Corsair Armour

Greetings one and all, today I can finally, finally, say: I've finished the Corsair commission. It's done. Finito. Phew. It is a fair wager to lay that these will be the last Eldar vehicles crossing my painting table for a looooong time, if ever. But enough of that. Lets look at shineys!

First, the real meaty punch of the armour. This Fire Prism was made from the excess bits left over from the Warp Hunters and a Falcon kit. Sadly, Forgeworld don't include the crystal sprue (fair enough) and of course, you cannot get one from GW for love nor money. Seriously, I tried. A lot. Mystifies me, "Here, I have money, give me stuff! Oh, you won't? Oh.". But there still needed to be a Prism cannon so ingenuity, enter stage left. I used the plastic parts of the cannon to make templates of the quite complicated irregular pentagonal sections. I cut them out of plasticard and then glued them into place to fill in the lasing crystal. For the firing crystal I nicked a High Elf wizard's staff top. I tried a few different colours for the crystal - at one point sort of cloudy green - but none worked with the rest of the scheme. Finally I just used an old school trick I saw on the last edition Fire Prisms. Cross hatching with ever brightening shades of the gem highlights. A longitudinal catchlight cutting through them helps.

Next up is a basic Falcon. Transport for the hordes of Corsairs, well, six of them anyway. As with previous ones the grey is a mix of airbrushing and edge highlighting. The red the metallic mix I made with varying mixes of red and Hashut Copper. The red bits are frustrating though. One of the reasons that these three took so long to do is the same reason that the hexagons are a smidge more irregular than last time. Ages ago now I really, really did my wrist in with an RSI. Now, it has recovered, I'm pain free. This is good. But... in order to stop a recurrence of the condition I have to paint with my wrist straight. For 25 years I've painted with my hand cocked back at about a 20° angle. To say that fighting two and a half decades of muscle memory kills your very finest control is an understatement. It is coming back, but I am having to relearn-ish the freehand skills I had. Irksome to say the least.

Finally though, we have one where through concentration and choice of subject, nifty freehand got painted. The Corsair Lord's Falcon needed something nifty. The sigil of the Corsairs is the stylised winged serpent. What could be cooler than a pair of dragons as your wingman? Not much thought I. So, I looked up a few tribal-ey/stylised dragons online (what did we do before Google?). Once I'd found a nifty one I traced the outline of the Falcon onto scrap paper and worked out where the lines of the dragons would fit. I can heartily recommend this. Saves a lot of pain. Then, with a nice sharp pencil I sketched the dragon outlines onto the Falcon itself and simply coloured them in. Shaded lower edges and highlighted upper finished them off. Simple but quite effective.

That's all folks! I'm off for a week of getting bludgeoning with latex weapons (I help run a LRP game) but I've got a couple of posts queued with Mulder to stop you feeling abandoned. To my strange, giggling glee I realised that this was my 365th post on the site. That's one per day for an entire year. Seemed like a milestone but I've no idea on the way to what :) See you in a week or so.

TTFN

Corsair Queen

Hi folks, very quick update to finish off the week. Remember me saying that I had finished all the Corsair infantry? Forgot one!

While I will get to the painting in a minute, first I wanted to talk about the process of deciding on a "look" as it was a meandering one this time. I'm not sure what the original donor model was but it has had a new arm, head and hair added by my client. Now, the body was female, the head, more androgenous and sharper than you would normally sculpt "feminine". Nothing wrong with that but it started me thinking how to paint her so that she wouldn't look "ugly". Then I was looking at the sculpting of the rest of it. Thick cloak, trimmed with fur, an elegant dress/armour, pose quite static... I started to think, an older woman. Then the concept came together, a matriach of the Corsairs. An aging, still potent queen to command them.

