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@bunnygurl - They don't cost a massive amount, ebay saved me a few pennies on one for sure. Saved up for a few weeks and don't regret getting one at all, the time it saves painting up units is insane.

@Lt. Coldfire- I know right? Some kind of mega genius.

@weetyskemian44 - the gems rescued them, before they were added the figures were just crazy bland, the lilac and black is not enough to make a figure look eye catching without some extreme edge highlights to say the least. Thrilled that they have a bit of colour now.

Cheers for the compliments, I'm not sure how I am going to paint the hair and doodad's though, silver for sure, but hair colour and sashes are still up in the air. Any suggestions?

They look quite good Iffy. Zooming on on the photo really helps as you can see the little bright bits on the models. Shadow effect is very convincing. Do you mind giving us a quick description of how you did it? My son's got a necron night bringer that we've been struggling with and I think this might set the mood perfectly with him.

The bases will brighten them up quite a bit (if you do the same as on the others).

When they are done I will upload some much larger shots with better lighting I tend to be super fast with WIP shots as I get them done just before bedtime.

The shadowing on these was a chaos black base with gradually lightened airbrush highlights from above, and blending up from the bottom. Afterwards was a badab wash in the recesses which managed to wreck all the work beforehand, then a careful edge highlight with the same final colour as the airbrush highlights. It is really not this noticeble right now due to photo quality, but hopefully you will be able to see it better when I take their real shots.

Thanks Iffy!

The rangers look really nice and gloomy. Looking forward to more pictures.

Great looking Fire Dragons. Beautiful red.

Been thinking how to do the next unit of fire dragons. Need to make them very similar but also different enough to be able to work out which unit is which.

Was thinking of bringing up their edge colour to an orangey yellow, so instead of the pure red feet hands and helmet edges, there would be a hint of yellow too? Not sure if that would really be enough, but I could also go with green or yellow gems too for some variation.

Any suggestions?

I like that idea... they'd be similar yet distinct and the battlefield.

What was your base on the dragons? Black? Or did you start with a dark red and move up from there?

They were based chaos black primer, then I started off the colour itself with a dark blend of black and blood red. I could have mixed scab but I always found that if I darken down the colour I will be finishing with and blend upwards, it blends slightly better? Hard to explain, but other reds don't seem to be the same mix as blood red, so if I based with them it would not look right even though they are darker.

I then did a light spray of a blood red heavier mix, then blended in pure blood red thinned heavily. I think with the next ones I could do another layer over this of a very thinned yellow being built up just to the crest edges.

So.... is the original primer black still visible, or does it get completely covered up by the black/blood red mix? I agree with your comment on the red shades... especially with the air brush switching shades can cause problems in continuity when blending.

I've never been in the habit of blending up from black (airbrush or not) even though I know it can produce some really striking results... but those dragons (and the scouts) are so dramatic I'm trying to suss out exactly how you did it to see if I need to reassess my position on the whole subject.

How about a differant coloured helm?

The black would be completely covered by the dark red, it was just there as a primer and to keep the mini dark as wanted.

The dark red however was VERY dark. Blood clot dark. Nasty but rich and recognisable as a red tint. From what I learned with these the airbrush appreciates a very dark base layer. It ended up nearly completely covered with the lighter blood red mix, but you could still see it in the recesses and mid body. If it had been the black primer in the recesses, it would have looked much starker and not as nice and warm? It's what the hawks missed out on. Had their orginal colour coat been a much much darker turquoise, think of the contrast the light coat would have had, I made the mistake of making the first colour coat way way too light on them :(

Thats a good plan Dee, I could try masking off the heads and having them a full yellow fade, it could look really nice but I am a bit nervous about how I could mask them off properly with such tiny necks.. would doing the heads first then carefully covering them in blu-tac when dry work? That could be very doable, I wont be able to get the right coverage with masking tape I dont think.

Like the rangers alot. They are all fabulous infact... Perkustin Likes this thread...

