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Just thought I'd toss some pictures up of my first and only 40k army that I'm painting at the moment (first time ever painting miniatures). Let me know what you think

Uaire-nem is a custom craftworld named after two Celtic god/goddess of birds (thanks to the dakkaites for helping choose the name). It's a swooping hawk heavy fluff army that typically uses Mech Eldar speed. The Uaire-Nem craftworld strayed a bit from the path and the culture as a whole became rather obsessed with the Swooping Hawk temple. Before getting out of control the harlequins intervened and have had a troops stationed since, carefully watching over them.

Autarch with w/ Fusion Gun, Banshee mask, Power Weapon, and Swooping hawk wings


Swooping Hawks w/ Exarchs


Jetbikes (Still need to put CW emblem on the hoods)


Wraithlord (Incomplete)


Guardian next to Wraithlord


Dark Reaper


Dire Avenger Exarch w/ Dual SC


Dire Avenger Exarch w/ Power Weapon and Shimmer Shield


Fire Dragon (Incomplete)


Fire Dragon Exarch (Incomplete)


Fire Prism Starting (obviously incomplete)


Will post further pictures if there is interest. Thanks for any constructive feedback or comments.

Once you get done with the army, a nice place to post it would be the Army Profiles portion of the site.

A pm to me, or other ARticle Mods would help you with the coding.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Army_Profiles

I like the painterly style on the fire prism, the brushstrokes make it look like it is moving at speed with a reflective surface. The jetbikes, however, seem a bit dark to show the effects you've painted on. Was your camera white-balanced? I would like to see a picture of them in better light. The values of the blue and the black don't seem a whole lot different, and won't stand out at first glance. I'm wondering if you intend to highlight the blues up a bit to make them showier. Also, I'm looking forward to see how you do the prism cannon effects. Keep it up.

Rather flattered that you think it's worth that. I'll have to choose a point to post it as I can't see myself ever being "done" lol. Working on the Fire Dragons and Tanks atm, but I spend countless hours on every model.

On the Jetbikes the blue was meant to be a little more subtle on them. My avatar is my craftworld's symbol that I will be painting on each of the hoods in white, so the darker coloring is made to make it pop out a bit more. Let me see if I can get a little better pic on one of them.


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It's worth noting that all 12 jetbikes i have were found as damaged lots on E-Bay. Some of the wings have been repaired or fabricated from greenstuff and plastic. The riders have been converted to look like standard guardians, did this before I figured out that a lot of other people have done the same lol.





All have magnetized bases, perfectly stable


Also here is the second Wraithlord with Wraith Sword, the sword is fabricated out of a metal wire and millput. Yes, I was going for the holy crap that is a ridiculously large sword almost anime sized sword... it has max strength after all.



I turned on the flash for these pics, so the paint may not look the greatest, The Deep blue strokes give the paint a bit of a depth look to them. I wanted it to feel like the wraithbone had some depth to it.

Ah, the flash brought the highlights out nicely. Nice job on the patched bike wing, that would be hard to tell without knowing what to look for. I see the effect you're going for in the paint overall, and I like it. Good luck on the symbol freehand on the bike cowls. I have a similar project in the works, and I'd definitely like to see how yours will come out.

Nice

I'm loving the Fire Dragons.

Hey, nice work on the second wraithlord, even though its not my favourite model from eldar, the lighter blue highlights look great. Also loving the anime sized sword.

Really love the Autarch. It that helmet a conversion? I've never seen anything like it.

@ Darkreaver55 - yeah I haven't done it yet simply because I'm nervous to mess it up lol. The nervousness gives me motivation to paint more models while I wait to balls up.

@ Grimm - Thanks, I couldn't stand the orange and yellow traffic cone look of fire dragons so I went with something a little more intimidating. I'm stuck on the scaled cloth at the moment though as I want to paint it a color that will tie them in with the rest of my army. Options I'm considering are - White cloth w/ asurman blue scales, White cloth w/ mithril silver scales, or something else i have thought of lol. Nervousness once again.