Once this had crystallised it informed the rest of the scheme. It helps to get that story sorted so that all the pieces fit. Otherwise, there isn't much to talk about on this one that hasn't been said elsewhere in the corsair posts. I took the armour more coppery this time as she needed to stand out a little. I also used a trick I'd figured out on The Doctor to do the hair. Didn't want her completely grey, just greying. So you paint the base colour on and then "highlight" the streaks with increasingly light shades of grey miced into the base colour. Not great for photography but nice enough in real life!

Anyway, like I say, just a quickee. Enjoy the weekend folks

TTFN

Mage Hunting Storm Guardians

Hi folks, complex title, no? Well, its a relatively simple story. My corsair client included a box of Privateer Press Mage Hunters along with the Eldar and asked whether I could make them into storm guardians. I did my usual thing of saying "sure!" with the mental caveat of "...but I'm not sure how...", despite this, I was able to produce... this:

If you follow the link above you can see the base models I was working from, I also had the presence of mind to photograph the models in progress (I wanted to get client's OK that I was on the right track) so you can see what alterations were made:

Most of the work was carving away catapults from the hands of the "rifleman" poses. The donor models are from Warmachine and have the usual Privateer sculpting quirks (A rather anime feel to hair and features, odd straps and floating armour plates) but some are actually really nice, the cloak sculpt on the second row down first on the left is lovely. I tend to find this with Privateer Press. Some absolutely lovely sculpting amongst some fairly pedestrian stuff. The tendency to add detail for detail's sake (non-functional straps etc) is irksome but it fits their slightly anime style. Anyway! On to painting!

I was in a quandry about which colours to put where. I needed them to be reminiscent of the other corsair models despite clearly not being such. Initially I was musing on making the cloaks urban camoflauge as they seemed to have a "ranger-ey" feel to them. But this just looked awful. Seriously, just bad. At times like that you swallow the gaff and rethink! I decided that the main body would be the dark grey of the armour plates from other corsairs. The cloaks would need to be grey, but as I've mentioned before you can change the tone of a grey and thus differentiate between discrete areas of a model. In this case it was a shift from the neutral grey tone of Administratum Grey shaded with lots'o'black to Val German Grey. It has a blue-er tone that works nicely. Red accents and piping along with the metal-red-bronze gloves and the weird clips on the hoods provide an analogue to the face masks and gauntlets of the armoured models.

This is the model I'm happiest with in terms of the conversion. It was one of those that once I'd dry fitted some parts just fell together. He's a mage hunter commander and I think the Eldar componants actually work better than the kit parts. He's got a lovely pose and flow. Happy Jeff is happy.

Well, those are the last of the Eldar Infantry, it's vehicles all the way now to project completion. I'll be mixing them among the Imperial commissions I'm working through to spare my wrist too many of those hexes in one go. Until next time folks

TTFN

Void Dragon Phoenix

Hi folks, I said that the next post would be Corsair shinies didn't I? Oh, and what a shiny it is:

The Void Dragon Phoenix is one of my favourite Forgeworld designs, it just 'works'. The lines are so elegant, the ratio of plane to engine feels right and the weaponry is neatly designed. I will say that there was one massive dissapointment on this kit and that was despite my every effort I was unable to correct a problem that occurred during assembly. Due to Forgeworld's total lack of instructions - a perennial infuriation of mine - a casting plug, exactly the size of the bottom of the cockpits, neatly cast, with no indication that it's removal was required, caused the pilot's heads to be 1.5mm too tall to fit under the canopies. There is no way to seperate resin once superglued. Believe me, I tried. Acetone can soften superglue but the join was too perfect to allow the acetone in. In total frustration I ended up having to remove the pilots heads and paint the canopies (mercifully, the cockpits aren't up to much).