How about wet blending?

Was taugt that by Fred Reed when he was in the Bath GW but forgot how to do it.

I prefer thin layering to wet blending, but that could work too if the airbrush doesn't work out for them.

I was thinking starting off yellow and working down to whatever the armour colour is?

Airbrushes are amazing if you have a good one. They can do sooooo much of the work for you and make it look like you spent hours when in fact it is more minutes. Cheers btw I think those fire dragons are some of your best work yet.

Thanks Empchild, that means a ton from someone at your level, honestly

The airbrush does feel a little bit like cheating in a way, but I think I can learn to live with it heheh. Dee, that could well work, I will test it out this weekend when I have time to paint, work keeps me super busy to my regret.

Hit a big milestone today as I made my first over €100 model sale. My old HE dragon I was so proud of last year is off to its new ebay owner. As much as I liked the model I don't see the point in having older models that don't have a sentimental value taking up space at home when I could try selling them instead, so that's something I will be taking to heart if and when I get more time to paint, which hopefully will be soon >< Painting up practice models and then getting a bit of cash selling them in between commission work definitely seems to be the way to go.

The rangers look great.

Lizardman army is gone! There are the final shots, shame there was no flocked table available. These are huge, so click for zooming








Phew.

Scouts just need their last metal higlight and they are done, will post pics asap. Thinking more fire dragons tonight with the yellow helms discussed earlier

Congrats!! They look great!

Oooo... Colorful! I can't imagine the owner wouldn't be happy.

One of the fastest ways of making a unit look different is to change their weapons. In this case, perhaps a wraithbone-style of fire pike, where you shade up from brown to bleached bone to white?

He was happy so I am thrilled Also nice to clear up all that shelf space!

Scouts are finished now, were actually done yesterday but I had to wait for the base pva to glue before finishing them off -



Still a bit annoyed that their nice faded cloaks got ruined by the rogue badab black, but they turned out ok in the end I think. Tabletop standard, around 7 hours due to having to repaint :( In process now are some fantastically purple warp spiders, hoping to finish them off by tonight. Also going to try a test model for some marines that just came in.

Had a friend over with the new Aracnaroc(?) giant spider from the new gobbo black box, he was assembling it while I painted and holy feth it is an amazing model. Really fantastic sculpt, fits together seamlessly.

Lizard men are awesome Iffy, really nice job. And those eldar scouts are really great; I love the muted color scheme.

As to distinguishing units, have you thought about using decals or a stencil for different squad markings? That way you keep the uniform "traditional eldar aspect look" while being able to tell the units apart easier. Alternately, you could just mark on the underside of the base which unit is which, since it isn't often that eldar units are close enough to each other to be confusing, and fire dragons usually just jump out of a transport, light up a tank, then get killed right away, so there isn't much time to get confused

very nice lizardmen
and yes, the new giant spider for orcs and gobs is unbelievable.

Rangers look great! They look really dark at my home monitor for some reason, but they look nice and shadowy on my work comp. Rifles are spot on.

Awesome, got the go ahead to continue with this green on the rest of the 1st spider unit. Took a while to work out how to get a nice powerful green like this while not going outside of tabletop standard but it should look brilliant across a whole unit. All thats done on this guy are the whites and green, purple is unhighlighted yet. I think the 3 colour schemes Coldfire chose so far are really working out for this, too many colours per model across an army with so much variation would start looking a tad insane.



Getting whites to tabletop is harsh. Going Astro- Vallejo ghostly grey (amazing coverage) - skull white thicker - skull white smoother, but hard to not get it lumpy. Can't wait to finish these dudes off, they are so uber techno. SPIDERS FROM SPACE.

Cool, I like the green

Ifalna wrote:Scouts are finished now, were actually done yesterday but I had to wait for the base pva to glue before finishing them off -

Actually, I find these very inspiring, as I am still searching for the ideal colour scheme for my Eldar. What are the colours used: Main colour is Shadow Grey I assume?