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About 7 years ago I was working for a Games Workshop store and my manager at the time basically dared me to make a Dark Eldar army since the models were so hideous and I had spent a fair amount of time making fun of them. He even said I could have the models for free if I painted them up. So, naturally, not being one to back out of a dare I started to work. You can check them out here (for some reason I can't get the "gif" files to work as images here lol):

http://legiominimus.blogspot.com/2008/06/minimans-grand-tournament-2005-army.html

The weird thing though is I actually had a lot of fun playing the army and apart from being the worst models in history I actually liked the way the army looked. Fast forward to November of last year and I see that DE are getting 100% redone with an awesome codex so I am totally all over that. I have done a fair amount of work trying to revamp and update the colour scheme to best fit the current models and overall I am fairly happy with it.

These look pretty cool - nicely done

Very nice, the haemy is particularly awesome.

Awesome work, what I like best is the pallet and common theme you have kept.

o Oni o wrote:Very nice, the haemy is particularly awesome.

Thanks! I actually painted him for a painting competition over at Spikeybits.com. I did a bit of converting to him to try and update him to the current style (his old "sword" was so thick it looked like he was holding a ham hock as a weapon). There is a painting contest in my area in about 4 weeks and I am going to do up the new Urien for that one, really looking forward to it

wardance76 wrote:Awesome work, what I like best is the pallet and common theme you have kept.

The main focus of this army was to keep a common theme from the previous army while updating it to the current codex and evolving it. I actually went through about 4 different variations of this particular scheme with slightly different painting styles before I eventually landed on this one. I am really happy with my new way of painting the black as it ties in with the turquoise of the rest of the armor (basically, high-lighting it with ice blue and codex grey to give it a cooler look). I have been having some issues with my camera as of late which is why the pics of Lilith (who is probably the best painted model in the army if you see her in real life...the camera completely washed out all the detail). I am going to be borrowing my friends camera soon, so I will probably re-post all the pics for things that didnt turn out well

Nice colors. Your basing work is just amazing. I really like to see players put great detail into the bases -- it is an aspect of the miniature that typically goes unappreciated, but even the most modest paint job looks fantastic with a great base.

All miniatures looks awesome good job mate!

well painted finally someone who puts some coherncy in his dark eldar army you used the sam helmets for al your flying-biker thing guys (don't know what they are )

i love it

Nicely painted. I can't wait for my Lelith model. She's arriving tomorrow with a lot more reinforcements.

Wow that gold really pops! Would you mind sharing your technique there? Looks like there might be gloss but some specifics would really help out.

asimo77 wrote:Wow that gold really pops! Would you mind sharing your technique there? Looks like there might be gloss but some specifics would really help out.

This is how I did all the gold for this army:

1) Undercoat of Tin Bitz
2) Painted Shining Gold over all the areas
3) Washed with Delvin Mud
4) Went back over everything with Shining Gold, picking out the highlights this time (much cleaner then the first pass)
5) High Lighted with Burnished Gold
6) High Lighted with a 50/50 mix of Burnished Gold and Mithril Silver, just doing the extreme edges
7) Final light glaze of Griphon Sepia (sp?) to help tie everything together

Seems like a lot of work (which, when looking at the list now I guess it is lol) but since I only use it for small accent colours I don't really notice the extra time. I did try to do this type of gold for a Sanguinary guard army ( you can see the Sanguinor here: http://legiominimus.blogspot.com/2010/06/sanguinor.html ) and it just took for freaking ever for so much of it lol.

Very nice. I'm not a big fan of the G-W coloured-edging house style, but you've made it work with good colour choices.

What are you using for your bases?

Foo wrote:Very nice. I'm not a big fan of the G-W coloured-edging house style, but you've made it work with good colour choices.

What are you using for your bases?

The bases are made up of lots of plastic industrial modelling supplies, some GW parts (like wheels, extra rhino doors, etc..). All the gravel is a very coarse resin pumice which gives me more control over where it goes, which helps for this style of basing. The bases are WAY easier to do then it looks, trust me. The biggest thing with this style of base for me is to have no idea what I am going to do before hand and just throw down as much random stuff as possible.

After they are built I primed the whole model black. The metal is done by stippling scorched brown, vermin brown with the final highlight of blazing orange and some small "ticks" of chainmail all over to simulate chips in the rust. The rocks/sand is codex grey dry brushed over black with a final highlight of bleached bone. The rims of the bases are graveyard earth. The final step (which I have only done for the warriors) is a 50/50 mix of the regular GW Green Grass and their Yellow Grass.

Looks good. Could you tell us what you used for the dark color on the armor? It's not black, right?

ph34r wrote:Looks good. Could you tell us what you used for the dark color on the armor? It's not black, right?

The dark colour is a mix of Black and Hawk Turquoise (almost 50/50 mix) with straight Hawk Turquoise as the first highlight then a mix of Hawk Turquoise and Bleached Bone as the extreme highlight.

WOW, Awesome paint job. Thats all I can say.

ghoulio wrote:

Foo wrote:Very nice. I'm not a big fan of the G-W coloured-edging house style, but you've made it work with good colour choices.

What are you using for your bases?

The bases are made up of lots of plastic industrial modelling supplies, some GW parts (like wheels, extra rhino doors, etc..). All the gravel is a very coarse resin pumice which gives me more control over where it goes, which helps for this style of basing. The bases are WAY easier to do then it looks, trust me. The biggest thing with this style of base for me is to have no idea what I am going to do before hand and just throw down as much random stuff as possible.