@ Bramnero - I actually picked up the model for $5 on ebay w/ shipping lol, so I figured I'd convert the hell out of it. The "Mr. Big Hands" look, as most people call it, worked great for putting a stupidly large sword on him. His entire job as he walks up the field is look intimidating as hell and draw fire... he does his job well.

@ warpcrafter - The helmet is the standard head that comes with the Swooping Hawk Wings Autarch from the GW site. Most people don't use it because it doesn't have mandiblasters which are much better then banshee mask, but for my army the look fit in well. Nothing says lovin' like deepstriking the Autarch Hawks team in behind a key vehicle and opening up with the fusion gun and a hawks talon.

Thanks for the kind words folks, glad to see the hours I put in to these guys are liked by others . I've only played about 7 matches so far, due to work/kids eatting up all my time *sigh*

nothing against your painting, but when I saw the title I thought it said urine name... at a quick glance.

Im with everyone else, this is a really cool Eldar army. Very nice job

Oh also Dark, that wing that your referring to (the second jetbike picture w/ flash on) is a full fabrication wing. It's as hard as the other wings, but getting the exact angles was a bit tough. Also, tryign to fabricate the power cells (gold bumps) is ridiculously hard.

Overview shot of the whole army (minus fire dragons), you can see a majority is unpainted and the others that are painted need to be stripped down still.



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@ Horst - Lol not the first to say that the name came from a poll/post here at dakka.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/250557.page it's pronounced "Y'aire Nem" and comes from the conjoining of: Nemglan (Bird God) and Uairebhuidhe (Bird Goddess)

@King Cracker - Thanks a bunch, off to paint a bit more and try to get the fire Dragons finished. Goin on day... I lost track.

Very good looking.

I have one problem. The Fire Prims has been drybrushed (at least it looks like it). I think you should practice using less paint on the brush. I'm not a fan of seeing it the way it looks here. Mine use to look like that, and once I figured out how to cover the tank w/o leaving brush strokes, I liked it alot better.

For example, heres a REALY old wave serpent I did probably 6 years ago. The brush strokes are clearly visable:



Now compare to my current Waveserpent. There's a lot more shading and detail going on here, but the drybrushing is still the basis of the green. Its a lot cleaner and you cant see any brush strokes:





Takes a bit of practice to get the drybrushing to cover like this, but I think if you master it, you'll be very happy with the results.

Also, the fire dragons look sweet :-P I love the hard highlights on the edges :-P

Keep the pics comming!

Thanks a bunch for the comparison pics, love the look of your serpent. I actually paint these is a really different fashion that most don't realize lol.

The prism for example is covered in the areas I want the deep blue (wraithbone) with Vallejo Turquoise. I then slather the thing in Asurman Blue wash on the black and the turquoise areas giving the whole thing a bit of a glaze look. It's not easy since your working with a thin liquid, but the result is a very deep looking blue that I can't really get a good picture of. The black also takes o a very suble blue hue and makes the color change look deeper then just brush strokes. The lines on the prism i drug a heavy amount of wash down the cracks to give it a very dark blue look.

So its just a base coat and a wash then?

Correct the main color of tank is those two, with a GW black primer of course. Tried to take a little better picture, I enjoy the feedback since this is just the prototype of what I will do to my tanks.

Took shots outside to hopefully show a little better with natural light.



Also here is some shots of a few of my hawks... these guys took forever. The base is weighted with a quarter then sealed with millput... pricey I know, but these guys are all fragile and prone to fall downs.




Also here is the prototype for the scale and cloth the fire dragons wear. Any feedback on it is appreciated as I'm not really sure how I feel about it.

Great pics man. The lighting makes all the difference!

I guess for the tanks, its the brush strokes from the initial base coat that we are seeing. Are you just doing one layer of color? If so, try and to 2-3 very thin coats insted of one thick coat. It'll cover better, and you'll lose those brush strokes.

I love the color schemes you've pulled out for the hawks and fire dragons. You may want to thin down your white a bit on the hawks. It looks a bit thick.

