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So these guys were the very first gw models I ever bought (some wardancers I think) and I collected them on and off again over the years, however I was never polarized to really finish painting them ever because of their lackluster book by the end of 7th and post FAQ 8th. The new book looks really fun though and I'm thoroughly excited to start painting them again and hopefully a painting blog will help keep my motivation up lol.

First up, orion's puppies (I'm saving him until later)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Finished painting them, hate how they turned out, time to resart

So I finally finished the dogs; I tried to go for a fairly ethereal look that still has elements of the corporal; brown tinge to the fur and their muzzles. Honestly I'm not super happy about it but I found it really hard to do any non drybrushing because of the texture of the fur. Bases aren't done, but I can't seem to find any of my flock and it seems that GW no longer sells it, suggestions?

Possibly one of my favorite characters and a model I painted 4 years ago or something; I'm going to have a hard time remembering how exactly I painted the greens and tones in general. Going to paint up an old way watcher model later on today to see how close I can get or if I come up with something new

Open thread.
Picture of Archer.
Avatar of Archer.
Chuckled.

Nice work on that Elf. Hope you can remember what you did

 Squidbot wrote:
Open thread.
Picture of Archer.
Avatar of Archer.
Chuckled.

Nice work on that Elf. Hope you can remember what you did

Thanks dude It was super fun to paint and I remember learning a lot of new things.

As promised I painted up an old waywatcher model last night. I have to say that every time I paint woodelves I forget about how much colour blocking needs to get done. As for the model itself I have to say the hardest part was deciding on the hues of greens. On one hand I want the leaves on his cloak to stand out from the green of his cloak; on the other, it's supposed to be camouflage and help him blend in. In the end I made his cloak a bit brighter because it's the main focus of the model and I wanted the eye to be drawn to it rather than the few leaves on the front of the model.

One thing I am very happy about is the hair; usually I just paint space marines where their hair is a solid chunk which I usually keep a dark brown. However because I used so much brown on the model and elves are supposed to be fair I decided against it. Instead, I went for a more "natural blonde" so as not to clash completely with the more muted tones. Like the dogs, I found the texture of the hiar hard to work with, but since I wasn't trying to do an ethereal feel I could keep it simple to layers and highlights (and thank god hair actually has those things naturally lol).

Them Wood elf images are very nice visually

Rarely ventured into Fantasy but once collected all the armies in 40k, prob going to move into Fantasy to end up collecting them all

 DarkMistro wrote:
Them Wood elf images are very nice visually

Rarely ventured into Fantasy but once collected all the armies in 40k, prob going to move into Fantasy to end up collecting them all

Thank you sir

I should be finished up a basic current ed archer in the next hour or so, so you can see it stacks up vs an older one

Excellent work on his face.

 Squidbot wrote:
Excellent work on his face.

Thanks! My poor photography coming in handy for once

Finished up the Glade Guard; colour blocking really took a while on this one too and I just realized, after 8 years of owning these models, that they in fact have sleeves . No wonder I found them so annoying to paint when I was 12 lol. Very pleased the browns didn't just congeal together and overall excited to keep on painting.

The only problem now is deciding what to paint next; I have glade guard, wardancers and waywatchers (new and old) for rank and file with me and a shadowdancer, spell singer and orion for characters. Considering I've only painted 4 models, 2 of which are technically a Lord choice, I think I should stay away from characters right now EDIT:going to paint a current waywatcher or two

I can't believe you're painting fantasy models

 Crablezworth wrote:
I can't believe you're painting fantasy models

Hahaha well somehow fantasy 8th is more balanced; maybe because it's a game and not a shared experience

Really like the earthy tones you've got going on. Looking good.

Any tree related models on the way?

 Medium of Death wrote:
Really like the earthy tones you've got going on. Looking good.

Any tree related models on the way?

Sadly not; I have something like 14 way watchers so I hope you like looking at those I pretty much built an army around the things I liked the most of wood elves; super archers and the insane elves who actually living in the woods, so lots of war dancers, way watchers and glade guard. I also have some glade riders and I'm going to get some wild riders. Depending on how many points I have (I traded a chunk of war dancers for orion) I might get a tree man, but I'm not a fan of the dryads rules wise anymore and it's too expensive to do a large block of 6++ save people and make it worthwhile.

I do have a way watcher I painted up last night that I'm going to upload when I get home for work

EDIT: Some clarification on the no dryads/treemen. Treemen are too expensive to have a solid unit of 6 (120 CAD) for me to want to purchase them for my army, especially since they've gotten a bit worse. I'd love to paint dryads however they're 42 CAD for 12, which is a really weird unit size and if I just got the one unit to paint I'd have a unit of with 2 ranks of 6? They would only be good as a small disruption unit and I already have war dancers to do that and I don't need to buy any of those.