I'm afraid Forgeworld's much vaunted customer service was completely absent here. I wrote to them explaining the problem and expressing my frustration that a £69 model could be spoiled by so small an error and that as a result the lack of instructions was damn near unforgivable. All I got in return was "oh, we hadn't run into that one". Seriously Forgeworld. Get someone to build your overpriced kits and photograph the steps. Write a note or two. If you can't bear to pay for a couple of sheets of A4 in a kit then put them online as totally free to you pdfs. You have to assemble them to sell them. Do this. Earn your price tag. Harrumph, enough of this, on to more edifying things:

The paint scheme for the Phoenix is the same as the other corsair vehicles, the usual airbrushed basecoat, edging and then very Eldar asymmetrically applied red panels which get their hex scales. The canopies fit in with the red because the highlight colour for the red is achieved by mixing Hashut Copper with Mephiston Red. The canopies are Hashut Copper, I took the view that these vehicles are used in space as well as in atmosphere so a NASA style film coating of metal over the glass would prevent radiation damage and reduce blinding stellar light. On their own, they looked a bit plain so I added a suggestion of horizon lining (reflected landscape in the windows) with brown ink and then thin glazes of blue and green on the respective areas. You hardly see the colouring but it helps the illusion. Two layers of wet effects give it a high gloss shine.

It's worth mentioning gemstones on Eldar vehicles. There are two theories on them. Some people like to paint every single gem-shaped object on a vehicle as a gen. I think this is overkill. The designers say that most of the blisters are just armoured domes containing equipment. Areas that get a gemstone on vehicles that I paint are those that feel like there should be some sort of psychic control or detection. so on this one, the weaponry gets one each, the engines and rudders have them and the large sensing arrays are stuffed with them. I figure the gemstones are attuned to the crew and allow them to see through them or detect what is going on around them. It also means that you don't have to paint what can be an enormous number of gems. On a Wraithknight - apparantly - it is almost FOUR HUNDRED. Choose life, choose sanity...

I deliberately kept the underside plainer than the top. It isn't seen as much and somehow having a dark surface to not show up too much against the night sky (I see corsairs doing a lot of night raids) felt right. The air-to-ground missile pods got red accents and a whacking great sensing gemstone to aim them with! The underslung starcannons I painted like the nightspinner weapons, the wraithbone toned weapons encased in grey painted armour.

The four squares around the flying stand hole are not on the model. Those lovely cross-shaped flying stands didn't exist when this model was made and they have not made a retrofitting piece to fix this. Sadly, the stand will not support the model on it's own. Instead I made a few thick plasticard shims to create a cross-format shape for the stand to squeeze into. As a result we have a tight fit that allows the aircraft to be firmly on the stand without gluing.

I decided that the base needed a little bit of "extra mile" work as those whacking great oval bases are normally filled with some girt great beasty. In this case it is totally empty. Knowing that the client's basing is all for urban environments I thought that digging out some spares from the cities of death buildings would provide an accent. Adding this to some cork rubble and secret weapon mini's bricks led to a nice, rubble strewn environment for the Phoenix to strafe.

So with that, I shall leave you, until next time folks

TTFN

Eldar Ruining Picnics

Hi folks! Today we have pretty pictures of wasps for you. No not the stripy insects composed of sting, wing and a hatred of all living things. No, not White Anglo-Saxon Protestants either. No, these are Eldar Corsair Wasp Assault Walkers:

with all the clear componants, cutting them from the background was a NIGHTMARE, cue retro white!

Even normal Eldar walkers make their Imperial cousins look lumpen and clumsy. These things though are another level again. They've got jump packs. Yup, those nozzles you can see beneath them are essentially the same design as on the corsair squads. The models come with large resin flying stands to allow you to model them in full motion so I took advantage!

By playing with heights and angles I was able to get (left to right) coming in to land; leaping into the air; taking long jump assisted bounding strides. Incidently, those canopies should be standard for the war walkers. They look awesome and make so much more sense than just hanging out with a "kill me" sign on your face.

As with most long running projects I am starting to run out of things to say about the painting. I've been over most of the themes in previous corsair posts so I'll leave it to you to cruise around them at your leisure. Will be a coin toss whether it's infantry or vehicles tomorrow for the Corsairs but as it is the dreaded MOT day it's debatable how much I'll get done. Fingers crossed that Bertha the Big Blue Battlewagon (my venerable diesel Scenic) passes with not too many more nails needing to be banged in!

