you want to get your guys done and out on the tabletop!

Just been through the entire thread, wow! all your models are amazing and the weathering is superb, keep up the good work!

Moltar wrote:Looking awesome, John! Keep 'em coming!

This, but with your name spelt correctly.

Again, absolutely great work man, does the wonderful DE models justice with a really characterful and great-looking colour scheme; I would LOVE to see this on the table across from me; beautiful work as ever.
I'm glad your blog is getting the attention and compliments it warrants.

Painted up a sail for one Raider. I can do a step by step guide with photos for the other Raider's sail if there's interest. It took me awhile to come up with how to make the sails look good without needing do blending on a large flat surface. Basically it's just a lot of dots in different shades of red and orange! I'm having a hard time getting a good picture of the effect with my lighting at home. So again, I'll ask you to take a look at a better photo of the sails on the Ravager on Page 1 of this thread.

My son is really enamored with the way you do your sails... if you wouldn't mind doing a tut on your technique... it would be greatly appreciated. I think they're fantastic as I can imagine them catching particles of the solar winds & each particle hit "lights up" a section of the sail for a millisecond.

Fantastic work!

Count me in for a tutorial buddy

Please post a tutorial, it looks great and I may use it to make a flat surface look like it had scales.

Very well done sir, the sails look leathery yet techy at the same time... it's odd, but it really works!

Both the pattern and the color work fantastically with the rest of the army, it provides a wonderful contrast to the (also awesome) teal of the army. Everything looks so good, it's almost criminal. Keep it up!

Please stop, you, Gits, MajorTom11, and Eggroll are making me jealous :(

Wrote up Part 1 of a detailed sail painting tutorial during during lunch hour at work. Forgot to bring it home. So Part 1 of the tutorial will go up tomorrow.

Here's something else to look at in the meantime. I've dug up a couple of photos of one of the Raiders I painted several months ago but never got around to posting. I remember not posting them because I hadn't glued in all the spikes. I still have not glued in the spikes. So I figure it's time to post them anyway! I think the sail in these photos is the first one I tried as a proof of concept. You can see that the effect is much more subtle than the recent sails I've been painting. That's mainly because I spent a lot more time on the first one with a lot more layers of colors. I probably spent an hour and a half on just the sail. The way I paint the sails now takes about 35 to 40 minutes instead and the effect is almost as good on the tabletop. On the plus side for the new WIP models, I think that I've gotten better at painting runes!

Great work man, but a weee bit of blue on the driver's ear

This is one Army that will really turn heads once in force and on the table the paint scheme is catcing and thent he detail level is excellent top marks matey keep em coming!

@Alfndrate: The bit of blue on the driver is actually a turquoise earring! On a semi-related tangent, I've been playing with this model in games for months now and up until today when I looked at the photos again I forgot that I had a female Raider pilot. It's funny how you spend so much time on the details just to have them recede into the back of your mind during a game because you're concentrating on other things!

So the tip of the ear is supposed to be an earring of sorts? I know the blue below it is an earring.

Alfndrate wrote:So the tip of the ear is supposed to be an earring of sorts? I know the blue below it is an earring.

It's OSL from the hair, you know because combat drugs have side effects too.

btemple0 wrote:

Alfndrate wrote:So the tip of the ear is supposed to be an earring of sorts? I know the blue below it is an earring.

It's OSL from the hair, you know because combat drugs have side effects too.

I just wanna make sure its intentional, this stuff is top notch, and it could just be my eyesight.

Alfndrate wrote:

btemple0 wrote:

Alfndrate wrote:So the tip of the ear is supposed to be an earring of sorts? I know the blue below it is an earring.

It's OSL from the hair, you know because combat drugs have side effects too.

I just wanna make sure its intentional, this stuff is top notch, and it could just be my eyesight.

Don't worry I was joking, I do not really use the orkmoticons but I do see what you mean.

Paint edited it poorly to maginify.

Wow! Glad to see my work is getting examined so closely!

You realize that this is the type of thing they do to the Mona Lisa or a Van Gogh!

You guys are right of course, it seems like I got a bit of white on the ear when I was painting it.

OR maybe I'm hiding clues to a lost treasure/true meaning of female Warrior's expression/identity of the descendants of Jesus in my miniatures that only show up under extreme magnification!

I'll be posting the sail tutorial later today.

Lol, I can't wait for that tutorial, and I only noticed it because of the shading, the beginning part of the ear was creating this shadow, and all of a sudden... bright light! lol

Here are the first few steps of a quick tutorial for all you aspiring sail makers out there.

