Shoulders of Giants

Hi folks, get the reference? Well, let me help, today is all about the people who guide the fate of the Corsairs, the Farseers:

If we have seen further than others it's cos we stood on the shoulders of giants...

So, unnecessarily niche Newton quotes aside... These pair are a GW farseer (left) and a Chapterhouse farseer on the right. Now, this model seems to no longer be available - probably as a result of the legal wranglings between Chapterhouse and GW. I really, really don't want to reignite the debate here so I'll just say I have no problem with "totally not a one-of-those" style models where a nod and a wink is enough to indicate a homage. Chapterhouse straight up steal. They use the race names and even unit entries. That's just out of order in this humble bloggers opinion. I think GW go too far sometimes where their IP is concerned but I could not blame them for a moment going up against Chapterhouse. Call 'em armoured space elves and provide alternatives. Call 'em Eldar and you've crossed a line from nod-and-wink homage to theft. My twopennethworth. Not that it means a damn thing! Lets talk more edifying things. Painting models!

trying a new on-table lighting set up, pics are a bit stark this time, continue the research Igor!

With these, the challenge was to differentiate the areas of the model without loosing the overall feel of the colour scheme. I knew that I wanted to have predominantly grey robes as I had already started down that road with the warlocks. The trick was adding red contrast while minimising the visual impact of it. The descision eventually boiled down to the inner robes being the best choice. They're mostly covered by the wraithbone runic "circuitry" and stuff like bags and cloths. The robes and the armour, while both starting from the same colour were treated very differently, with the robes being shaded almost to black and the armour recieving nice stark highlights. The effect is a differentiated model while retaining the pallete. The by now familiar wraithbone and turquoises do their work balancing and contrasting the red/grey and leaving a rather attractive finish. Certainly the model that I am happiest so far within the Void Dragon scheme.

So, on to the Chapterhouse farseer. First thing to note is how boring the back view of both of these models are! C'mon, some runic stuff would have killed the designers? Anyway, minor gripe over with. I sharpened the sword as I mentioned in the warlock post (farseers spear too) and set to painting. Turned out to take about half the time of the Citadel one as there really weren't all that many detail areas to worry about. If you were looking for a clean canvass for some freehand work, this would be your man. The vane things on the helmet had a couple of different colours used on them before giving up and going for plain grey. They just are so out of scale with the rest of the model that calling too much attention to them makes them look weird. In situations like that, minimise the impact of the part by using the same colour as the majority of the field and have a nice strong adjecent area of colour to draw the eye away from it. Happily, in this case the face was perfect for it!

There isn't much more to say about these fellas. Guardians and Wasp walkers this week. Pictures, as always, coming soon!

TTFN