TTFN

Corsairs and Scorpion Lords

Ha! I wondered whether I would get these lads finished in 2013, and I did! Just... ;)

Today is the turn of the Guardians to have difficult-to-focus-or-colour-balance photos taken of them! Mostly, they are nigh on identical to the Dire Avengers and the Corsair Guardians. I think they'll all hang together quite nicely on the table. Of greater interest is the grav platform:

I did a tiny bit of head scratching on the grav-platform. I wanted the thing to hang with the army but not just be uniformly grey. After a few minutes it occured to me what I was looking at. A teeny, tiny corsair vehicle. With this notion I treated it exactly the same as all the other Corsair Grav Tanks. Even down to the hex panels. It seemed to work rather nicely.

Our final offering today - indeed for 2013 - is this Chapterhouse Striking Scorpion Phoenix Lord. This is one of the better Chapterhouse models, the pose is nifty. Of course that isn't saying much, not much facial definition, legs different sizes and irregular sculpting (lines are different thicknesses along their length for example). However, enough carping. We replaced the original chapterhouse weapon with the citadel striking scorpion exarch weapon. Much better, check out the original and see what I mean:

Fortunately the citadel one fit fairly well. I needed to resculpt a bicep and fill in a shoulder blade but mostly fine. The pose works very well with the weapon. Looks like she's crouching behind a barricade ready to spring up and decapitate some unsuspecting human. Painting wise, I was left with very few choices to make. The grey armour was taking care of itself. The red hands needed some balancing with the ridges on the shoulders - as the model lacks a helmet and thus lacks a red faceplate. Just like the Prince Yriel model I decided to use the Wraithbone basecoat (Zandri Dust and Skull White mix) for the hair. All in all, straightforward! Although I did need to put some effort into defining the facial features. Would have been a bit flat featured otherwise.

And with that, 2013 is done! I'll be doing a new year post in couple of days but until then, I want to wish all of our readers a happy, enjoyable and safe New Year's Eve. See you in 2014!

TTFN

Lord of the Corsairs

Ahoy me hearties! Set sail on the sea of stars and fall upon those worthless humans like the wolves we are, solar sails set and this guys hand on the tiller:

Yep, today's offering is Prince Yriel, recast as a Corsair Autarch complete with nifty wings, all the better to join his men. I've always loved this figure, right from the moment they released him. I worked for GW Oxford at the time and we even chose Iyanden as the store army just to better fit in with him. So the chance to paint one as part of the corsair force was a treat.

The first thing to fathom was which colours were going where. Initially I thought to make him stand out more from the pack and use red on the coat. I was worried that the shades of grey would blend together. Trust me, this didn't work. So instead I launched into plan B. The coat would be a darker shade, the armour plates lighter. The metallic red alternating feathers would provide enough bling for him. For reference, the wings and the main body of the model were painted seperately. It would have been madness to stick them on first. One more note on the coat before we move on. Yriel has lovely brocade-esque detailing around the garment, this created a problem as the dark and brooding thing was working. I didn't want to introduce another colour - the only options from the pallete being turquoise, bone or red - as it would have dramatically changed the tone of the model. Instead, I had a brainwave. I darkened the detailing to black and added a layer of gloss varnish. This created a contrast of texture rather than colour and while it looks ok in photos it is lovely in real life.

Speaking of turquoise, eagle eyed types will notice that the sash around his waist and the band around his arm are also a dark shade of turquoise (Stegadon Scale Green with a Coelia Greenshade wash and some highlighting if curious). This allowed me to subtly break up areas of detail without drawing the eye from the main foci - face, spear, wings, that gurt great gem on his chest. Using a darker shade of an existing colour from the pallete is a neat way of maintaining a colour scheme while minimising areas of detail that you don't want to pop out.