After they are built I primed the whole model black. The metal is done by stippling scorched brown, vermin brown with the final highlight of blazing orange and some small "ticks" of chainmail all over to simulate chips in the rust. The rocks/sand is codex grey dry brushed over black with a final highlight of bleached bone. The rims of the bases are graveyard earth. The final step (which I have only done for the warriors) is a 50/50 mix of the regular GW Green Grass and their Yellow Grass.

So the plastic stuff is just spare bits of model you have lying around or do you buy stuff?

(Can you buy stuff? I have no idea aside from the Citadel basing kit.)

ghoulio wrote:

asimo77 wrote:Wow that gold really pops! Would you mind sharing your technique there? Looks like there might be gloss but some specifics would really help out.

This is how I did all the gold for this army:

1) Undercoat of Tin Bitz
2) Painted Shining Gold over all the areas
3) Washed with Delvin Mud
4) Went back over everything with Shining Gold, picking out the highlights this time (much cleaner then the first pass)
5) High Lighted with Burnished Gold
6) High Lighted with a 50/50 mix of Burnished Gold and Mithril Silver, just doing the extreme edges
7) Final light glaze of Griphon Sepia (sp?) to help tie everything together

Seems like a lot of work (which, when looking at the list now I guess it is lol) but since I only use it for small accent colours I don't really notice the extra time. I did try to do this type of gold for a Sanguinary guard army ( you can see the Sanguinor here: http://legiominimus.blogspot.com/2010/06/sanguinor.html ) and it just took for freaking ever for so much of it lol.

Thanks for the response. A really nice gold is just what my models need.

@ Foo: It's mostly just bits of extra models I have lying around. I also have some sheets of plasticard, some plastic tubes and some plastic factory pieces I bought from a local model store ("I" beams, things like that). The stuff from the model store is all super cheap. When I go about basing I just cut all of those into small pieces, mix and match and glue them to the base. After that I put on the pumice, wait for it to dry then it finished. You can literally do this with anything though, not just industrial bases. I just really liked the colour contrast with the bases and this army to help make them stand out.

Very nice! Always cool to see a fully painted army

great work bud !! love the pics congrats on a job well done !

Just a quick update. It almost killed me but I finally finished the 3 Ravagers for the army. Each one took at least 8 hours to complete. All I can say is I am happy they are done lol.

They look fantastic. You can tell you spent a ton of time on each one. Plus they fit the scheme of your army too. Overall, you have one of the best painted, most cohesive dark eldar armies I've seen. Actually, one of the better armies period.

Just a quick update. Just finished 2 of my Venom Transports. I didn't bother putting on the wyche crew as these will have trueborn in them about 99% of the time (maybe some warriors). I think I will eventually do up the Wyche crew for my raiders and one or two of the warriors for the venoms. I should also be adding pics of my finished Haemonculi in the next couple of days as well (Urien and the new Finecast generic one).

Your making me seriously consider getting a dark eldar army. It looks awesome!

Nice!!

Great stuff, man.

I see you built up the venoms with both railing options; I can't say I like the left one. Just a matter of tastes. Overall, you're doing justice to these fantastic models. What else do you have in the pipeline?

ghoulio wrote:

ph34r wrote:Looks good. Could you tell us what you used for the dark color on the armor? It's not black, right?

The dark colour is a mix of Black and Hawk Turquoise (almost 50/50 mix) with straight Hawk Turquoise as the first highlight then a mix of Hawk Turquoise and Bleached Bone as the extreme highlight.

Wow I just got my DE and my color scheme is almost the exact same. I am using strait black, highlighting with mordian blue, second highlight of hawk turquoise, then electric blue for the extreme highlight. Your models look awesome. I cant believe the schemes are so close. Great job on everything.

AesSedai wrote:Great stuff, man.

I see you built up the venoms with both railing options; I can't say I like the left one. Just a matter of tastes. Overall, you're doing justice to these fantastic models. What else do you have in the pipeline?

Thanks! I know what you mean about both railing options. For me the reason I built up the option with the skulls is to help add visual interest to the army both with just the slight variation to how the vehicles look and because the skulls help break up the colour scheme.

As for stuff in the pipe line I just finished painting the Finecast Haemonculus as well as the metal Urien (best looking things in the army, no contest). Gonna take some pics tomorrow so they should be up soon. Tonight I am going to try and finish off my first 5 man unit of Scourges (haywire blasters). After that it will be my second unit of 10 Wyches. I am also going to do a tutorial on how I did the bases for this army as well as some generic tips for doing scenic bases (basically showing off how it can 100% make an army).

Farseer Jenkins wrote:Wow I just got my DE and my color scheme is almost the exact same. I am using strait black, highlighting with mordian blue, second highlight of hawk turquoise, then electric blue for the extreme highlight. Your models look awesome. I cant believe the schemes are so close. Great job on everything.

The colour scheme does look different in real life. My camera isn't great for doing these types of pics so things get muted quite a bit (both in how crisp the models are and the colours). The army in person is no where near as dark as it looks in these photos and is much greener too. So the vehicles definitely have a good hint of the hawk turquoise for the main colour instead of black. Yours sounds like a cool colour scheme though. This army looks just awesome in those dark schemes. Gives them a really sinister vibe

Very nice looking army. I start to like DE more and more. I told my friend to wait for the new dex to come out before he started a DE army, but he didn't wait, and started his DE army like 8 months before the dex.