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Ezki,

Another nice Wraithlord.

Cheers,

CB

 finnan wrote:
Bonus points awarded for doing all the gems as gems! I can never be bothers to do that many! lol Kudos!

Hey finnan! Glad to se you around.
Are you painting again ? I hope you are.. Your work has inspired many people sir! Myself included.

Wow, thank you very much guys!
Did not anticipate such praise.

I was a bit worried if the hilt of the sword would pop too much, but apparently it does not.

finnan wrote:Bonus points awarded for doing all the gems as gems! I can never be bothers to do that many! lol Kudos!

Haha, thanks! It's a bit of a pain to do them, but I think it's worth it in the end.
I don't mind Eldar models with unpainted gems, but for some reason I'm really neurotic about painting all of them on mine

Argive wrote:I really like the star cannons.

What recipe did you use on the top bit (gold coils?)

Thanks Argive!
The coils were a bit of an experiment, but the ones in the image were done with the following steps:

- basecoat with Beastial brown
- Paint the raised areas with trollslayer orange (or any orange for that matter, had that on hand)
- paint the "glowy" areas with yellow
- wash the whole thing with orange wash. I experimented with orange and purple inks as well. All the different results are actually in the model still, as they did not differ from each other that much.
- highlight the brightest glowy areas with bone color (or mix bone color with yellow)

So basically layering, washing and a final highlight. With more layers, the result might be smoother.
I need to experiment more with the purple wash. But I think it needs to be put right after the first orange color, so it won't tint the yellow too much.
The coil with purple ink is on the right starcannon, best seen in the last picture.

Next time I'll paint some Starcannons, I try to remember to take a snapshot from each of the steps.



Finished working on the grav tanks for now.
They have been in the works for a really really long time now.
The first iteration of the starpattern was painted back in 2012 and the paintjob is still there. It was a repaint already back then, and I don't even remember how it was painted before that.
Most likely just black with some bone color details.

Then I moved on to repaint all my grav tanks with mixed results. All of these tanks were painted with the current scheme somewhere between 2012 - 2013.
The main color scheme turned out alright, but I missed a lot of details and did very sloppy work back then.
I guess that was a general theme back then: quickly paint something and move to the next project, even if the previous one was not completed.
I have talked about this before when I was doing some renovations to my Orks last winter and spring. Starting from page 13.

I learned to ignore the mistakes when the grav tanks were on the tabletop, and in the end did not even notice them.
Except every time I packed the models to my foam trays or placing them in the cabinet.
I have once before tried to renovate them a bit, but that just ended in a hobby burnout.
I was not that motivated do it anyway, so trying to do all of them at once was too much.

Gladly it was a different story this time.

There were quite a few sloppy areas. For example this turret, with wrong colored gems:


And black areas with red / gold paint for example. Some due to mistakes, some due to the previous color showing through.


There were many scratches etc, the paint is really thick in many places and all the "antennas" have been broken over the years.
Not too stressed about the antennas (these have seen tons of play after all), but I had to do some fixing nevertheless.
The mistake areas were not bad enough to be seen in the army shots, but definitely something you can notice if you now where to look on the tabletop.
And that bothered the h**l out of me

Anyway, back to the canopies which I mentioned a few posts back.

I could not get my hands on new canopies, so I decided to try and strip the old ones.
It turned out alright, except that I noticed that many of them were stained with glue residue etc.
Can't do anything about that now, so I decided to use these anyway. They are relatively easy to remove, if I can find new ones from somewhere.


Covered the see trough parts with Vallejo liquid mask.


Used orange ink on the backside of the galss to tint the canopies. One or two layers were enough, depending on the thickness.


Don't have an airbrush, so went with a spray primer to color the "support structures".
Then I pealed the mask with a toothpick.
The first completed one in the pic as well.


While removing the canopies, I noticed that the Crimson Hunter's pilot did not have a head
That had to be fixed.


Ended up doing quick paint jobs on the pilots, with a wash and some really simple highlighting.
They won't be seen very well through the tinted glass anyway.
Then I proceeded to fix the old mistakes, repaint a few of the largest gems etc.

Here's one with the new canopy.
Took a quick shot with my phone in the evening without much light, so it was impossible to take a good picture from all of them.
I will take better pictures tomorrow with the proper camera and with better lighting.



