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I'm currently busy trying to get all my Eldar models plainted. I had previously painted four serpents, but when adding two more models, I later stripped them and redid them with the scheme you see here.
What I held myself up on, was how to mark them with the Iyanden sigil. I've now arrived at a point that I'm happy with in that regard:



With the other partially painted parts the model looks like this:



I'm thinking of:
- painting black lines between the blue and the yellow on the hull.
- painting some light grey shadow into the Iyanden symbol's white.
- adding thin, black panel lines with oil shade

I'm not trying to make each of them a masterpiece, since I have 6 serpents, 3 warp hunters, 3 fire prisms and 3 falcons that I want to share the same scheme - within reasonable time ;-]

What do you guys think?

They are very good.

Painting a thin black line between the yellow and blue would not be good. The eye already observes a line where they meet. Adding a line will just make it look silly.

Adding greys to the white is also a bad idea. Keep the 'logo' pure.

Adding pannel lines is verh good, but do not use black on yellow.

Yeah they already look plenty good. I would get out of the "must do more" mindset as it can lead to really screwed up models. Panel lines with a dark y ellow (or even just a sepia) wash might work.

 Niiai wrote:
They are very good.

Painting a thin black line between the yellow and blue would not be good. The eye already observes a line where they meet. Adding a line will just make it look silly.

Adding greys to the white is also a bad idea. Keep the 'logo' pure.

Adding pannel lines is verh good, but do not use black on yellow.

I used my lunch break to try lines on a sacrificial hull - liked it and copy pasted the lines over. So it's too late on that one.
Since most of my Iyanden models have oil shade applied to recesses, I did it to these models as well. I used Neutral Black Oil paint, semi-opaque.

I held off on dirtying up the Iyanden symbols though.

I know you don't wanne hear this, but it was not a change for the good. The black in the crevises does not look good. The black line looks ugly.

I have to agree with the Norwegian. Detracts a bit from the model. Black is not part of the Iyanden colour scheme and it really stand outs to me.

Wait really? i quite like it.

Well estetique taste is personal, but no. It was near peffect, now it is not so good.

See I will disagree. I think the black in the recesses is a good change, really accentuates the panels.

I found the originals much more striking, but panel lines are a good idea on models like these. They still look much nicer than anything I could do, and I love that logo. Main thing is that you're happy with them, and secondary, that they fit with the rest of your army.

I like the black lines.. though I think it might really be helped if you shaded it on the Blue sides so it's like a brighter blue shading into darkness. Just a thought.

To some people the black seems to be rather neon in standing out, I don't seem to have this issue, it blends into the blue for me.

I also like them better now.

personally.. i like the black lines....

I think you definitely needed to add definition between the panels, so the black is an improvement. However I reckon a brownish ink would have been even better

I like the oil wash, but not the black lining, I think a deeper shade of blue would work though to get the contrast increased between the yellow and blue, but not in a way that jumps out

I personally think they look a lot better with the shaded recesses.

Makes them look more believable as a vehicle rather than a small plastic toy

Right on! I see that the panel lines and black lining between blue and yellow didn't please everyone.
Luckily, I like it, so it didn't ruin things for me. =]

In the meantime, I've been cracking on and pushed a bunch of other hulls I had collecting dust through.



This line-up does make me happy, but I don't really want to add up the points this comes down to or think about how likely I am to play all of these anytime soon. ;-]

What definitely still needs to be done, is make the weapons less boring!

Since there are quite a lot of heavy weapon bits, I don't want to devote too much attention to each individual one of them.
So I'm leaning towards a drybrush of a lighter grey, followed by picking out some individual details - one or two for each weapon.

For the fire prism and warp hunter guns, I'm happy to do something more elaborate.
I'm thinking to paint the fire prism crystals to glow, probably orange/red, with a bit of OSL going on with the center and (not glued on yet) tip crystal bits.
For the warp hunters, I want to do some kinda muzzle glow as well, not sure about how to colour the barrel though.

What do you guys think?

Well done sir, or mam.

Thank you =]

Some pictures of the squadron on the move:

Just highlight those weapons and I will be able to identefy them from each other on the picture. :-)

*looks at your serpents and other tanks*

*looks at my workbench*

Welp, now I feel inadequate.

Hehe, the above pics make them look like a collection of incredibly intricately painted Epic tanks!

I personally love the panel lining. The originals were too dull in comparison.

And here I am proud that I'm painting a single Stormcast per night for my skirmish force, and you are knocking out an entire brigade of tanks in short order!

