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Make sure you don't get right to painting yeah? she did come 200km was it with your pot of paint? I don't think they've got brushes in the dog-house

And yeah it's really tricky to get good shots of whites. Took me ages to find anything that was soft enough to show proper colour distribution.

Can't wait to see them both done though

She's down for three days so yeah I'll make sure to divide my time more than fairly, to be fair I don't think I'll get much painting done at all for the next 3 days

The Shadow Spectre is looking damn good... god I love those models, it's a shame I'm not looking for craftworld eldar allies :( maybe once day....

I like the orange and how it plays with the white, white is a very cold color (especially with the hints of blue) and the orange adds contrast perfectly (and I think everyone knows I'm a sucker for high contrast).

Keep it up!

Gotta play with those warm and cool tones! All part of colour theory 101. It's one of my three criteria for painting a model actually.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Gotta play with those warm and cool tones! All part of colour theory 101. It's one of my three criteria for painting a model actually.

And the other 2?

An interesting color scheme for a Craftworld, consider me subbed!

The three things I strive for when designing a paint scheme for a model Nev are:

1) Complimentary Colours
2) Use of both warm and cool tones
3) Varied textures

If I can achieve all three of those things in a model then I should be on the right track to painting an interesting and pleasing model. This is by no means the entirety of how to make a model look good but it's a decent foundation to start with until you learn more techniques and styles to add to your repertoire.

Thank you very much JustaerinAtTheWall! Happy to have you here and hopefully this should be an interesting an enjoyable plog for you to follow. I welcome any and all comments and critiques so if you ever have ideas or suggestions then please feel free to speak up. In fact any amount of banter is most welcome. Thank you very much for the sub!

Okay update time! Got some paint down on the Wraithknight, just starting to layer up that troll slayer orange (finally!), we'll see how tomorrow goes but hopefully I can finish the troll slayer and get my first wash down on it. More importantly I finished my forge world entry for the comp. Got my shadow spectre done. I wanted to get him in the same photo as my Wraithknight but wouldn't you know that attention seeking bugger just stepped right in front of the shadow spectre to hog all the limelight.

I say that's good enough anyways, you can see his gun after all, I'll break out the light box tomorrow and get some real photos of the shadow spectre to share with you, hopefully the WK can keep his jealousy in check long enough for a phot-op to happen.

He looks great I_F! Looking forward to the Shadow Spectre too

Really interesting seeing your categories for picking colour schemes, and interestingly how much they differ to mine which is probably the basis for how our differing painting styles have developed

My 3 criteria for a paint scheme are:

1. Complimentary colours
2. Single tone (warm or cold)
3. Majority of model painted in very low contrast similar colours, with sparse splashes of a bright vibrant colour

Very interesting indeed

There are lots of ways to establish your paint scheme and no one way is totally right or wrong, you're completely right that the criteria in which we design our models is what distinguishes our styles as painters and hobbyists. Over time that criteria grows, shifts, changes and evolves with our skills and techniques.

With my next project I hope to expand upon my skills even more and not only evolve the style of painting I use right now but to also take on a brand new style of painting that is very far removed from what I currently do. It'll be quite the learning experience but it'll be lots of fun and completely worth it. For now however I have the last remnants of my to-do list of CWE and DE to finish before I jump onto the new force.

Absolutely right it's part of what gives each of us our own unique style

Ooh interesting! Any hints what this new force might be?

Well since I've been painting Eldar for this long, both CWE and DE, and I'm still loving everything about them all I figured it'd be the next logical course for me to make up some Harlequins. I have one Troupe on sprue and a Shadowseer that I'll start out with and I'll build up form there. I'm just not at a point yet where I'm redy to start on that project, I want to add some more to my DE before I go down that road.