While there isn't a whole lot of painting to talk about on it I just had to post a picture of the spear tip. It's been my favourite part of the model for ages. Of course it's actually a halbard but then most GW spears are anyway ;)

Now, the picture above may look a bit mad but it illustrates something that I talk about from time to time, balancing colours across models. In this case the red and the bone were important. I knew I wanted the wings to alternate red and grey feathers so I needed some red low down on the model to balance that. The lining of the coat, darker, but the same hue took care of that. The outstreatched hand was also balanced by making the ribbons hanging from the weapon red. I thought of turquoise or grey but it needed that balance.

Simarily, the spear is huge and occupies a lot of the model. While I was pondering hair colours it occurred to me that I could balance the spear accross the model by using the tyranid bit on the base and his hair. You wouldn't think to look at it but the hair is the exact same colour as the spear. It has just been treated differently afterwards. In this case a wash of Agrax Earthshade rather than Seraphim Sepia changes it juuust enough. The tyranid bit is different, it's Karak Stone but the colours are close enough to work. This is the sort of process that your brain goes through automatically when you've been painting a while, you instinctively balance things or at least know when something is "wrong". But every now and again - like the hair - you stop for a moment trying to figure out what to do. It is then you shift from instinct to an active process and start mentally drawing triangles all over the place! Most colour decisions on my models are made using a mix of this process and a colour wheel.

Anyway, that's all for today folks, the guardians are nearly finished and will be up on the blog very soon. But for now.

TTFN

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

Corsair Double Feature

Hi folks, now that the excitement over the time-bothering, phonebox dwelling vagrant is dying down again I can return you to our regular programming. Pirate Space Elves!

First on the menu are the other half of the Corsair squad, these are all the special and heavy weapons and the leader. Check out the first article for the other half. I'm rather taken with these chaps, especially the heavy weapon troopers. The models look so much better in the flesh than on the Forgeworld website. Let's check out the heavies first:

yikes, the camera really chopped through the blending on the shoulder, looks better in real life.

A shuriken cannon and a missile launcher make for a hefty firepower upgrade for the squad. I know that the grav-platforms are more normal for the Eldar but these forearm-mount style weapons look crackin'. I've altered the wraithbone mix a little. Rather than the fairly unpredictable results of the layers of parchment wash I'm mixing Ceramite White and Zandri Dust for the colour in various ratios and still using Seraphim Sepia for the shading. It's a bit more straightforward and predictable.

The special weapons are likewise lovely and elegant. I tried to get a hunched, furtive look to the meltagunner (on the right). I envisioned him creeping up behind some armoured target to take it out with the critical shot.

With the leader you can see the backpack form nicely, that sword is lovely too, classic scimitar given an Eldar tweak. I had thought to put the Void Dragon's glyph on the vanes of the backpack but the transfers are too large. I'll pick through some of the smaller icons and see if there is any that would be suitable. They look great as plain red though so if nothing works it won't be a complete tragedy.

Speaking of tragedies... no, just kidding. For those who read Today I've Mostly Been the saga of these Dire Avengers has been a long one. They've had two different blue shades, three different greys, the details at the back are cast soft and so are tricky to pick out cleanly - essential for Eldar - and so over the course of weeks of trying to get them right they became something of an albatross. Purely a psychological one though because now they are finished I think they look all right! It's important to acknowledge that these things happen and to try and find strategies to get past them. For me it is usually to stick them back in a box, paint something else and wait for a day where I am feeling full of get up and go in order to attack them again. It works out in the end.