STEP 1: Paint the base color of the sail. I’ve used a mixture of Mechite red with a little bit of Scorched Brown and Chaos Black. I don’t pay too much attention to the exact shade since I don’t mind having slightly different sail colors across the army. The Dark Eldar aren’t known to be strict conformists after all! You might also notice some visible brushstrokes. This also isn’t a big deal since we’ll be covering up most of the basecoat in later stages. The lighting is strange in this pic. But hey, it’s a basecoat.



STEP 2: Paint a random pattern of big dots in a brighter color. I use a mixture of Mechite Red and Blood Red. The consistency of your paint is important for this step and the next. It’ll be easier if the paint is at the consistency where you just have to touch the brush to leave a “dot” without actually having to make a stroke with the brush.

Painting the scattering of larger dots helps make sure that your final pattern isn’t too regular. When I was first testing out the paint scheme I tried painting dots by working from one end of the sail to the other. I quickly found myself painting in regular rows and had to start over again.



STEP 3: Fill in the space between the larger dots with smaller dots of varying size. Again, I find it easier if you work by randomly dotting some medium sized dots around, then some smaller dots before finally filling in the rest of the space with whatever sized dot you need to fill a space without overlapping a previous dot. I use a Basecoat Brush for all the dots just because it holds more paint and I don’t have to keep going back to the palette.



STEP 4: Mix up some Dwarf Flesh, Blood Red and a tiny bit of Mechite Red. Apply this color over some of the existing dots making sure you keep at least a semi-random pattern to the highlights. Again, I realize the photo isn’t the best. But hey, it’s just some dots.



STEP 5: Mix up some Dwarf Flesh and Blood Red. Repeat STEP 4 except don’t go over as many of the dots with this highlight.



STEP 6: Varnish with matt sealer. Gloss might give a cool effect too but I haven’t tried it.

I’d recommend painting the spars before you paint the sail itself since then you won’t mess up the finished sail with stray paint and rust. That’s not what I did here though. Here’s the finished sail!



Now get out there and paint some dots!


@Gitsplitta: Great fluff idea for the sails! Consider it yoinked. Put some pictures in your P&M thread if you or your son try out the method! Although I'm not sure what you would use it for on the Mantis Warriors!

@_Tim?: Missed your question about Wracks earlier. I do plan on including some in the army and think that they’ll look great in “Mechanicum Jon Colors.” The one thing I haven’t decided is whether I’m going to paint the skin in a healthy color with discolored bruises in places or in a pale purplish white color more in line with the official scheme.

The current iteration (changes every week) of my tournament build uses two squads of 3 Wracks in Venoms. Was hoping to use them as Objective holders (go to ground for the whole game), but ended up playing a KP mission against Mech Guard. I found they still did reasonably well. One squad killed a squad of guard in close combat before getting shot to bits. The other squad went to ground in his deployment zone for the last 3 turns and managed not to give up a KP. Really great game, I just managed to scrape by with a 12 to 11 KP win.

Actually, they boys each have their own armies and I think the little one is eyeing your sail pattern for the wings of his tyranids.

Will be a fun technique to learn in any case... thanks for the tutorial!

There's so much awesome here, totally amazing...
Quick question though.
I love your skin tone that you've been using whats your secret, if youy don't mind?

I'm declaring "job's a good 'un'' on these Raiders. No crew yet, but I'll just put some of my painted Warriors in the driver and gunner's places during games. Actually it might turn out to be a good way of keeping track of which Raiders still have passengers on board. I'll get back to the crew after I get some of the more critical parts of the army painted (mainly the Blaster warriors and Beasts).

I agree!
Job's a good 'un!

Truly epic stuff here Jon,i think the sails rock and i love the weathered look to the vehicles.I can't imagine dark eldar meticulasly painting there vehicles when bloodshed is so much more gratifiying(to them).

@ashtekka: Can't remember if I posted a skin tutorial earlier in the thread, here it is again anyway:

1. Basecoat Deneb Stone.
2. Ogryn Flesh wash.
3. Ogryn Flesh wash again in the crevasses.
4. Highlight with a mixture of Ogryn Flesh and Deneb Stone.

It's the easiest method I've found for painting flesh so far!

@Gitsplitta: I could definitely see the method working for Tyranid wings! I think you'd just need to add a couple final step of washing the wrinkles and doing a few edge highlights and it should look great!

Fantastic work! The scheme is tops! Very aquatic feeling