And as promised I have the photos of the completed Shadow Spectre! Bright colours are still hella difficult to picture, I'm thinking I need to get some filters for my lights to dim them down so it doesn't blow out the photo so much. Here he is, my entry for the Forge world category at the end of the month is done, hope you guys like him and please let me know any comments/critiques you may have. The photos have blown out a lot of the gradient on his armour sadly and there is a slight blue tinge to a lot of the model that doesn't show up well in the photos, I think a better camera may be a good investment in the future for this.

Spectre looks very good. I like the purple as a counterpoint to the orange.

Thank you very much youwashock, I'm quite happy with the interaction of the colours for my CWE, they took me a while to settle on but it was worth the time in my opinion. Here's a couple extra photos I forgot to add in the batch.

He looks phenomenal! You definitely have an eye for colours I can picture the slight bluish tinge, even if the photos don't quite show it. Would work really nicely with the warm orange and purples

Excited to see you're looking at some Harlequins too here was me concerned that your next army might be some filthy mon keigh not that there's anything wrong with that of course

I think you'll enjoy Harlequins. I've found them a real joy to paint

Thank you Ynnead for the kind words. No threat of me going anywhere away from Eldar for the foreseeable future, they're way too much fun and their lore is just phenomenal.

Small update on the painting front. The Wraithknight has officially pushed me over the edge, maybe it's just the size of the model, maybe it's the lack of any real inspiration as to how to make him stand out, perhaps it's my lack of experience in painting larger models holding me back. It's probably all of these things and more to be honest but I had a breakdown a few days ago where I got so angry while trying to make progress on him that I just had to stop, I wasn't enjoying painting anymore. I tucked him away into a cabinet so I wouldn't have to look at him and pulled out my Cronos parts and started painting those, instantly relaxed and loving the hobby again. Below is a pic of the WK progress, I got the wash applied to the orange, it ran in places and ruined my greys, that's another part that drove me nuts. I'll get back to the WK before the end of the month but for now the Cronos is keeping me sane. I got a little WiP pic of the cronos here too, I'm much happier with how he's turning out.

The chronos looks ace I_F!

I'm sorry to hear about the wraithknight, I'm in a similar place with the Yncarne, but hey, you can always come back to it! That's the beauty of this hobby I think

Yup you're right Gummy, I just need a break from him to get my head back on straight, in the mean time the Cronos is a welcome distraction.

Well that's a bummer about the Wraithknight, but not to worry really it's a massive departure from your bread and butter, and TBH I've yet to think of something fun to do with the model either (probably fuelled by my bias that superheavies should be in Apoc games...). Stash it away somewhere and let your subconscious ruminate on it, perhaps you'll get some inspiration

Cronos is looking great though love the bloodied tips of his tentacles, and the red raw skin on the underside is a great touch

Ouch, always sucks when a model fights you. Thankfully you made the right choice and took a break before you had to give it flying lessons.

Big vehicles normally have a tipping point for me.

I start excited. New thing to field, so much potential on the paint bench.

Then the actual mechanics of painting it start to sink in. It starts to get tedious. So much space to paint, and inks and glazes never work the same on something that size.

But after a while of glacially slow progress and getting scared away from my bench, eventually I see the light at the end of the tunnel and get motivated to finish it. Some things take longer then others (damn drop pods)

It’s good that you realized that the WK was sucking the fun out of your hobby and were able to switch projects. I’ve had to do that myself. Again, drop pods. Just keep it in the background. I might suggest not totally hidden, so you might work on it a little bit at a time. After enough touchups, you might get to the point where you need to see it done, and get remotivated.

But if you are angry at it, some time apart might be the best thing for your relationship.

The DE murderbot thing is looking fun.

Thank you everyone, I'm glad I made the choice to put it aside for the time being. Already I'm starting to want to reconcile with the model and start painting it again but I'm not quite there yet, another few days and more work on the Cronos and I'll be ready to go on him again.

Ynnead: I don't mind the superheavies in games but I think they need big point adjustments across the board. It should be a real decision on a players part to choose the superheavy instead of the plethora of smaller things he could take instead. Currently the big things like Stormsurges, WK, imp knights and riptides are total no-brainers for list building.