The Exarch, who is armed as all sensible Dire Avengers must be with paired Shuriken Catapults, is one of the better sculpts in the box. The sword especially is nice as is the pose which doesn't pretend that you can aim and fire paired weapons but rather empty one and then bring up the next. Massive firepower, minimum reload. The loincloth really helps balance the odd, bum-wrap too so it doesn't look as weird. On the subject of that bum wrap:

The model pictured is one of my favourite poses from the box, but. The sculpts are really showing their age and have one really, really odd choice. There is a sort of bum-wrap hanging down like a reverse loincloth. This seems to wrap around the armour plate covering the buttocks... despite the fact that no Eldar model has such an armour plate. It seems to float, attached to the buttocks for no good reason, are Dire Avengers inflicted with some horrible diarrhoea that necessitates nappies? I suspect, given the samurai overtones in a lot of the Eldar range that it is intended to be a sort of pseudo-Obi (Obi are the broad silk belts worn around the kimono and through which the sword scabbard is worn). If this went around the waist it would be a lovely Japanese stylistic touch that would reinforce some of the designs. Having it just floating there just makes no sense whatsoever. Because of this it just melts into the undersuit and creates problems choosing where the belt ends and the undersuit begins. Ho hum, a rare Eldar mistep there. Probably a tech-restriction from back whent they were molded.

Well, that's all for today! I'm returning to vehicles tomorrow and trying to get the two Night Spinners finished nice and quickly. 'Till next time;

TTFN

He's a Pirate and a Scallywag..

Ahoy mateys! I've got some pirates for ye all! Granted, they use the name Corsairs and are a bit more pointy eared than wooden legged but Pirates!

Once more, cutting the guns out is a bit of a chore so we have the retro white background.

These are the first half of the corsair guardians for the growing Void Dragon commission. Those expecting to see Dire Avengers... well, they've been put in a box until I have more of the infantry done and I can fathom what the hell is wrong with the colour scheme. Something is seriously out of whack and I've wasted too much time puzzling over it. Instead we have these chaps! Their painting is fairly unremarkable as I've talked a lot about how to get the tones and effects I have going on them (click the corsair tag at the bottom to see more). Instead I thought I'd talk about these models a bit and the stirrings of a notion about why I am struggling to make this colour scheme work.

The models themselves are quite nice, I wasn't convinced when I saw them on the website, but the huge sashimono style wings make sense when you can see the jetpacks. They're designed to control the descent of the corsair rather than to allow them to fly per se. I imagine only the Eldar with their psychic control mechanisms moving at the speed of thought could use something like this (I see Imperial Guardsmen spinning like sycamore seeds). They make for elegant and sensible flight options for the eldar and I quite like 'em. The guns are likewise pleasantly designed but - and I sigh heavily here - again we see Forgeworld simply not taking the time or trouble to quality control their expensive product properly. There was some quite bad mold slippage here, so bad that I had to conceal with painting rather than modelling as it would have necessitated a lot of green stuff work. C'mon Forgeworld, the internet at large gives you a free pass that GW would kill for. No rage about prices, no complaints about having componants that don't fit without surgery or hot water baths, no righteous indignation about your lousy instructions. Well, yeah, I do all that but the community at large seems content. I'm very keen for the Forgeworld machine to raise it's game to match it's premium pricing and generated image. That's all for now, I promise.

Now, colour scheme and why, I think, I am having trouble. You don't see many painted models in the books from forgeworld, lots of nice illustrations though and it is an illustration I am working from now. The trouble is, what can look gorgeous on a 3 inch long illustration with total control of how the light plays on the surface etc etc is often VERY difficult to achieve on models. Some schemes just don't "pop" when reduced to 28mm. Sadly, greys are one of them. With the requirement for the urban bases too (all the client's scenery is urban) it means that they simply do not photograph well and indeed struggle to have that spark that makes them instantly look good. They do actually look quite handsome and I think on the tabletop they will be a very military looking force with appropriate camo and the like. They just will never look quite as nice as their alternatively coloured cousins in pictures. Just the way these things go I guess! This revelation has made me feel better about the project (I was starting to rend my hair in a kind of "Why isn't this working?" fervour worthy of some of the more scenery chewing actors out there) and we'll be full steam ahead from here!

Finally, if you're a warmachiner, I'm selling off my Cygnar force. So if you know one or are one then I am open to offers!


TTFN

Corsair Banshees

Hi folks, just a quickee today to show off some more of the Void Dragon Corsairs, this time: Howling Banshees.

wraithbone weapons very tricky to cut from the background so no pretty blue fade, sorry!

