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Trying to do Eldar pieces. Painting armor in Skull White was such a tremendous pain that I gave up and stripped all of my models. I had to do three or four coasts of white with an airbrush to get a smooth, clean paint. If I applied it with a brush, even to the 5th or 6th coat, you could see through the paint to the grey or darker patches underneath. After the 6th coat, sure, it was all white. But it was lumpy and misshappen. After doing four guardians and taking three months to do it, I gave up and stripped them all down to start over.

In yellow. Boy am I dumb.

I'm facing the exact same problems with Sunburst Yellow on the tip of an eldar rocket launcher. I've stripped it 4 different times trying to "fade in" multiple colors until it gets there to no avail. It always just looks like ass. Should I use a different paint brand? Anything? Can anyone tell me some way to make this work before I have to toss these models in the garbage in disgust and buy Space Marines (*shudder*)?

what color primer do you use? My eldar were 2nd edition ulthwe style with lots of yellow, I always primed them white and never had problems with yellows. As a general rule if I'm gonna paint a model that will have a lot of light colors, I'll prime it white.

I've also been using a lot of the army painter colored primers too, they're really nice and can save a lot of time. I use their red spray for my almost all red lizardmen.

There are tons of tutorials on painting a good strong yellow. Look there. I can't do justice to the painting gods that wrote those tuts. White on the other hand is a lot easier. I usually start with a white spray can primer for a predominately white fig. It covers great. if that doesn't float your boat, try working your way up to white by starting with a GW foundation like Catachan Brown and layer up to white from there. Hope this helps. Or you could just avoid making an Imperial Fist Army like I did. Amazing how fast they became Crimson Fists.....

Try starting with a white primer. That's going to make achieving a clean white or yellow much easier.

For yellow, can you describe what it is that you're trying to do with that EML? I've used Iyanden Darksun as a base for Sunburst that worked pretty nicely, but I don't know if that's the effect you're after or not.

My models are a combination of greens and blues with a mottled pattern to escape the bland fruity norms of Eldar color schemes, but to keep to some tradition I decided to do vehicle and heavy weapons a simple yellow. So for my EML, I have a Dark Angels green reciever, a mithril silver lower reciever, and a yellow rocket head.

Yellow and white are hard. The paint is contaminated easily and they are thin colors. Is you prime with spray paint it will look/work better, one coat will do.

I used to have an Eldar army years ago. To paint the yellow guardians I used to spray them pure white, then use a wash of the citadel yellow glaze to colour them, and detail from there. They used to look really good and the colur was very smooth.
I don't know if the glazes are even available any more though, I certainly haven't seen any in my FLGS, although I have heard you can make your own by mixing paint with floor wax, but I have never tried it.

Key ingredient if you are doing white as a main colour is to use spraypaint.

I echo the other users who recommend using iyandan darksun. I use it for my howling griffons to great success. painting yellow has never been easier. The regular citadel yellows are horrific and if you like you could try the vallejo game colour range. Their range is designed to emulate the shades of workshop's potted paints however the vallejo yellows cover better, you get more and the container won't dry out in a few months as it is a dropper. As somebody who uses vallejo game colour's yellows I have never looked back to the citadel ones. it would be like going back to dial up internet.

Here is my result:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26990385@N06/4725565337/in/set-72157624336486012/

sorry the pic isn't great but that is

scorched (vallejo)

khemri, leaving scorched in the recesses

iyanden, 2-3 thin coats.

highlight, white and iyanden

a wash of sepia/water 50:50

here is the same kind of thing without a wash on my skinks and the crests of my sallies.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26990385@N06/3022923747/in/set-72157608904911658/

I haven't done it, but a friend of mine who has a large Imperial Fist army uses an airbrush for his yellow and he says it goes on very easy with minimal basecoating.

That's probably what I will end up doing - airbrushing them white and then yellow. It's just a pain... it isn't very many pieces to drag that setup out.

All I have to add is Sunburst is a bitch to get going, it takes like 10 coats for it to come out.

CDiablo wrote:All I have to add is Sunburst is a bitch to get going, it takes like 10 coats for it to come out.

vallejo game colour

I'm gonna buy Vallejo's equivalent (I prefer vallejo, but I was allready ordering models from GW) and try it, but after airbrishing with a windex-cut sunburst yellow, I've decided my best bet is to buy a krylon can of... probably enamel paint... and base the entire model yellow if I plan on having anything more than a few dots of yellow. The airbrushing of Sunburst yellow still proved to be problematic... and it didn't want to cut very well... it took me forever to clean the clogs out of my airbrush and jar.

i find painting these colors work well as long as you start with a good foundation for the paint. I dont like to paint anything or begin with solid Skull White or Sunburst Yellow, because it leaves you no room for highlighting beyond that point. So when I paint bright colors, I start with a medium foundation of a similar color. For my yellow, I basecoat in snakebite leather and for white a mix of codex grey and fortress grey. this will allow you to correct your mistakes as you go and ultimately highlight up to the color or tone your looking for. I am in the process of painting an Eldar army primarily white also, and this works great for me. Best of luck!

I'm no expert, but when I paint yellows I base it with something yellow-ish, like snakebite leather.

I will say this - painting Eldar has been MUCH more difficult than painting Necrons... I'm guessing because Necrons can look tore up and that's fine - they're supposed to. Whereas Eldar are supposed to look flawless. The slightest screw-up stands out.

In all honesty, I really had a hard time with the way about half of the infantry models look. Quite clown-ish. But I love their stats and the fact that they're kindof good guys who aren't Space Marines. But the thing is, everything about Space Marines attracts me to them except that every kid and his brother plays them, and I'd do IG except I don't want to dump $800 on enough infantry and vehicle models to make a viable army. Eldar seemed like the compromise, but painting them has turned out to be more than I bargained for.

EDIT: I'm probably going to go Death Korps and start developing them alongside my Eldar once I have enough Eldar models to get around a 1500pt. army.