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I've been promising to post pics in the monthly vows since May, err, June, that is, I posted in May when I should have posted in June since it was already Ju... you get the idea. So here's a sampling of my Eldar army for your perusal and critique.

First things first: mold lines are my Great Enemy. I haven't been very successful at eliminating them before priming. I've got a great set of xacto knives that can do the job, but more often than not, I dig into the metal more than I'd like. No files as of yet and I don't like the idea of spending $12 for the GW set (yes, I am cheap), but haven't found small ones anywhere else. Any advice would be received as prayers from heaven... those lines are glaring in these pics, but not too bad in person.

Second: the clear coat that I used came out fuzzy on some models and not others. Florida humidity! I have a big soft makeup brush that I use to clean them off, but forgot to use it before taking the pics. Next time...

On to the pics! This is a Fire Dragon, obviously. Not so obvious is the blue and green "gem paint" glitter-stuff on his helmet. Yes, I know, very girly, but the Eldar are nothing if not flaming, androgynistic, glitter-laden girl's blouses. Most of the army has some of this glittery stuff somewhere in one color or another or has highlights of a metallic tone to add an "otherworldly" element to the uniforms, kind of the theme I guess.



Here's the Exarch, with his hot rod of burnin' love, er... fire pike. He's glittery all over



A Swooping Hawk: silvery helmet, no glitter. I put my hawks on flying bases before the leak of the new "model must be mounted on the base that came with it rule". I remounted most of them using the flying base post on slotta bases and they're not much taller than the wraithguard so TLOS doesn't affect them much...



The Exarch for the Hawks has a yellow and green gem paint on the rainbow portion of his wings as well as the silvery helmet. He's extra (x2) girly-man.



A close up of the wings, from the rear, of course.



Here's a guardian with a lasgun, old skool-style. I've got a bunch of these guys and I'm kitbashing them into warpspiders (soon to be posted) I'm using a violet/purple with silver mixture for the body and a yellow with gold mixture for the helmet.



Another guardian - a gunner, this one blue and yellow. The duster was basecoated with Reaper's Emerald green which has a gold interference, making it look like beetle-shell: green one way, gold another. His crewman is sporting the classic biker jacket in the same color.




Scorpions up next. The helmet's a Ral Partha Elven Green (yeah, I still have my Partha paints even though they're ancient, I love them) with a silver highlight. I like the rock basing - my son found a rock in our yard that we broke open to find an onyx-black crystal faceted interior. I just glued it to the bases of my scorps sans paint only to find the glittery crystal oxidized to a grayish color in some parts overight.



Scorpion Exarch... paint looks a bit thick on this guy, but I think it's more because the prior paint job hadn't been stripped as well as it should have been. Laziness on my part.



Ahh Wraithguard! Alas, I only have the one He's a bit more violet than the guardians, but follows the same scheme. The gun is done up to bronze for a more antique/ancient weapon look. The spirit stones were based in a blue-white mixture and then repeatedly coated in blue, green, yellow, and pink gem paint to acheive an opal effect. Hard to see in the photos, but stunning in person!




Okay Dakkites, give it to me straight.

Looks great man, apart from the fuzziness. Keep it up!

Great job for your first attempts!

As I recently found out, an older bottle of clear coat can fuzz up a model no matter how much shaking or prep work. Make sure you have a fresh can.

The Eldar armor takes the new GW washes very well, and add a lot of shading with minimal effort.

Good work!

I like them, other than the fuzziness.

Especially your wraithguard.

Patience is your friend with mold lines.

Do you rely on dry brushing a lot?

Just curious.

they look intresting in a good way =) but a bit grainy but it might just be my eyes as it is 3:28am =P

Thanks all, nice reception for my first attempt.

@HoG: I'll keep that in mind, but it was a brand new can, shaken to the warp and back. I'm pretty sure it was humidity...

@Bartius: I have been drybrushing less and highlighting more since picking up the brush again. Most of the metallic tone was lightly drybrushed in the same halo of light technique to apply highlights. It's hard to see in the pics, but it adds a decidedly "not of this earth" iridescence to the armor.

Again, thanks!

those look really nice, I have trouble with using normal colors I seam to limmit myself to black and white with few others.

great job, maybe add some of your own freehands to them (or decals) to really make them your own.

Thanks Wash-away, I've been increasing my shade palette with each paycheck. I dare myself to pick up colors that I think I won't use and then try to find a model to use them on. I'm particularly fond of the Reaper Master series...

My freehand isn't very steady at the moment. I practiced for 3-4 hours before doing the 'guard's infinity symbol and I'm still not entirely happy with it, but I'll keep plugging away. I don't want to ruin a perfectly good paint job with a ruinous bit of freehand.

Looks pretty good. As for the mold lines, if you dont want to rely on the files, which while useful on some things, are not as good on mold lines as I had hoped. The best thing I found to use on the lines is take your xacto edge to the line.
What I mean by that is instead of cutting or carving with the blade, set it at a 90 degree angle to the line and lightly scrape. You can then control how much you take, and how fast you go. And don't worry if you go a tad too deep, with this technique I have found that you can't really tell when all is said and done because the blade is wide enough that it doesn't leave a glaring divot.

This will kill your xacto blades quicker than normal, but hey....you can get like a gross for 5 bucks.

Hope that helps.

Ze pastels! Zey burn my eyes!

Seriously, though - while I'm not thrilled with the color scheme, they all look really solid.

Gavin Thorne wrote:
@HoG: I'll keep that in mind, but it was a brand new can, shaken to the warp and back. I'm pretty sure it was humidity...

It could indeed be the humidity, since living in Utah I haven't dealt with it.

I had a similar experience- shook the hell out of a "new" can and it still fuzzed everything up. Turns out the store had it on the shelf for months (probably longer). I probably should have noticed the fact that they still had Blood Bowl rulebooks, 3rd Edition 40k sets, etc. as a sign that the store didn't update their inventory very often.

Still, your models probably look pretty sweet on the table top, I'm sure the fuzz isn't noticeable from 2 ft. away.

Appreciate the advice Raptor... I've had limited success doing exactly what you describe, but sometimes the angles on those lines are tough to work with, or the seam lines from the casting are too far out of whack, like on the wraithguard. The rear view shows that pretty evidently, I think.

@ DbM: I'm going classic eldar, 2nd edition (I used the book as a guideline for the scheme) which uses a bunch of paler/pastel kinds of colors. I thought about doing them all in white/black/gray with color accents, but until getting through these guys (and my Reaper models) didn't have the skills to get that job done.

@HoG: The can was a Krylon that I picked up from our brand new walmart. I guess I could contact Krylon to check the batch code, but I'm pretty sure it's humidity. If not humidity, then it's dust that I'm not seeing. Maybe I'll try brushing the figs down before coating them.

dude....i live in mobile.....its the humidity.