As with the warlocks, I was conscious that these needed to be corsair banshees, not craftwold banshees. As a result I decided to abandon the traditional bone that these girls normally come dressed in and use the grey and red that we've been using throughout the project. There was also some kind of weapon arm mishap somewhere between the client's bits boxes and my workbench so the banshees have had new arms scavenged from storm guardian sprues so that makes them a little different again.

There's not a lot more to say about them. The wraithbone method was covered in the warlock post and the grey is just a straight series of highlights from Mechanicus Standard Grey up to Administratum Grey via a shading wash of Nuln Oil and a layer of Dawnstone. Dire Avengers next!

TTFN

Corsair Warlocks

Hi folks, today we present the lowest rung of the psychic might of the Eldar Corsairs, a pair of pirate Warlocks:

These pair served as the test models for the farseers still to come. I needed to find a way to make the grey and red corsair scheme work on the more obviously craftworld models. Initially I had the grey of the robes roughly the same as the armour colour but this just looked dreadful. For some reason it just homogenised into one grey mass that looked for all the world like unpainted plastic. Darkening the robes and putting a very light edge highlight on the armour differentiated the areas and actually turned them into painted models, phew!

Balancing the red across the models was mostly achieved with the gemstones, rather than just use the turquoise from the vehicles I used some red ones too. That allowed the colour to be spread subtly across the model rather than in a stripe at head height. The Void Dragon scheme has red hands and faceplate you see, so with both hands up the red would just have been in a horizontal strip. I initially thought to paint the entire singing spear in wraithbone but this seemed to be a bit too much. Talking of wraithbone...

The step by step above runs left to right, first a couple of coats of Ceramite White establishes the basecoat for the bone areas. Note the difference between the first and second images. It is worth making the effort to put the second coat on. Every layer after this is very weak colour and will not cover properly without this solid basecoat. Next we use two layers of Secret Weapon Miniatures' Parchment wash. I picked this up along with both his blacks as I was on my constant quest to find Badab Black again. Sad to say, Secret Weapon aren't it. They stain too much. But, this very property makes it perfect for the wraithbone and I dare say for Deathwing too. Once they've dried off Seraphim Sepia defines the shadoes. Normally I just run the wash into the recesses of the weaponry but this time I had a mishap and so the whole thing got coated. It's fine, just needs more layers of highlight is all. The final image shows the models after a couple of highlights of white mixed with the SWM Parchment are applied. This crisps up the colour and makes for a nice artificial bone look.

While on the subject of weaponry, the warlock's are a good example of an older model - 20 years or so - which has stood the test of time beautifully save for one element. The blades. Old school sculpting and casting led to a requirement for blades of weapons to be more like clubs with a 1-2mm thick edge. This warlock still looks awesome thanks to the genius of one Jes Goodwin but the blade does age it terribly. Easy enough to fix though. This is one of the occasions where a metal file is not the tool for the job. Use a flexible emery board (bit of sandpaper on card) with a medium grain and sand it down moving from the centre to the edge. Essentially you sharpen the blade as if it were real. Keep checking the edges to make sure you are getting a consistant thickness - especially these complex curving edges of the eldar swords. Keep checking the central spine of the blade too as otherwise you can end up making it look bendy. The transformation from left to right took about ten minutes. Well worth it to update this classic model.

Once painted you can see how nice and crisp the esges of the sword look now. Before I go I should mention gemstones, I'm trying a new method for these and it seems to be working. Paint the basecoat and then glaze it with black ink. This creates the dark areas really nicely and then you just work up the highlights as normal. Seems to be doing the job! Anyway, with the experimentation over it is onwards and upwards with these lads. Until next time.

TTFN.

