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so i have finally decided to paint my Eldar collection that has been lying around for ages and want to do it in a sort of Ulthwe theme.

The plan is to have most areas of the models in black with a gloss varnish then a few areas painted bleached bone with a sepia wash, to finish it off the gems etc and loin cloths etc will be done in a red to act as a spot colour
Trying to decide on the best method for painting the black,
Do i need to highlight the black if its getting a gloss varnish?
If i do need to highlight what colour will be best to use?
my other concern is the gloss black going to look too much on larger models like falcons etc?

Any advice is most welcome really need this to be a straight forward and simple paint scheme but at the same time i do want the models to look good in the end lol.

You don't necessarily need to highlight black if you varnishing it with gloss, it's a quick and easy way of getting a good finish especially if you've got a lot of mins to paint up. Only problem is that with a predominantly black figure a lot of the detail will be lost as the gloss just reflects where the actual light in the environment is coming from rather than where you want to suggest it's coming from with your highlighting. So your Guardians will tend to look a bit 'flat' on the table as the gloss won't necessarily pick out the details of their armour plates for example.

Easiest thing to do IMO is paint them black, put the gloss coat on and see what you think; if they do look a bit flat, give them a highlight on top of the gloss, you can paint over it easily as long as you keep the coat of varnish thin. As for colours, I use GW Codex grey then Fortress grey for the extreme highlight (sorry not sure of the current equivalents).

As far as vehicles go, I think the gloss effect works best on large flat areas with little detail, so should be good for your falcons and wave serpents. Give it a go, if you don't like it you can spray over it easily. Hope that helps.

Unless you do this...

I have done it with my Alaitoc and it looks fantastic in my opinion... I started with a very very very thin and light highlight of bright blue on the edges of the armor plates, boots, etc. I then used matte varnish on the whole model to seal the model and brighten the colors... the final step was gloss varnishing only the armor plates and helmet (the weapon is up to you, I didnt do mine because of it being bone colored and felt it would detract from the model). This gives contrast between the flat clothy areas and the actual plates themselves and produces a unique and clean model keeping with the sleek eldar tradition.

I will post pics soon to confirm said notions.

well i am mostly going to be painting wraithguard first but they are fairly similar to the guardians in general design so the scheme should work accross the two easily enough,

the varnish is only going on the the black areas and gemstones, the bone effect and the red cloth is going to stay matte, will have a bit of an experiment tonight to see what i find works best for me,
thanks guys