Again, the red on the fire dragons looks really good. It might benifet from another very fine highlight, but if not its good as is :-P

Your golds and silvers could use a wash to help them gain some definition. Devlin Mud on the gold, and wattered down Badab Balck on the silver should do it.

Hope that helps! Cheers.

Thanks for the advice Pherion, I think the brush strokes came from the wash getting a little thick when I wasn't happy with how the effect was comming out. Once I get the turret finished up I'll reevaluate if the strokes are distracting enough to risk messy the tank up with additional coat lol.

The white on the hawk's wings came through a little thick mainly because the white primer that was used feathered really badly. Thin coats weren't covering it well enough and the difficulty of trying to get into the cracks of all the feather lines was getting me to a breaking point lol.

The highlight on the Dragons will probably come a little later as I'm =getting some burnout from them. Once I get the scale cloaks done I'll probably step away from them for a little bit. Never thought of using the washes on the metals, but once you mentioned it the lines on the gun di get a bit blurred.

Really nice I like them.

Updated shots, but sorry about the bad lighting.

Fire Dragons (finished) shots





Fire Prism shots, sorry for the really bad lighting. This one is finished except for craftworld symbols and possible white stripe across the body of the tank. There is also a Heavies kill count marker next to the turret cockpit . Also there is a magnetized holofield upgrade I forgot to snap on up top.






Farseer w/ Witchblade (may add witchblade effects in the future)




Warlock w/ Witchblade (may add witchblade effects in the future)

you sir are mising 1 thing, CITADELWASHES other than that they look quiet nice

physcosamatic wrote:you sir are mising 1 thing, CITADELWASHES other than that they look quiet nice

Actually almost everything here has a wash over it. The blue coloring is Vallejo light turquiosie and asurman blue wash, the silver has badab black, and some of the gold has Devlin mud (thanks Pherion on those suggestions). The black undercarrage of the prism also has been coated in badab to take the primer look off the black.

Is ther anything in particular you see needs a hit with a certain wash?

Looking good. As far as the weight, you should of used nickels. They fit perfectly inside the base and weigh as much as a quarter. Thats what I used to do with half and half minis.

KingCracker wrote:Looking good. As far as the weight, you should of used nickels. They fit perfectly inside the base and weigh as much as a quarter. Thats what I used to do with half and half minis.

Get your hands on some South African 5c coins. They fit perfectly under the bases are worth approximatly $0.005, so for every 'quarter' you can get about 50 of these

Nice thought on the South African currency but how the heck would one get ahold of them lol.

As for the hawks weighting I couldn't use nickles since the bases were slotted for the metal figures. I put the quarter under them, originally glued, sine is was size of the base bottom... but then the son realized there was "monnies" under them and they became the key thing to play with.

Dude... If I ever played you, I'd steal your Swooping Hawks and get a milkshake or something.



Ghidorah

Those bases....

...I just hate them, I hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate hate, hate, hate, hate them.

I hope I made my point clear. I'm filled with hatred.

Lol the bases for all units aren't complete yet. Not sure what I want to do with them quite yet, so I just left it as is for now. The rocks for the hawks were added in for most units to break up the poses a bit, but as of yet aren't complete.

Painting everything > Making the bases look good.

Well, for one, nice basing can make up for a lot and adds even more value to the model.

As for your paint jobs, very nice, but I have a suggestion about painting lighter colors, such as white. If you are going over a smooth surface, I find it easy to get a nice smooth application by watering down the white paint to almost a milky consistency. It will take several coats, but careful application and keeping an eye on it results in awesomely smooth white coverage. Using the lightest gray you have as a base first helps a lot.

BlueDagger wrote:Lol the bases for all units aren't complete yet. Not sure what I want to do with them quite yet, so I just left it as is for now. The rocks for the hawks were added in for most units to break up the poses a bit, but as of yet aren't complete.

Painting everything > Making the bases look good.

Well you could first strip off the old basing. It should come off pretty easily with a hobby knife if they are glued on with PVA-glue.

IMHO I think that you should add some kind of shading to the white areas.