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I am an extreme novice to painting and could use some guidance. For example what brushes do I need? What brand of paint should I get? And finally how do I paint my Craftworld Eldar. I just want to learn how to get to them to a presentable level. (i.e. Painting the whole model one color is a no go.) Thank you for any advice you can give.

Welcome to the Hobby!

On the games Workshop website, they have many different paints to get. They also have sets of paints that are the most basic such as the Modeling Essentials (http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Painting-Modelling?N=102355+4294966261&Nu=product.repositoryId&qty=12&sorting=phl&view=table&categoryId=cat440136a-flat). These all come with select Brushes as well, and are great to use. Now i will tell you firstly that GW paints and brushes can be a tad bit pricey. So Any modeling paint would work nicely, and the same goes with the brushes. brush sizes range as well, but I would suggest getting a Detail(Base coat) brush, a fine detail brush, and any others that would be necessary.

Now since I did say that these are pricey on the GW website, Ebay is a fantastic source of all things GW. That, or your local hobby shop that may not be GW. I'm not saying you can't buy their brand items, but it is a personal opinion.

Now for painting, i don't personally play Eldar, but there are great schemes in the codex that each army has. Otherwise, wiki pages, google images, and even the forums have plenty of ways to decide (I.e. Army Painter). Or, you can do as you please and have a homegrown craftworld eldar, which is equally, if not more, fun.

Hope this helped and again welcome

 Lightish Red Space Marine wrote:
I am an extreme novice to painting and could use some guidance. For example what brushes do I need? What brand of paint should I get? And finally how do I paint my Craftworld Eldar. I just want to learn how to get to them to a presentable level. (i.e. Painting the whole model one color is a no go.) Thank you for any advice you can give.

Do you have a craftworld in mind? That will give you an idea of what colours to pick up.

Personally I recommend picking up a mid-grey and a white spray primer (automotive primer is what I use; just make sure it is not self leveling!). This will allow you to get an all over grey prime, and then a directional highlight (ie spraying from above) with the white primer to pre-shade/highlight your models. Then you can use nice thin paints to add in colour while keeping a hint of the pre-defined lighting.

I recommend Vallejo; their paints cover the entire spectrum. The only paints of theirs I would not recommend particuarly are the metalics; they have been a bit hit and miss for me. Their airbrush paints are great for painting thinned layers to show underlying shading. They also have a handy colour chart to convert to other major paint ranges (including GW's). Plus they are cheaper. Plus they come in a dropper bottle so your paint lasts longer

http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/en_US/media/e588d28183cec31ffd6dcee6d3718fc3.cms/equivalencias-rev05.pdf

Some of my eldar:

Welcome to this great hobby.

I second cman64, that ebay is the place to get your stuff from, since you will be able to get a better deal on there. This can be a pricey hobby if you aren't careful.

I have Reaper, GW and Vallejo paints, all have their goods and bads, so if you plan to buy local, find out what they carry, and use that companies paints, they will get you to table top standard no matter which you use.

You should be able to find good pictures of Eldar on here, as well as google, and GW site. Something that could help as well, Bolter and Chainsword, another forum like Dakka, has a program for testing out paint schemes and I believe they had a eldar on there, but its been a while since I've checked.

Welcome and enjoy yourself.

Hey welcome to warhammer,

I'm a fairly new war gamer myself and my best advice to you is YouTube/forums and only buy what you need as you need it. You don't need every paint,tool and paint brush to get started. But you do need decent stuff to reduce frustration, there is nothing worse then getting frustrated as a new wargamer because the stuff you got was absolute gak. If I were you I would do some serious research on a colour scheme. Once you have a colour scheme you like pick a couple paints, get a detail brush, a base coat brush and a comfortable work station set up. You don't need to buy games workshop paint but I highly recommend it. As for primer I would try and get your hands on some krylon ultra flat black camo paint, it's super cheap and works great, just make sure you apply it properly. The brushes I recommend is army painter you can get a set of 3 for 12 bucks Canadian and it comes with A base coat,detail and dry brush brush(I still use these brushes today).

I hope this helps and if you have any questions don't be shy to ask me or the rest of dakka the community here is great.

If you are interested you can also view my personal log called the bone legion in my signature below my post. You can see my experience from when I started out just like you every step of the way till today.

Good luck and cheers!

Welcome to the hobby!

The advice above is all solid! To it, I'd add a recommendation that you should watch some of the many, many excellent tutorials on the 'Warhammer TV' channel on Youtube. They're very good for beginners and veterans alike, and even if you're not watching videos for the minis you'll be painting, a lot of the techniques are very transferable. They're honestly some of the best presented painting tutorials out there.

for brushes especially dry brushes
i go to the art stores clearance section
my poor first few dry brushing brushes

I strongly recommend looking up "StrikingScorpion82"s Eldar tutorial on YouTube. He shows you in detail how to get a great look for them. Even if you don't like his paint scheme, the techniques he uses are GREAT.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's the link to it: https://youtu.be/KjuBsBFMtl4

I started with these great tutorials: http://taleofpainters.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/tutorial-collection-how-to-paint-eldar.html

And I will also echo a few posts above - don't get too much stuff, when I started I spent hundreds on everything I *thought* I would need, most of which has never been touched. 10 paints, 3 brushes, some good glue and assembly/cleaning tools - more than enough to get you going.

For what it's worth, if you want to get less expensive stuff, you can get almost anything you need at a store like Michaels (or any similar arts and crafts supply store). Starter sets of acrylic paints will give you a decent number of options for colors (at a much lower cost than GW/Citadel paints), and starter sets of brushes will give you options for precision. You'll want some pretty fine brushes - for individual models, I most often use 10/0 and 18/0 spotters, and size 2 or 3 rounds are handy for dry brushing. I use size 6 or 8 flats for painting vehicles.

But, as others have already said, it's worth trawling youtube and dakka, looking for people who've made an army that looks like how you want yours to look, then watching how they do it. That will give a very clear idea of what supplies you'll need for the look you want.

Also, there's a thread here in the Painting and Modeling Forum called "Your P&M Tip for the day" that's worth browsing through. One decent rule of thumb is that your brush can almost always use more water. It's way easier (and sometimes even more effective) to put on one more thin layer of paint than to strip paint off when you've made it too thick.