The Hornet's Nest

Greetings one and all, a trio of Eldar light vehicles today:

My familiar blue background fade has to go for these unfortunately as it is almost impossible to cut the weapons from the white backdrop! Let me just say, right off the bat, that I love these models. Despite all the trials and tribulations, the design is just peachy. I honestly don't know why they called them Hornets as the shape is so reminiscent of a shrimp. Surely there is another badass shrimp other than the mantis (already used see) they could have been named after, am I right? They're one of those models that you fly around making zoom noises when they're finished. You all know you do it too.

Following the same painting scheme as the Warp Hunters; these three are part of what will be a fair sized Void Dragon Corsair army. I'm starting to get a feel for how to work with Eldar vehicles, they often have asymmetric paint schemes to match the sculpting. The trick is to find only one thing to be different or asymmetric on the models. In this case it is the red hex/scale sections. The weapons, the black and the turquoise gems are the same on each and help the models hang together as a unit and prevent the scheme being too confused. We human types like symmetry and repeat patterns so it's important not to go too nuts with the alien asymmetry.

While we're talking hexes, I thought I'd share how I do it. The first step is to get a really clean, flat basecoat as there is no possibility of fixing this later! Next, start from a vertical line of darker colour to start the shapes. This pretty much defines how large the hexes will be so think it through! I tend to use smaller for smaller models, larger for larger. At the end of the line paint some V-shapes, then connect another one to the first and carry on until completely covered. Once you've got your hexes layed out, run a line of highlight colour all the way around each scale - this, this stage right here, takes some time - giving it the start of a 3D feel. Finally, make a lighter highlight mix (in this case the shade is adding Warplock Bronze to the "metallic red" I mentioned in the Warp Hunters and the highlight is just adding more Hashut Copper) and paint the top two edges and one of the sides. Make sure not to change which side is highlighted! It'll look pleasantly 3D and define the shapes involved.

Well, that's all for now, more Eldar fun soon!

TTFN

Warp Hunters

Hi folks, today marks the completion of the fist stage of a new commission project: Corsair Eldar.

The client asked for a varient on the Void Dragons from the Doom of Mymeara book. Charcoal grey and a warm metallic red. Now, a true metallic red is one of the holy grails of paint manufacture. It is almost impossible. They wind up pink and metallic or red and matt. After a day or so of experimenting and fiddling I came up with a workable option a roughly 3:2 mix of Mephiston Red and Hashut Copper creates a nice strong red with a metallic sheen. It doesn't look metallic until it is in the light but when it does it reflects nicely.

The client wanted a hex-pattern similar to scales on the red panels, I figured I needed to use metallics to shade and highlight the hexes as it would increase the sheen. First, the outlines of the hexes. I used the current basecoat mix and darkened it with Warplock Bronze. Then, again starting from the main base colour I added more Hashut Copper until I had reversed the original mix (2:3 Mephiston red and Hashut Copper). This I painted around the entire edge of each hex. Finally, I mixed yet more Hashut Copper in to form a 2:1 Hashut Copper:Mephiston Red highlight. This I painted on the 3 edges in the top left corner to help the 3-dimensional appearance and accordingly even more metallic gleam.

I love the shape of the Warp Hunters, they're just a delivery system for a whacking great cannon. I debated a few different colour schemes for a while before realising that wraithbone would be the best option and would contrast beautifully with the black and red. The effect is a lot easier to achieve than I had feared. Just get a nice solid white basecoat - 2 coats of Ceramite White does it, what a lovely paint that is - to work from. Next I used a new paint for me, Secret Weapon Parchment wash. I'd picked this up along with a couple of different blacks in my ongoing search for Badab Black. I'm afraid the blacks are just not good enough as they glaze something fierce. But, this property made the Parchment wash perfect for tinting the white to create a very, very pale, bright, clean bone. Two glazes of Parchment gave the base tone and then careful pin washes (where you run the wash into the details rather than sloshing it all over) of Seraphim Sepia sealed the deal. Very happy. A quick check of the colour wheel indicated that turquoise would be the gemstone colour of choice here. Glad to see colour theory was right again!

These are but the first of many, many more! Enjoy!

TTFN