There are a ton of things I would do if I were to paint one of these tanks nowadays.
There are not even any highlights on most of the areas and like mentioned, the paint is really thick on certain areas.
But for some reason, I don't actually mind. Despite them lacking many details, I wanted to keep the original look with a few hot fixes here and there.
I was really proud of them back in 2013, and I still am. And it's always good to have something to compare the new models to.

I'm really happy to finally cross this off my list.
They had been so long in the making, and finally I can call them done.
Until I notice some more mistakes I missed this time

I will most likely paint some more weapon options and magnetize them to the tanks in the future though.
Maybe when the new codex drops at some point.
The Scatter lasers in the Serpent turrets have not seen any action since the 7th, so I have had to proxy them.

To end things off:
I mentioned we rented a gaming room.
It's actually an old office that belonged to the Finnish Defence forces years and years ago.
The rooms are currently being rented to small businesses or hobbyists like us.

The gaming area itself with one gaming table and one modelling table.
The most keen eyed of you might notice the audio equipment we made in the pic


The other room is a smaller storage room with a fridge.


It's neat to finally have a place where you can play without moving the furniture around (like we usually have to) and where I can store most of my terrain.
Therefore organizing a game is quite easy. So hopefully I get to play more frequently from now on.

Thank you for looking!
I'll get back with better pictures soonish.

Nice work.

Thanks for the recipe. I will check it out. Have bucket load of star cannons to paint lol.

Looking forward to seeing all the tanks together. Congrats on the improvements. Nice game space, too! Blood Bowl flag is a great touch.

 Argive wrote:

 finnan wrote:
Bonus points awarded for doing all the gems as gems! I can never be bothers to do that many! lol Kudos!

Hey finnan! Glad to se you around.
Are you painting again ? I hope you are.. Your work has inspired many people sir! Myself included.

I am indeed painting again : )


Liking the tinted canopies - cool idea!

I am loving those canopies. Really excited to use that technique on my own stuff soon. Gotta track down some liquid mask, it seems way more workable that the painters tape I usually use, especially for these canopies.

I’ve gotta join in with the love for the canopies, they’ve turned out great. The orange orange as certainly the right colour as it works with the vents really well. The game space looks great too, is it rented by a club or just you and a few mates?

Those canopies are beautiful, well done. That liquid mask looks handy, is it difficult at all to remove?

Yeah might steal that idea from you

Nice restoration work. Add me to the list of parties interested in how you find the liquid mask to use.

Thank you for all the comments everyone! Appreciated.

Inevitable_Faith wrote:I am loving those canopies. Really excited to use that technique on my own stuff soon. Gotta track down some liquid mask, it seems way more workable that the painters tape I usually use, especially for these canopies.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote:Those canopies are beautiful, well done. That liquid mask looks handy, is it difficult at all to remove?

Arakasi wrote:Nice restoration work. Add me to the list of parties interested in how you find the liquid mask to use.

The mask was surprisingly easy to use. This was actually my first time using it, and I was positively surprised.
It was easy to control along the edges of the see-trough areas, and it had quite good coverage. One layer was enough.
Removing it was not too hard after letting it sit only for two to three hours, but then again, the canopies are really smooth so the mask does not get stuck that easily.
I've heard that if you leave it for too long, it might be harder to remove.

gobert wrote:The game space looks great too, is it rented by a club or just you and a few mates?

There are twelve of us at the moment. Mostly a group of friends and friend's friends. There are a couple of guys who I've not met yet, but I know all the others (a few of them for over a decade).
It's good to have familiar people in the room, so organizing games and keeping the room in order is easier.

Argive wrote:Yeah might steal that idea from you

Go right ahead
I also borrowed the idea regarding the liquid mask from somewhere in Reddit. Sharing is caring etc.



Took a couple of days longer with the pics, as the car tires needed changing, house needed cleaning etc.
But without further adeu, here they are in different shapes and sizes:

It was a bit hard to capture all the vehicles in one shot, but tried my best with the conditions I have.





I also realized that I had never taken a proper picture of the crimson hunter with the new base.
With the new canopy, it was finally time.








And as a bonus, decided to take a pair shot from the Wraithlords.
Dynamic duo: the other lays down some covering fire taking down the big targets, while the other advances with dual guns blazing.






Thanks for looking!
Most likely some Escher gangers next time, not sure yet.

Beautiful, man. Great shots. The WL duo is cool, too. That color scheme is a home run. More Escher is an exciting prospect.

All those vehicles and your wraithguard are just absolutely inspiring. Top notch work dude.

