Committed Chaos Cult Marine
Lawrence, KS (United States)
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Even though you're probably well into painting by now...
Eldar are not a particularly easy army to paint by any means (unless of course you go with the dyes and inks already outlined). All of the smooth surfaces on the models are a bitch to highlight realistically, and if your blending skills aren't up to snuff, you probably won't be happy with it.
I am a huge fan of the Reaper Pro Paintbrushes, as they get much smaller in size than GW's sets, and have much harder Golden Taklon bristles (which is actually a plus when painting miniatures). The downside to this is that they tend to fray more easily (I also have problems with stray hairs sometimes sticking out too far from the tip when I've been using the brush for a while, but those can be removed fairly easily). They are also much cheaper. I'd recommend at least four brushes to get you started. One medium to large sized brush used for measuring your paint out onto a palette, One drybrush (any size, really), one brush for painting larger areas on your model, and one brush for painting very small details. Luckily enough, reaper sells a set that knocks out three of those in one fell swoop, and it's only about $12.00 USD. From there, you only need to buy the small detail brush (called the super fine detail brush, which is manufactured from reaper as brush #08508), and you're good to go.
I assume that you've already primed your models, but if you haven't, here's a few tips for that. Shake the CRAP out of the can. I mean shake it for five straight minutes, at least. Make sure you're not spraying it in an environment that's excessively hot, cold, or humid (preferably around a normal room temperature). Spray a little bit out on to something before you start coating your models. There might be some paint drops that fly from the can, and you don't want those on your models. I personally put my models on a flat piece of cardboard, but put them on something before you prime them. Finally, spray very fine microbursts of primer (I mean don't hold down the nozzle at all. Just enough to get some out, then let go) at about two feet from the model, until you are satisfied with the coverage. Wait for them to dry for about an hour, then flip them on their backside and repeat for full coverage (you might have to do this once more for some models. I've been painting too many tyranids for it to be good for me). Then I'd wait at least two hours before you paint them. Also, about primer color, prime them black if you want the end result to be very dark and muted, and prime them white if you want the end result to be very bright. It is nearly impossible to get a bright color on a black basecoat.
Anyway, as for watering down your paints, there is an ingenius method known as the Wet Palette. Anything porous generally works for this, and people usually use the little foamy grey squares from the back of GW Blister packs. I personally recommend cheap toilet paper, as it will always allow the brush to pick up more paint (And I say cheap toilet paper because the expensive kind actually tends to cause more chunky toilet paper residue to be picked up by the brush). To start, fold up a fairly large square of toilet paper and soak it in water. Press most of the water out, until it's just a bit more than slightly damp. There is a Zen amount of water that makes the Wet Palette work like a miracle, but it takes much trial and error to obtain. If paint from the palette dries mere seconds after it's been applied to a model, but still goes on quite wet, then you know you've got the perfect amount of water.
From there, load a brush with the paint you want to use, and dip it into the toilet paper. I'd say repeat it, but it really depends on what ratio you want to mix your highlights at (I'll explain that in a moment). Use the brush to mix it into the palette until it just looks like colored toilet paper and not paint. Wet the brush you want to use and move it along the spot of color, twisting the brush to get full coverage. And now you can apply the paint to the model. A very basic explaination of Wet Palette, but it will do. Wet Palette is a great technique, as watering down the paints themselves tends to create pooling on your model, unless you wipe of the excess on a paper towel, thus removing most of the paint from your brush (a more arduous process).
Now to highlighting and paint ratios. First of all, I suggest you get a lamp if you don't already have one. Secondly, I'd suggest buying three paints for every one color you want to use. One should be the actual color you want. One should be one shade darker. And one should be one shade lighter. Position your basecoated model so it sits (or faces) directly under the light. See how the light catches different areas of the model, depending on where and how raised they are? Well, highlighting is basically accentuating this natural lighting on a basecoat (since a model is too small to actually exhibit realistic lighting).
You should start off with the darkest shade of your desired color. If you're looking for a brighter model, I'd just use this alone as a basecoat. However, if you want it to end up a little darker, I'd go half chaos black with half whatever your darkest shade is. A 1:1 ratio. Just to have a better example, I'll explain this 1:1 ratio. Dip your charging brush into the darkest shade, then mix it into the palette. Wash it out, then dip it into the Chaos Black and mix it into the paint that's already on the palette until it is one color. Since you did one brushload of one color, and one brushload of another color, that is roughly a half and half ratio. You should keep the ratio of paints in mind for every color you use, as you'll probably need them to get something similar for every model.
Paint the area of the model that you want this color completely with the basecoat. Don't worry about not filling recesses just yet. Coat the whole area, going back over it until it's a solid color. One of the nice things about a wet palette is that the paint will never be thick enough to obscure any details on your model, unless the palette was too dry when you mixed the paint. If it gets that way, you can always wet it down with your charging brush.
Depending on how detailed you want your model, you'll want to do more or less shades. For this example, to keep it simple, we'll just do half-steps between the shades you bought, keeping the ratios of paint at 1:1 or simply not a ratio at all. It can get much more complicated than this, but we'll try not to get too heavy into it for now (even as it is, there will end up being about seven shades. You can skip the half steps to save time, but it looks better, and this serves to kind of teach you how to mix paints together and kind of memorize ratios). Now, take your darkest shade, and make a new area on the palette for it (Don't mix it with the other color, as black tends to mute any lighter colors and you will never quite get the same result). Once you've got this shade mixed in the palette (remember how much paint you just put down, because you'll need to put that exact amount down for the next step), hold your figure up to the light again.
Now, you're going to paint every area of your model that does not appear near-black in the light. Usually this includes cracks and crevices, or the deepest recesses of something. You might have to go over the model more than once to get a solid color, but just be sure to leave some of the basecoat showing. Now, take your mid-range color, and mix it at a 1:1 ratio into the dark shade. Paint just an ever-so-slightly smaller area on top of what you just painted. Then your solid mid range color, just a slightly smaller area from what you just painted. Then half and half with your light color, etc. It basically repeats from here, and I hope you can figure it out. Just note that for the final highlight (usually a tiny tiny tiny portion of the model) should be mixed with Skull White, or could possibly be skull white itself (depending on the look you're going for).
Eventually, you should have a fairly smoothly highlighted Eldar Warrior. You might not want to spend this much time painting (as this method is very time consuming), but if you spend time with this method, and don't use any (or at least very many) shortcuts, such as drybrushing and inking, I can promise you that you're on your way to becoming an excellent painter.
It might seem hard at first, but it will really help you get a feel for it until "expert" painting techniques and tricks become second nature.
I also suggest looking at about midrange-quality painted figures while you paint. It really helped me understand the basics of painting when I first started out. Midrange meaning that they are well shaded, but you can still see the difference between the colors. Expert would be a perfect blend of color, usually achieved by using a technique called glazing, but we won't get into that. That takes quite a bit of patience and skill with highlighting.
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The Tainted - Pending