Nevelon: I totally agree, there's a huge difference between painting infantry and vehicles, I know I'm a fan of infantry painting and that's where my love of the hobby comes from. I got a friend who hates painting infantry but man he loves sitting down and painting militarum tanks for days on end. It's a different mentality and style to paint these things. I think it may be time to break out my airbrush and get it ready to go to work before I do any more large models or vehicles...

ChaoticMind: Oh man your post had me almost falling outta my chair! Flying lessons most certainly crossed my mind when I saw a huge drip of my wash roll its way down into my greys. It reminds me of the time I had a friend, chaos player, have a very unfortunate series of events happen to his defiler and it was removed from play before it even got to do anything. We played at my first house at the time on the kitchen table. He was so angry he grabbed his defiler, yelled "Perils of the warp b**ch" then proceeded to dropkick it down the hallway. It was funny right up until we saw his foot and the massive laceration a spike from the Defiler had made in the top of his foot. Driving on our way to the hospital where he received stitches was when we agreed it had now moved over to "hilarious" territory.

Sorry to hear about the Wraithknight...had a similar problem with the Riptide. Looking forward to the Cronos.

Cheers,

CB

Made some headway on the Cronos, the mask is done and ready to be glued on once the body is painted, the back carapace shell is done and just needs the top spikes glued in and all the spinal tendrils are finished. Just the flesh and some odds and ends to do. I'm quite pleased with how he's shaping up so far.

He's looking really cool I_F! I always forget how awesome your cherry-blossom motif is

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Ynnead: I don't mind the superheavies in games but I think they need big point adjustments across the board. It should be a real decision on a players part to choose the superheavy instead of the plethora of smaller things he could take instead. Currently the big things like Stormsurges, WK, imp knights and riptides are total no-brainers for list building.

Yeah that's a good way of looking at it. I suppose the ideal situation is for the vast majority of things in a codex to be broadly similar in cost-to-ability so that it's a genuine decision whatever you take. Interestingly, aside from Scatterbikes, Wraithknights and Warp Spiders I think the Eldar codex is pretty much where it needs to be for that...

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:

Nevelon: I totally agree, there's a huge difference between painting infantry and vehicles, I know I'm a fan of infantry painting and that's where my love of the hobby comes from. I got a friend who hates painting infantry but man he loves sitting down and painting militarum tanks for days on end. It's a different mentality and style to paint these things. I think it may be time to break out my airbrush and get it ready to go to work before I do any more large models or vehicles...

Your friend's mad as far as I'm concerned! Definitely with you on the love of infantry, and I can't think of a worse experience than painting a dozen tanks!

I do get that it's a personal preference thing though, as well as likely army-dependent. With Eldar/Dark Eldar we're blessed with some of the most kickass infantry models around. Comparing them to painting 40 Cadians for a single troops slot and I might be able to see where he's coming from...

WOW! I love the cherry blossom pattern on the talos, it looks baller!

Ynead - I'm afraid thats the issue with the eldar codex, it has awesome internal balance, and almost everything is good, and balanced compared to everything else (except a few of the Phoneix lords, howling banshees, and wraithlords are situational) but compared to the rest of the game, they are stupid good

Thank you for the kind words guys, I'm glad you like him. From my first attempts at the cherry blossom pattern to now I'm quite pleased with how it's improved, I've made small adjustments to it here and there as I've repeated the pattern and I like it more now than when I first did it.