Here's the current edition waywatcher, one of the only ones I don't have a duplicate of lol. I have to say I didn't have as much fun painting this guy up as I did the other two and I think the reason is that it has too much detail. Trying to keep a cohesive look and limiting myself to two browns and two greens that are similar in hue is very hard when a boot has 15+ layers of fabric to paint. The twine/strips of cloth on the wristbands and boots are really what add to the confusion; its very hard to separate them from folds or overlapping pieces of cloth and the twine can be confused with the twig armour, which can be confused with the leaf camo. Generally I wanted to stay away from how the GW team painted theirs back in 6th because they stop looking like they're trying to blend in and start looking like brown and green harlequins (which is the war dancer's job lol).
Ex:

Regardless of all that complaining I do like how it turned out (except maybe the bow) and I think that the model looks like it quite clearly belongs to the same force while still being a bit different; exactly how waywatchers should be. After I finish the second waywatcher I primed I think I'll go on to paint some actual war dancers I'm just not looking forward to all the bare skin I'll have to paint (tallarn flesh is getting gloopy)

Alright so I finished the second waywatcher and I have to say it was much less pain in the ass lol. The twigs and leather/twine were much better defined on this model and I had more opportunity to use the brown mix I use for cloth (as opposed to leather). I also got to use the light brown/dirty blonde hair colour again on this model so I'm extra pleased the test model I did allowed me to discover that shade or else I probably would have struggled. The one thing I'm really not looking forward to doing on the wardancer is the skin; even on this last one I considered painting the skin as brown cloth (except for the head) but the sculpt is a bit too crisp for me to get away with that. From now on I don't think I'll paint the same type of model back to back; I want to keep it fresh for myself

EDIT: Just noticed I forgot to do the eyes...woops

Lovely colours, perfect, subscribed.

 Imperial Templari wrote:
Lovely colours, perfect, subscribed.

Thanks a lot man, really helps keep me motivated

Talking about motivation; here's the wardancer I did today. On the whole model wasn't hard to paint, the skin tone is two colours with a wash on each and it takes up most of the model. I was a little afraid the minimal fabric and more flesh would make him look less cohesive next to everyone else, but he actually turned out pretty well after everything was done. I actually remembered to do the eyes before taking pictures this time lol, however I was thinking about tattoos to maybe take more flesh tone away. The only problem is that I don't what they would be of and there's not a lot of surface space on the model itself.

Also I didn't take any side shots because the pose made it impossible to focus

Very cool, i'm a 15mm figure collector, a saw a native American themed WE army once that was jaw dropping I have wanted to do a 15mm Wood elf army ever since, onl;y problem is these 28mm WE figs are more dynamical posed then the 15mm options available, and the poses were half the attraction, like this guy.

 Imperial Templari wrote:
Very cool, i'm a 15mm figure collector, a saw a native American themed WE army once that was jaw dropping I have wanted to do a 15mm Wood elf army ever since, onl;y problem is these 28mm WE figs are more dynamical posed then the 15mm options available, and the poses were half the attraction, like this guy.

That really sucks; their dyanmic movement is pretty central to their feel.

I know that their theme really appealed to me since it was different from other woodelf themes; they aren't just elf archers who live in a forest, they're insane elves who don't give a feth about anyone else, some of which dress up in camo to be super stealthy, others just like to party almost naked, and then there's ones that become embodiments of gods. Also their forest hates everyone.

So here's my second finished glade guard, I finished him last night and I gotta say I liked the first one more. Unfortunately i got some bug or crud in the middle of a primer blast and it got stuck on the inside of the cloak so after fixing that it got a bit uneven and splotchy. In addition to that I don't feel like I painted the cloak or hood as well as the first one. However, I just have to keep in mind that even though I paint them as individuals they're going to be part of a unit and so any minor annoyances or mistakes won't be very noticeable.

Hopefully paint one or two more up tonight (old and new waywatcher) and have pictures for tomorrow

This guy was easy to paint, so of course I was lazy and it took more time to actually finish him. I was very happy there was no skin to paint on this model; the cloth sack on the head is pretty interesting, actually the whole model is interesting. So far this is the only model that I've seen for woodelves that doesn't just wear a cloak with leaves on it; he makes it out of them, he doesn't just obscure his face; he wears a gimp mask and doesn't give a feth, he's a stealthy ranger archetype; but wears a blinged out girdle with a giant ass gem on it. Honestly you could make the craziest back story for this guy (posessed by a daemon that was then sealed in the gem, but his face was horribly scarred and he now lives as a hermit to protect others from it's evil). As it is he's just some nut job with a giant jewel over his gut

Oh and his base is warping lol. Enjoy!

Very nice work man. It is a little hard to tell due to the camera but are you using nmm on these models and if so what is you process for bronze? if you aren't no worries and it is still really nice.

 Khain wrote:
Very nice work man. It is a little hard to tell due to the camera but are you using nmm on these models and if so what is you process for bronze? if you aren't no worries and it is still really nice.

unfortunately my phone camera is a bit junk and makes the simple things look good and the layered things look bad lol. It's just dwarf bronze with burnished gold highlight

I learned my NMM lesson with my tomb kings

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:

 Khain wrote:
Very nice work man. It is a little hard to tell due to the camera but are you using nmm on these models and if so what is you process for bronze? if you aren't no worries and it is still really nice.

unfortunately my phone camera is a bit junk and makes the simple things look good and the layered things look bad lol. It's just dwarf bronze with burnished gold highlight

I learned my NMM lesson with my tomb kings

If HDR is on I'd turn it off, might help with the saturation and overall flat look.

 Crablezworth wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:

 Khain wrote:
Very nice work man. It is a little hard to tell due to the camera but are you using nmm on these models and if so what is you process for bronze? if you aren't no worries and it is still really nice.

unfortunately my phone camera is a bit junk and makes the simple things look good and the layered things look bad lol. It's just dwarf bronze with burnished gold highlight

I learned my NMM lesson with my tomb kings

If HDR is on I'd turn it off, might help with the saturation and overall flat look.

Ya it's on lol. thanks for the tip, hopefully it'll make my picture look less bad.

Speaking of which I should have the next model I painted uploaded tomorrow

Well I lied about the upload time but here he is; not too sure about the green/brown balance, I'll probably try something different on the second copy of the model. Also not a whole lot of angles because the sculpt is very flat.

sorry about the pictures, the're a bit too bright