I'm back....with High Elves!

So it's been probably over a year since I last posted to this blog.  Although I haven't been painting as much I would've liked, I have been doing bit now and again.  After dabbling with the Dark Eldar for quite some time, I decided it'd be nice to paint with some brighter colours for a change and so bought myself the Warhammer Island of Blood Box set with a whole load of High Elves to paint.

 High Elf Sword Masters of Hoeth

So here are my first attempt at painting High Elves - the Sword Masters of Hoeth.  I decided to pretty much invert the white & blue 'official' colour scheme, which also allowed me to experiment with Citadel glaze paints.  This was used on the models' scale-mail armour.  After painting the armour silver, and washing and highlighting as usual, I gave it a couple of coats of blue glaze to make a metallic blue colour.  I wanted the Captains sword to really stand out from the others, and although the model had runes embossed on the sword, I used the same glazing technique to create a more enchanted.  In all honesty, I used too much glaze in getting the blending gradient correct so it came out a bit darker than I originally intended.  But, after standing all the models together I decided that the additional contrast the sword had made it more a focal point, which I quite liked in the end.

Captain of the Sword Masters

The banner gave me the most trouble whilst painting these chaps.  I originally intended it to be a white banner with blue details but I found it immensely difficult to get a smooth enough blending of whites over such a large area (I also had the same problem painting the hair plumes on the helmets). After five or six attempts at repainting it, I realised I'd used that many layers that I'd started to lose the detail on the banner and so used some paint removal techniques to start fresh. I found plenty of guides for how to do this online, and managed to get some good results with cleaning products that I already had around my flat.  Anyway, after getting most of the paint off (it seemed a lot tougher to get the final layer and undercoat off the model), I went with a blue background, which again was a much darker look than I was going for but it looked pretty cool with all the models together as a unit.  I think I'll be avoiding white from now on too...

Bannerman & Sword Masters

Just as a bit of a reference, the next image shows the first Sword Master that I painted with the original design.  The only thing I really changed with the colour of the gems.  I thought purple was a more regal and slightly more sinister look for the Sword Masters of Hoeth.  It's also nice to see how my highlighting and blending improved whilst I was painting these dudes.  As usual, the pictures don't show all the best details but you can definitely see some improvement in the blue drapes near the feet and on the leather pouch on their belt.  Also I'm a lot happier with the finer detailed eye's I managed to get on the later models - mainly thanks to getting myself some much needed decent brushes.

First Attempt (left) & Final Design (right)

Until next time, which hopefully is not another year away!

  - MHB

Dark Eldar Colour Scheme

So this will be my first more technical post, detailing the colour scheme I chose for my Dark Eldar army and describing the techniques used for painting the figures, specifically the Kabalite Warriors in this post.  The image below shows my latest complete miniature, which turned out much better than I expected. 

Kabalite Warrior with Shredder

Not only did the armour highlights improve greatly over the previous models but I also learnt a couple of new things for this one: firstly, it was the first time I've painted the skin on Dark Eldar (which will be detailed in later posts) and, secondly, its the first time I was really happy with how the blending came out on the gun.

Right so back to the basic colour scheme for these guys.  I've been painting with the official Citadel paints from Games Workshop.  I've found them easy and enjoyable to use, and the price is pretty good too.  Below is an image showing the first stages of my next warrior dude.  

• The main armour is basecoated with Naggaroth Night.
• All metalic bits (both silver & gold) are first basecoated with Leadbelcher.
• The gold parts are then coated with Gehenna's Gold.
• The cloth parts (e.g. the loincloth thing) is first basecoated in Ushabti Bone and, once dry, shaded with at least two coats of Druchii Violet.
• Satchels and cylinders on the side and back are painted with Mournfang Brown.

For reference, you can see from the picture which parts are painted which colours.  As you can see, on this model I've already started picking out some of the smaller details, such as the eyes, which are coloured Lothern Blue.

First Stages of a Kabalite Warrior (front)

First Stages of a Kabalite Warrior (back)

I don't glue the arms on the model until after I've finished painting the details on the chest just to make it easier to paint.  There are some slight variations between the models, namely the gold on the shoulder and knee pad armour plating.  I don't really have a set method for deciding this. I basically just choose what I think looks best on the specific model; for example, on the model pictured at the start of this post, I chose to do the shoulder pad gold with a silver spike as a continuation of the gun colouring to create a balanced line of colour across the center of the model that draws attention upward toward the face and that chilling deathly stare, which I think worked really nicely :-)

Well, writing this has given me the urge to get painting again so I'll get back to painting the finer details of this guy and will post photos of the next stages soon.

 - MHB

New Beginnings & New Armies

Every story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  This one starts with a young me being pretty rubbish at painting, even though I always wished I was good at art.  I always admired the fabulous flowing works people did with watercolours.   It always amazed me how people could paint something so rough looking when close up but the same picture looked so amazingly detailed when viewed from afar.  I had the desire to paint, and I could sketch out a decent enough picture.  But when it came time to put paint to paper, it would always turn out a mess.

An old friend of mine, also young and innocent at the time, introduced me to the world of Warhammer - a game played with miniature models, in which epics battles would be fought between Humans, Elves, Orks, and all manner of creatures, good and evil.  Before any blood could be shed on the battlefield, however, armies must be assembled from plastic kits and painted to look the part.  While a lot of young boys might find this a tedious chore to do before being able to hack and slash their mate's army to pieces, this was really the part that interested me most.  Painting made so much more 'sense' to me when I had 3D model to paint, something that I could pick up and turn around in my hands, something where I could physically touch the lines and edges that I'm painting to rather than adhering to squiggles and imaginary lines drawn on a flat sheet of paper.

This became an important hobby of mine for quite a while.  I really enjoyed painting the models and my skill at doing so was steadily increasing.  Alas, however, as time went on, life got more complicated, the economy shifted and pocket money would stretch far enough to keep buying new models to paint.  And so my interest in the hobby faded and eventually my models got put in boxes and stored away in cupboards.  I did think about starting up the hobby again a few times over the years; however, something always stopped me.  I think it was perhaps the thought I was already quite a geeky and weird guy and I was worried about what people would think if I did even more geeky and weird things with my time.  Now I'm 27, consider myself to be well on my way to being fully-fledged grown up, and frankly I don't really give much a sh*t what people think of me these days - something that does make life go by so much easier.  So bring on the geeky weird stuff 'cause I love it!

Right then, don't worry we're almost at the end, a few weeks ago I was visiting another good friend of mine who had a similar story of painting miniatures when he was younger, although he preferred the Sci-Fi version Warhammer 40,000.  Seeing that he had recently started up the hobby again, I was in awe of his newly started army of Space Marines and the nostalgia started flowing back.  After a couple of days debating with myself whether I could afford to get back into the hobby (pocket money is still in short supply), my friend, being the amazingly kind gent that he is, bought me (as a late birthday present) a starter set of Dark Angel Space Marines that came with some paints to get mew going, and a rather nice set of Dark Eldar Kabalite Warriors.

And here we are! I've already finished a couple of the Marines and Dark Eldar, pictured below, and my painting skills are rapidly improving once more.  Most important I'm absolutely loving painting models again :-)

Dark Angel Space Marines

Dark Eldar Kabalite Warriors

More posts will follow as my armies and skills increase, some will be general comments of my own thoughts and experiences in the hobby, others will be more informative and discuss the techniques I use for painting (mainly so I don't forget how I did certain things!).

I do get carried away with my writing sometimes, especially when it turns into a bit of story telling, but I hope you enjoy reading this blog for whatever reason you may find.  I'm certainly going to enjoy writing it.

  - MHB