Thank you! =]

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Hehe, the above pics make them look like a collection of incredibly intricately painted Epic tanks!

I personally love the panel lining. The originals were too dull in comparison.

And here I am proud that I'm painting a single Stormcast per night for my skirmish force, and you are knocking out an entire brigade of tanks in short order!

The thread might be deceiving with regards to the time it took.

I had originally painted four Serpents when I started my Iyanden Eldar army back in September of 2013.
They did carry my Wraithguard into many battles in 6th Edition. However, while I got an Airbrush to deal with the challenge of painting yellow, looking at the models I did back then makes me cringe today. When I picked up a lot or two of used Eldar models, I piled up a bunch of Eldar tanks to paint. After stripping, those models just sat around idle waiting for attention for quite a while.

When I had my first look at the ForgeWorld Warp Hunter kit and the Eldar tank upgrade kit, I wanted those spoilers and decorative bits for all gunships and all tanks respectively. That took some time and effort! =]

In November 2016 I decided that enough was enough, stripped the four Serpents what were painted worse than I can do today and got busy. That is when I slapped the yellow basecoat on the models and added the blue stripes, masking with PattaFix. PattaFix was really the key here, since masking these Hulls is really difficult when looking for anything but straight lines.

My next hangup was how to slap the Iyanden Logo on them. I had the idea to do a stencil for the airbrush rather than using decals. A few weeks ago I kicked myself in the butt and spent some time in Photoshop to make a suitable silouette to serve as master for creating the vectors for cutting the logo out of masking foil. A friend then cut them for me using a laser cutter. A traditional cutting-plotter would do the job as well of course. I had thought to do each logo in two steps, first in black, then in white with a smaller size to have an automatic outline, but that turned out to fiddly, so I just did the logo in one size, sprayed black primer over the yellow and blue, followed by white over the black and then painted the outline and the flame by hand.

That of course brought me to the start of this thread and motivated me to get cracking on the other ten hulls that were in parking orbit. And here we are. So... it wasn't really 1, 2, 3, table done. ;-]

Time isn't so much of an issue. Rather you have the dedication to see it through. Again, I still have a workdesk filled with unpainted models that I always say I will get to "eventually".

Hell my Imperial Knight army consists of only four models, and I haven't even ripped open the packaging yet!

Yeah, that is true. However, I only really managed to really push forward since I stopped worrying about the exact result or about being as finished with a model as I can. These days I'm trying to get my models playable and I'm perfectly fine getting back to them some time in the future to add some detail or make some nicer.

Tonight, I messed about with the Fire Prism and Falcon weapon bits. The result could be better, but the bits are all magnetized, so I have all options to revisit them later.



I need to get these tanks done. I'm so close to having the army all painted.

To do are:
30 Warp Spiders,
1 Jetseer, Jetlock and some bikes
6 Support Weapon Platforms
6 Hornets

Then there will be only one Eldar model in the queue... about 2' tall when finished

have you done some brightening on the middel of the first plate since last time?

 Niiai wrote:
have you done some brightening on the middel of the first plate since last time?

You mean the first yellow panel on the fire prisms?
No, I didn't change anything with the yellow, must be the light.


I've used
- bright orange for the Fire Prism cannon (I'll add some accents there to make it less flat) and the the bright lances.
- bright green for the monofilament weapons of the Night Spinner, which I want to carry forward to the heavy support weapons and the Warp Spiders. I previously used that on my Skatach Wraith Knight's monofilament weapons.

Now I'm wondering what I should use for the Warp Hunter's D-Flail and more generally for distortion weapons. My Wraith-uinits so far have only flat grey weapons, without any weapon glow.
I've used light see blue for the engine glow on a bunch of units and of course yellow is Iyanden's primary colour.

What colour would you recommend for the distortion weaponry?

well your shading is very good on the weapons, I suspect a spray gun?

I would usualy not recomend doing to many colours because you throw the colour contrast palete out the window, but it is suptle enough that it works. The orange can be seen in the logo, si that is OK. I was afraid of the green but it works.

That being said, all your oponents will be very happily that you colour code your weapons.

A colour you have not done is purple? Purple and yellow is a good colour.

Other then that, grey, brown, black and white goes with anything.

Yes, I'm using an airbrush where appropriate. =]

On the Warp Hunter barrel you can see clear evidence of that. I also reworked the center prism in the Fire Prism gun with white and some more Fluo-Orange.



I went with your idea of purple for the glow, but I had to brighten it up to work as an OSL effect.