Dark Eldar - Raider - WIP #1

I've taken a bit of a break from Rakarth to have a play with one of the Dark Eldar raiders I have kicking around. It provided me with a good opportunity to test out the Army Painter spray paints as I have never used them before. Colour me impressed as it not only provided a good solid base to work from but it also dried pretty fast and colour matched the corresponding paint pot perfectly (just as they said it would. Always nice when that happens).

It also takes their Ink range and paints beautifully. The (somewhat bizarrely taken,) photo below show the raider chassis prior to assembly. I'm incredibly impressed with how smooth the whole thing looks so far. All that is needed now is to glue the chassis together, highlight along the joins and then give the whole thing a glaze or two of Bloodletter to really 'make it pop'.

Below is a close up of the base, made out of a mix of cork pieces, GW scenery, gravel and sand. To finish off I'll be adding snow (as with my Space Wolves).

 

 

With another meet up coming up in two weeks I am now switching my focus to my Eldar in an attempt to get a few more bits built up. This will include a couple of Wave Serpents and some Dire Avengers.



Dark Eldar - Urien Rakarth - WIP #2

Continuing on from last week, I've added some depth to the face and started work on the worms and vials. Not really much more to report this week as I'm only really building on last weeks progress.

I have been playing with using the glazes to get a nice transition to the worms, something I think that could use some experimentation in other areas, such as maybe making some nice smooth blends.

I am using some of the colour guides from the Painting Guide now, as I do think they provide a good basis for getting some nice tones.

I may also redo the red area on Rakarth as I've been tinkering with the red on some spare parts and think I have come up with a slightly better way to highlight it (mixing in Cadian Fleshtone with the Pure Red instead of using Lava Orange). I am testing the tone on some more Kalabites, as well as a Raider so I should have something along those lines to show off fairly soon I should think.

Dark Eldar - Urien Rakarth - WIP #1

Just a brief update this week, and as stated last weekend I have a WIP of Urien Rakarth to show off. The skin is still in it's early stages and I am tinkering with some ideas for the rest of him (for example painting the worm heads a different colour to the bodies.)

The skin is a basecoat of Rakarth Flesh washed with Eshin Grey (mixed with some Matt & Glaze Mediums). This has given a quite ashen feel to the model which I like, though I will most likely add some Reikland Fleshshade & Carroburg Crimson into the deeper recesses as it perhaps lacks a little bit of depth.

I don't normally go in for GW Painting Guides or Supplements, but Dark Eldar are very much my first army so I decided to treat myself. I've not gone through the Coven's Supplement in any detail but I have had a flick through the painting guide.

Call me crazy but if I were releasing a premium product I'd want to show off the product to the best of my ability, yet the models throughout are uninspiring and messy. I can only assume that the armies are painted to show the standard a person would achieve using the painting stage by stage guides contained within, and to a moderate tabletop quality. However I can't help but feel that the whole thing was rushed in order to get it out of the door in time for the codex release.

The biggest use for me though is to see how they've utilised paints across the whole range to select colours as highlight colours & tones. To me this is something that a more advanced painter could use as the basis of painting a particular colour (mixing Fenrisan Grey into Xersus Purple as a highlight tone for example).

To sum up, I'm not particularly disappointed in the book itself either, it does have some interesting fluff and is well presented, and the stage by stage parts will help with my colour choice. But I'd not buy another one.

Dark Eldar - Scheming #2

The lack of post last week was predominantly due to jetlag and losing most of the weekend to sleep which was rather annoying. But I am now back in the swing of things so lets see if I can't keep up the consistency again until Christmas!

I had been hoping to show off the completed Wolf Guard, but there is still a few more evenings worth of work to do on these guys, so instead I'll be showing off a potential new scheme for the Dark Eldar.

I've always wanted to do a red army, but could never find the right tone before. With purple being a marginally more common than red scheme for Dark Eldar and my not finding a colour tone I liked that didn't involve a hefty amount of mixing I thought I'd try out a red test piece to see what it came out like.

Paints used for the red are all Army Painter (or GW where stated):

Basecoat: Chaotic Red
Wash: Nuln Oil (GW)
Re-base: Chaotic Red
Edge #1: Dragon Red
Edge #2: Pure Red
Edge #3: Lava Orange
Glaze: Bloodletter (GW)

I'm rather pleased with the result, and with the release of the new Codex upcoming I might find myself knocking out a few more Dark Eldar models in this scheme.

Holiday Post - #2 - Lelith Hesperax

I'm still on holiday. This week's 'blast from the past' - Lelith Hesperax

Dark Eldar - Jetbike WIP #2

Now to my eyes the photo's for this post look almost identical to the photo's from the previous Jetbike post... Still plenty has been done so pressing on...

The purple has received an sharp highlight of Dechala Lilac and the black has now been highlighted.

I'm not entirely satisfied with the black yet, which may receive another edge highlight in a similar manner to the purple. These are now all but done, just needing the turquoise areas worked on  and the bases re-done to finish them off. Should be enough there for two weeks work, although I am now having to build a 1000pt Eldar army in time for the end of the month so these could end up on the back burner for a short while...

Dark Eldar - Jetbike WIP #1

Just a quick one this week showing the progress on the Dark Eldar Jetbikes. In all honesty I have been working on these for some time and I am still experimenting with the colours. This is also the second time I have attempted to paint them.

I am still not sure on the gold and the larger flat metal areas are proving a pain to work with but I am reasonably happy with the black and purple mixes I am using. Once I have them finalised then I should be able to 'speed' through the final stages.

I've tried to make each one individual by mixing in parts from the other Dark Eldar sets. Makes for a much more dynamic pose I feel.

I may well end up not writing a post for next week as I am picking up a lot of Christmas related duties at the moment which has so far left me with zero time to paint.

Time to get on with the decorations!

Dark Eldar #1 - Colour Scheme

Coming up with an army colour scheme is always a bit of a task for me. For the Eldar it's easy. Iyanden equals yellow. Simple enough. But how do I paint that yellow? An agonising thought in itself, but more on that another time. Since the release of the last Dark Eldar codex I found myself drawn to the purple and blue scheme of the Cult of Something or other. The name escapes me right now, and it won't be the name of my Kabal anyway...

This is also the second time I've attempted to paint this colour scheme. The first time was using GW older range of paints (Midnight Blue, Liche Purple, Warlock Purple & Rotting Flesh) and the biggest issue was finding a mix of the new ones to replicate the scheme. Turns out a one to one mix of Naggaroth Night and Screamer Pink actually doesn't do a half bad job of replicating the old Liche Purple.

So the newer scheme colours are based on the following:

Armour - Naggaroth Night 1:1 Screamer Pink
Flesh - Rakarth Flesh
Hair/Stuff that glows - Sotek Green
Black - Abbadon Black 4:1 Sotek Green

After much trial and error here's the final concept model:

 

Still got a few of the colours to work out but nothing that will affect progress on the Jetbikes, which are coming along nicely.

 

For reference the scheme painted using the older range:

 

 



And for a bit of a laugh here's a sample from my original Dark Eldar army, painted back in 1998/99

Next up - Striking Scorpions Work In Progress...