That armoured battle group is enough to put the fear in the Imperial Guard tank divisions! They look super cool together, as does the Crimson Hunter on its new base. The Wraithlords look like some kind of huge kill team stalking the battlefield, great work all round!

Thanks youwashock, Inevitable_Faith and gobert!


Been asked a few times how I've done the starpattern theme on my Eldar.
I've tried to explain it a few times (on Dakka, Instagram and on Reddit), but the steps are a bit hard to describe with words.
So, I decided to take the time and do a little step by step picture collage. Not sure why I have not done it before.

I did not have a proper model to do this on, but I had one spare Wraithlord head that I decided to use.
The paint job was done rather quickly (in 5 or so minutes, not counting the drying time) so the end result is not the best.
I also took the pictures using my phone camera, as I wanted to post this before jumping to another project, and I was not able to setup my proper photo equipment at this time.

Anyhow, here goes:



1. Drybrush Xereus purple to all the areas you don't want to leave black. In the example, I did a few circular areas, but you can do different patterns as well. The color is really dark, so it does not show well in the picture.

2. Drybrush Genestealer Purple to the purple areas, but leave some of the darker color showing. I like to do this on the middle parts, but you can variate the lighter areas.

3. Pick an off white color, and bring out the areas you want to be the lightest. I usually use the stippling technique for this. You may also want to mix some Genestealer Purple into the off white color at times, to variate the tones.

4. I like to add a little more variation by drybrushing a bit of Screamer Pink here and there. This I also sometimes mix with the off white color. In this example, I used the color really sparingly, so it's hardly showing.

5. Variate between the different tones and if the result seems too dark, bring it back up with an off white color. Usually I jump back and forth with different tones a few times.
I finished this step with Grey Seer, as I wanted to make a bit darker. When you are satisfied with the pattern, proceed to the next step.

6. Wash the whole surface with a thinned down purple wash to even it out a bit. It also helps to cover the messiness of the drybrushing. I usually mix two parts wash, one part water.

7. Start adding dots (stars) using pure white. Variate the size, intensity and density. You can also create a few crosses, that look like a twinkling star. To further increase the effect, you can use a bit darker tone to those far away fading stars.

Randomness is everything. When I do this, I usually don't think about it too much. Just let the brush go where it wants to go.
Drybrushing does no necessarily produce the best results, but it's quick. I guess you can do a similar effect with layering or glazing, but at least for me it would take too much time.
One can of course use an airbrush, which would probably be the best solution for the purple tones but, alas, I don't yet have one.


Hopefully this made sense.
Next time I paint an Eldar vehicle, I'll try to take proper pictures with the whole process step by step, and create a "proper tutorial".

Thank you for that tutorial Ezki, the photos of each step really help to see what you're looking for as a result of the individual stages. Will definitely be adapting this to some future projects of mine. Thanks dude.

Great step by step, not sure I have anything to use it on, but it’s a cool technique

Your vehicles looks so good together like that! That complex unified paint job really pulls them all together so nicely. Thanks for the tutorial also, if I ever start an Eldar army I'll have to come back to this post.

great tutorial!

Thank you for the extremely detailed tutorial- that must have taken awhile to get all typed out and greatly appreciated!

Thanks guys! Glad you liked the tutorial.

Mentioned I was getting back to painting some of those Escher gangers I built a couple of months back.
Inspiration shifted back then, and I started working on other stuff. My mood and urge to paint different models and armies changes quite frequently, as you may have noticed.


But first, a couple of shots from the shingled house, which took a few steps forward as I visited the garage for a few hours over the weekend.
Was supposed to clean it for when my summer car finally goes to her winter nap, buuut instead I decided to "quickly glue a thing or two".

Added a few plank frames to the building.
Also built a door and one window. Will most likely build a few more windows.
Not sure why the door is the wrong way around in the picture... Just noticed it. Oh well, will take a better one when I go back there.




You might have guessed: no cleaning was done.


Right, to the Escher gangers.

I did not quite start working on the ones I built earlier. But they will most likely be next. Probably. Maybe.

Instead, I started working on a couple of newish miniatures.
A while back, I ordered a few Raging Heroes minis. I wanted to paint something not GW for a change and I liked the aesthetics of some of the models. Not all of them mind you.
We browsed the site together with my girlfriend, with the goal of finding a couple of gals that could work as an Escher gangers for her gang.