Ynnead: Yeah there's a few things that could use adjustment, another reason superheavies and gargantuans (as well as many of the OP MC, looking at you riptide) are so common too is that they can score objectives. Back when I first started playing this game troops choices were the only FOC that could score which meant you had to take some if you wanted to get obj points. Now since everything scores that's not required and since formations are a thing the restrictions of the FOC is out the window. You like riptides? Take nothing but the riptide wing and that's a legal battle forged army. I like the idea of formations, it's a way to build a fluffy themed list around some of your favourite units, but in practice they got way out of hand for most codexes. For most of them too their points cost is way too low comparatively to the amount of firepower you need to take them down, unless you happen to have that one specific unit that hard-counters it then you're fine but at that point we might as well be playing rock paper scissors instead of 40k, not to mention in most situations you don't know what you'll be up against so you can't really plan a certain list against it, that also gets into the counter-list argument which is frowned upon. All in all the game can be great fun and there's lots of great ways to play against any army but there's more than a handful of really stupid design choices that are really hurting the game right now. I don't mind the game evolving, they wanted big models to be part of it? That's absolutely fine by me, some people want to play with the big things, some people want to play with the infantry and lighter tanks, some want flyers. I think it should all be allowed in game to have the broadest appeal to the most players and playstyles but it needs to be balanced appropriately which it absolutely has not been.

Gummy: I agree with you for the most part on your feelings on the Craftworlds codex balance. With a couple exceptions (as you mentioned) the whole codex is very well written and balanced. Howling Banshees suffer not from their own unit entry in my opinion but rather in the terrible transport rules we currently have, wraithlords I have little experience with but I think they probably suffer from the poor assault rules and perhaps a bit too high of a points cost on their weapons but that's debatable. I think the Eldar codex as a whole is pretty well balanced against any Dex written after the necron codex, necrons included. Anything from before that is far too underpowered. What I love about the Eldar codex is that each unit has a purpose and is written in a fun way to do that, striking scorpions are super sneaky until they act beyond moving, swooping hawks have cool grenade and flight rules, fire dragons kick vehicle butt as they should. On top of that if you add an exarch to a unit you get another fun fluffy rules for the exarch such as the striking scorpion assault bonuses or no-scatter DS for the hawks. It makes each unit feel unique and fluffy with the tactical decision to add an exarch for more options. It's in my opinion a wonderful way to write a codex and more of the other dexes would benefit if they followed suite. I can't tell you how disappointing it is to add a squad leader to my DE forces for what... +1 LD and access to ridiculously overpriced melee weapons? Whereas their craftworld kin get cool fluffy rules that greatly aid the unit in their chosen role. The other problem with newer dexes is formations, too many of them are "take these already awesome units and add them together and get these super awesome bonuses that just crank them up to 11" and that design has to stop. They used to make formations to Band-Aid units they knew were weak, that was also a poor choice as it doesn't address the real issue with the unit. What they need to do is, for the beginning of 8th, scrap formations and go back to the classic CAD. Balance everything in the game to each other in a CAD then add formations later, and these formations need to either simply be an adjustment to the CAD so you can modify how your army is built but have no extra rules and if they do have extra rules they cost extra points.

Oh wow this turned into a rant... really sorry guys, my last few matches were against absolute cheddar cheese Tau lists abusing formations and the crazy-good units and I have been tabled before turn 3 twice now without getting any wounds out there. I may be a little bit bitter. Sorry.

The thing about formations and how strong they are is it really needs to be all or nothing. If everybody has stupid good stuff, then theres no such thing as stupid stuff.

Wraithlords are bad because they are too slow to get stuck in, and they are really really expensive when decked out for shooting (more expensive and worse at shooting than a scatpack) T8 is misleadingly tough, as its immune to small arms, but anything at all that ignores that toughness really really breaks the wraithlord, (I love seeing my opponent bring one as DE ) Howling banshees just need something to modify S3 and an assault transport and they become awesome skirmishers.

Haha! That is a wall of text, but very insightful agreed on all fronts

Tiny update on the Cronos, I've done step 3 of his flesh. I don't know how many steps there are, just that this was the third.

Hopefully it shows up well in the photos, the colours are quite similar to each other. For this guy I decided to try out painting him to look like he's had his skin flayed off, hopefully it works out.