Some more of Eldrad

Slowly painting him up, I can see this taking a better part of a fortnight non stop painting, and more since I'm back at uni as of Monday.

Then again, it doesn't have to be done by October so I'm in no rush.

I've also been toying with the idea of running some Reapers and Banshees in conjunction with 2 Spinners, Eldrad and a Seer council in 1750. Might be a tight fight, but it could fit. If not I'll drop the reapers and save on some points. I'm just worried I may be trading off long range AT.

Eldrad, he is totally rad.

WIP of Eldrad I'm working on.

The idea is that it will be a GD entry this year, but I'll have to wait until he is complete to really pass judgment on whether he is worthy or not.

Something I think I'll work on is his Sash, I might darken the recesses again to really make it pop.

I also chose Eldrad over any other model just because 1; hes bad arse on the tabletop. Sure he might be a little bit expensive, but comparatively and for what he does, he cannot be beat. The ability to use a second power is fantastic. He can do the job of 2 Farseers for the price of one.

Anyway, back onto delicious hobby goodness. I'm pretty happy with the robe, though I'm afraid it may look too stark, however Eldary. Another one is the Wraithbone on his chest, which I am afraid may not have enough contrast. Things like this won't be apparrent until the model is mostly completed however.

I used a mix of Black + Shadow Grey with increments of Shadow gray and then Space Wolfs Grey for his robe, slowly building up colour, the wraithbone was a bit more simple with Tau Sept Ochre and Bleached Bone and adding white.

The cloak was the same deal, with Liche and Warlock Purple being blended up and then adding white to the mix to really make it pop. For the back of the cloak I'm considering using a similar design from the Celestial Wizard from the Heavy Metal Empire Wizard challenge, though probably not so much for stars but more a purple blue backdrop with some colour.

Slowly but surely!

I'm finally on holidays.

I've set myself a massive painting queue so far, the top of which are some Shining Spears and an Autarch on Jetbike with Laser Lance.

Instead of going with the red of my Saim Hann, I think I'll break it up with dark blue bikes, along the lines of the Night Lords. Probably have a red stripe or a Black / Bright blue stripe, that remains to be seen.

Either way, a continuous stream of updates should now proceed as I have plenty of hobby to photograph.

In other news I have dropped my Seer Council from my 1750pt list and replaced it with Shining Spears + Autarch, followed by a footseer casting Fortune from a Falcon.

I lose out on Destructors and WS5, but I have I5 and S6 PW attacks with Withdraw.

Hobby plan for July

Hey guys,

Sorry for no update earlier in the week, I'm in the middle of exams and I've got a cold. Not a good mix, let me tell you.

Regardless, I've been planning on what hobby I plan to do during my time off from Uni. The list is somewhat substantial and includes practically everything left to paint in my 1750 Lords of Terra list.

This includes;

1 Farseer on Jetbike
1 Wave Serpent with TL Cannons
1 6 man squad of Fire Dragons
1 5 Man squad of Dire Avengers
5 Objectives
2 Warlocks on bike
6 Guardian Jetbikes

Not too much, but I can definitely see this taking some time throughout July. I definitely plan to take the time to make sure everything will, as usual, challenge myself as a painter to achieve the best results.

I'm also considering taking Shining Spears over a Seer Council, and throwing in an Autarch. PWs with withdraw, they still have the saves of a Seer Council with Fortune, except that when the Farseer is fortuning them, he can't turbo boost. I'm considering, that if I make this change I'll be taking the Farseer on foot, and stick him in a DAVU Falcon and see how that goes.

Now I've just got to figure what to drop in exchange for the points, as the Autarch is an extra hundred points 30 odd points over the difference provided by dropping the seer council. He adds a lot to their effectiveness however.

Tips and tricks for painting

While I apply these to Eldar, they are applicable to other armies, very easily. I'm sure many of you already know about these, or already do them.

There is a short list of things which you can do to really make your painting pop. Whether you choose to do so on all of your models, some of, or none is entirely your choice. Personally I tend to implement these on leader models, such as Exarchs, Farseers, Warlocks and Autarchs etc.

Something I'd like to cover first are eyes.

I know many people have trouble with just getting the paint neatly into the eye socket without it going everywhere. I did too. The easiest way I've found to do eyes is with a watered down paint into the socket.

First off, once that dries, it won't look any different, maybe a little bit neater. This brings to bear another technique that is common on higher painting circles, such as Golden Demon. This technique is Black Lining.

So you get the eye, and with some very watered down black paint with some wash (I use about 2:1:1 Water to paint, and wash. There is no ideal uniform ratio for any paint consistency, it just depends on your paints and you.) and you'll want to get it within the recesses. Try to not get this part onto the 'body' of the eye as it can lead to inconsistency in the colour spread of the eyes.

Finally, outside the eye socket you cab highlight the outer rim of the eye socket to the brightest colour that you have on the face.

WIP Wave Serpent.

I've been working on this for the last few days. Playing around with Freehand.

You'll notice from the pics there was a dragon. He looked silly. I called him Gary.

Gary looked out of place, so Gary is gone now.

I replaced him with lots of scales. Forget ever doing that again, and if I do, they will not be the same colour as the tank.

Got some valuable practice on techniques and colours I'm not really familiar with on this. Experimentation is key!















The finished result (Turret needs to be primed, but its been really wet around here)



The thing I'm probably happiest with is the Energy Fields on the left Wing, and the gems. The eyes came out nice, that is about it really.

I actually can't wait to start on the next one, but until this rain lets up I'll be drilling slate, for my other dragons. Woohoo.

Some more pictures

Today I've got some pics of my jetbike squads and fire prisms. This should hopefully give more examples of freehand. Yay for crazy amounts of freehand being acceptable on Eldar.



Jetbikes




First Prism


This is one jetbike squad and one prism, I'll have the other prism up tomorrow some time.

The Prisms came first, and where I tested out new techniques for flames and lightening. The prisms were really the first play I tried pushing my freehand, steering away from 2d single colour things. I think the freehand on the bikes came out nice, though probably could use some cleaning up on the serpents.

First Dragon Squad finished!

Next time I'm going to start up from Tausept Ochre as opposed to Red Gore. Probably adds 1 too many layers of paint.



First 6 Dragons done.

Edit: I can't fix the page clipping the image, infernal contraption. If you click it you'll see all 6.

I also took another front on pic of the exarch.