We decided to go for two minis from the Jailbirds faction.

The other one required a weapon swap, as the burning sword was a bit over the top for Necromunda. It was a cool piece, but not that fitting.
So I cut a bunch of spare Escher hands, combined them and added a plasma pistol on it. I wanted to save the "generator" on her back, so I though a crude plasma pistol could maybe have something like that attached to it.
Maybe it's an ultra boosted version?

I decided to swap their legs with one and other. Not sure if it's for the better, but just different.





The plasma pistol hand is pointing a bit too high, but I was pointed out that maybe she could be aiming at a Goliath or just a taller target. Well, I don't mind it that much.
The unattached head is still unattached, as I decided to try and paint it separately.

These models required quite a bit of prep work before painting. There were very little casting mistakes or mold lines, but they required some curing and proper cleaning.
Now I'm not sure if I messed up with some of the prep work, or with the primer, but the surface became really grainy.

I noticed the grain immediately after painting the first couple of layers on her skin. Not sure if it's visible in the picture.


I'm glad I decided to strip her before proceeding any further (bad pun intended).
The paint did not have much time to dry, so stripping the paint was quite easy.

I managed to help the graininess a bit, but it's still not perfect. The surface is not perfectly smooth, but I decided do my best from there on.

Fast forward a couple of nights, here's the current work in progress:





Decided to go with a similar color scheme to the Escher leader I painted before. Lot's of black with purplish pink on the chest and some yellow / orange details.
Still need to highlight the blacks and the skin, do a few touch ups and choose a color for their hair.

Thanks for looking!

Sweet tutorial, Ezki.

The new gals look superb. Love the skin. Solid conversion, too.

Ezki,

Exalted the tutorial on your star background scheme,

Cheers,

CB

Raging heroes does make some absolutely badass models. Always love seeing their stuff get painted up. Out of curiosity what colours did you use to achieve the skin tone? I'm on a flesh kick right now and trying to broaden my repertoire of tones.

Thanks! And thank you for the Exalt Captain, much appreciated.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Raging heroes does make some absolutely badass models. Always love seeing their stuff get painted up. Out of curiosity what colours did you use to achieve the skin tone? I'm on a flesh kick right now and trying to broaden my repertoire of tones.

The skin is actually just the base coat. It's four very thin (I mean very thin, almost glaze consistency) layers of Bugman's Glow on top of a grey primer.
I intend to bring certain parts up a bit with lighter tones, and carefully wash the recesses with reddish brown.

Maybe the combination of my yellow desk lamp (this is bad, I know) cheats the tone a bit.
And the sculpting does most of the work, as the thinned down paint works almost like a wash.

That grain is strange, it seems to have cleared up pretty well though. I’ve not seen much from Raging Heroes before, the models look pretty cool. Nice progress cleaning the garage too! That’s the sort of thing I’d do too!

Ah bugmans glow! Perfect I'll add that to my list of tones to use. Thanks very much.

Love the Eldar star paintjobs as well as the Jailbirds. Great word!

Thanks all!

gobert: Yeah. I tracked down the reason for the grain: it was a combination of the surface of the resin models (did not prep them well enough?) and the primer.
I used the Mechanicus Standard Grey spray primer from GW. Never had any problems with black, but sometimes the gray seems to come out a bit grainy. Not sure if I did not shake it well enough, or if the bike storage was too dusty (had to do it there, too bloody cold outside). The other Escher gangers were a bit grainy as well, but not as badly.


Finished painting the gals.



Had a lot of fun painting them. It was a bit of a task to practice glazing on two models at a time though.
In the end, I got a bit exhausted with the project, and rapidly dry brushed the purple hair and finished a few small details with a quick over brush.
My patience has grown over the years, but it's still not endless.

The same thing happened with the blacks that happened with the Escher leader: the overall tone of the trousers is a bit too blue. I tried to tone it down, but in the end it did not help much.
To my defense, I noticed it after taking the pictures. This tells me that I really, really need to upgrade my painting lights.
Currently using a single desk lamp from IKEA, possibly the cheapest model. This is far from ideal.
Or I should at least change the bulb to something a bit better. Did not realize that it was an issue before now.
I know I know, I should have. But it is what it is.

Anyhow, I'm still really happy how they turned out, even with all the mistakes and such.
Learned a lot once again and had a bunch of fun, which are the most important things after all.

The last four Escher gangers will be painted to a quick tabletop standard.
Stay tuned.