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Fantastic work, well done. Top level painting. Always a pleasure to enjoy unique and well done models.

The quantity and good brush control as well as colour is impeccable.
I am trying to pound through a large army of AM/IG so I can appreciate the painting of the horde AND your clear painting scheme: it is easy to make too much work for yourself by using too many colours, so this is well done.

My best suggestions / criticisms I can give for something I would have zero criticism seeing across the tabletop:

- The soul gems could benefit from one last brighter version of the green or blue at the bottom (once you get to 3 or more it tricks the eye much better than two) AND/OR a shade or ink or the GW gloss/wash to smooth-out the transitions between gradients.

- Sounds silly but it looks like your black is too black. I have Black Legion and Black Templar so it has taken me a little while to refine painting black. Usually go a shade or two lighter into the darkest "grey", do a very light zenithal highlight of a couple shades lighter of grey, edge highlight then hit the recesses with a black wash or blue depending. I find the final "light sucking black" should only be used for the shading of shadows: you cannot go darker.

- For any of your thicker stripes, go a shade brighter on the "leading edge" with one last pass of the airbrush however you determine that (front of vehicle or top), a bit like an edge highlight but flat.

- Try to keep the colour of "hard armor" quite different from any cloth, like the helmet vs a tabard or cloak, it confuses things a tiny bit.

Those are suggestions for improvement that you may have considered but had a ton of stuff to do so decided against it.
How you did not go insane painting all those guardian eyes alone is worthy of the utmost respect.

Stunning work.

Wow thanks for the amazing comments and feedback!

@ Jivardi

I have done the same thing to other people's armies... it's part of the game.

The scale style pattern all started with my void dragon phoenix 15 years ago or so. It was my theme for my main/old Eldar army (in red however). At that point I had taken time to paint things slowly as I built my army over many years. Then I took a hard turn to mix it up and decided to mass paint and build a new army in a very short time with different colours. I agree the pink rims are a bit distracting and perhaps one day I will make them all black. It would surely be easier than the 3 coats of warlock purple to get them to looks somewhat solid.

@ Paull

Thanks! The concept spawned from trying to add a bit of pop to a black/grey model while being very easy/quick to paint.

@ Talizvar

Painting a horde can be a bit mind numbing at times... I am able to power through squads on the brink of insanity in relatively short time. I kept the scheme simple for that reason. Best of luck on your AM/IG army. It is impressive to see large armies in a cohesive theme on the table but I wouldn't wish the process on my closest friends.

I appreciate the criticism and you brought to light some things that I never would have thought about doing.

I agree my gems are a bit hit or miss depending on how lazy I was. I may be one of the few people however to paint every gem on 2 wraithknights.

The harsh black looks a bit out of place even in comparison to the grey airbrushing on the other models. The models would have looked a lot more natural if my base was a very dark grey so that the cracks could actually have a slight shadow.

Being the first time trying an airbrush, I was happy to get a stripe to look like a stripe, but highlighting the edge of a stripe is a cool idea. Do you have any sample pictures where this is done?

Looking at my wraithblades vs wraithguard... I clearly see the difference between painting cloth the same as armor or different. I know I did this on other models too, but it never even dawned on me that something so basic could make such a huge difference.

I am still recovering from painting that many eyes. I have all my models stored in led lit ikea detolf cases and sometimes I just like to stare at the entire lot and think about those things..

I can see the wheels are always turning with you on making things better, I suspect I will "hate" how you get better at this by leaps and bounds.
You have a level of patience that makes all this work out well, I have my lack of patience holding me back.

Glad the suggestions are of help, I feel hesitant to criticize what was an awful lot of work that is obviously done well, it feels too "after the fact".
I have been tempted to go back to models I painted before to "fix" them based on new lessons learned, that is the path of madness.

I "need" to fire up the airbrush so maybe I can show an example of the stirpe work.
I got rather "upset" when I saw how easy it was to make a nice gradient with airbrush, it took me forever to get any good with a brush.
I made a rule for myself to have close combat weapons with a hazard stripe of black/yellow (except actual knives or power weapons).

This model is from quite a while back but is the same idea done by freehand hairy-brush: look at the bumper on the Whirlwind:

<edit> Note ALSO the too much light sucking black, this was prior to learning to go lighter.
I almost over-did it where the darn thing "pops" so much it looks somewhat 3D.
I figured this would fit in nicely with your almost neon schemes.

I was distracted by too many games on the computer lately so the IG/AM will get more attention, my friend's Ork hordes are only getting bigger each time I look.
I gotta figure out a quick way to "block paint" with airbrush to speed all this along.
Eldar lend themselves well for airbrush work with their more organic shapes so the nice gradient works, Imperial units have too many fussy bits (mind NOT the fussy gazillion soul stones).

Looking forward to seeing more of your work.

 allofher wrote:
Thanks everyone!

@ Argive:

Depends what you are referring to. In general I painted the yellow trim over the black. Took a couple coats though. The heads of the wraith guard though were painted separately. In the cases of the vehicles the grey was already airbrushed on.. so the yellow was on top of grey. Let me know which specific model you are talking about.

@ Tpiddy:

Thanks. I really love the look of the full squad(s) of wraithblades too.

@ Galef:

Out of the 4.. I like the blue one the most.

Thanks I was asking about your approach. Interesting. Did you shade up the layers or just kept applying the same shade of yellow over and over?
Im currently going from a black to brown to averland sunset and yriel and flash gits yellow in many layers but find it very temperamental and hard to get a smooth finish.

Im asking for tips because your work is outstanding sir!

@ Argive

I used multiple coats of the same yellow. I don't think building up with other colours will get you anywhere quicker. The darker yellows or browns would still likely result in the same number of coats, with the differential only being to allow you to reveal the lower coats to show some shading.

It is hard to get it to stay smooth with so many layers. If you find your yellow paint doesn't have enough pigment and another paint like white does, you could try painting white first. I use mostly vallejo paints and just try to be patient building the layers but usually it would not take more than 3 and often just 2. I would only recommend trying to use white before yellow if you are trying to get to a bright yellow fast.

@ Talizar

That does look 3D! It pops like crazy.

Brush only painting earns a lot of respect from me. Airbrushing is kinda cheating. This is why my old army I still like more, because I know how much effort went into it compared 2/3rds of the new stuff.

Amazing, individual paint style!

 allofher wrote:
@ Argive

I used multiple coats of the same yellow. I don't think building up with other colours will get you anywhere quicker. The darker yellows or browns would still likely result in the same number of coats, with the differential only being to allow you to reveal the lower coats to show some shading.

It is hard to get it to stay smooth with so many layers. If you find your yellow paint doesn't have enough pigment and another paint like white does, you could try painting white first. I use mostly vallejo paints and just try to be patient building the layers but usually it would not take more than 3 and often just 2. I would only recommend trying to use white before yellow if you are trying to get to a bright yellow fast.

@ Talizar

That does look 3D! It pops like crazy.

Brush only painting earns a lot of respect from me. Airbrushing is kinda cheating. This is why my old army I still like more, because I know how much effort went into it compared 2/3rds of the new stuff.

Airbrushing is cerainly not cheating. Cmon By that logic so are spray can primers. Still takes ungodly hours if you want to get top results and requires a loooot of practice to get good and is really easy to mess up. Im actualy more confident in my brush work than airbrushing and actualy see airbrusjing (if done extremely well) to be more impressive because i know how hard it is. Press/pull on the trigger too hard by accident even for a fraction of a second and its a bad day.