Sunday, November 27, 2011

Dark Eldar WIP's: Scourges


My adventure with a new army and new painting techniques continues this week with some scourges.  I airbrushed the base colors with these like I did with the grotesque and venom, using it as a glorified primer coat to paint over.  Here's a bit of a step-by-step.



I did the wings first.  I wasn't super inspired with a color scheme for these guys.  I figured I would match the "Twilight's Edge" scheme that I used on the venom on their armor.  For the wings, I decided to do something blue similar to Picster's Greater Daemon.  For the shading, I sprayed the top direction down with Aqua and the bottom direction up with Pure Black.


The finished wings also incorporated Cobalt Blue and Thunder Blue in the shading.  I was demonstrating the process for my friend Gerry at the time, but all 5 sets of wings took about 60 minutes along with our chatting.


Next I started the armor with Autumn Leaves on top.


Then Barn Red mid way down.


Then Violet Purple on the legs.


I finished with Pure Black on the feet.


Base coating the whole squad took just over 2 hours.  After that, I assembled the models and started applying washes to shade and dry brushing to highlight.


I thought the wings were a bit too bright for Dark Eldar so I gave them some light black washes.  The armor plates got a few washes also.


The highlighted the wings with Dove Grey and a little wicker white.  They will probably get one more dry brushing for more contrast.


Here's a test model I took nearly to completion so I can plan everything out.


My favorite aspect of airbrushing is the amount of time it saves.  I started this unit last Wednesday night, putting in about 2.5 hours to base coat them.  I put in about 2 hours a day since and the unit is nearly complete.  Compare that to my Grey Knights which received 6+ hours per model and I'm saving about 20 hours per squad of 5.  Not bad huh?  The time saving allows me to indulge my painting ADD and jump around a bit.

I decided to try some freehand glyphs inspired by Yellow One's Eldar Vehicles on CMON.  It's definitely not on par with his work, but I think it will look real nice if I finish trimming the whole vehicle.


And here's a shot of the total progress I've made to date on the first 500pts of my winter painting league escalation army. 



I have 5 wracks and 5 more grotesques to knock out and about 10 days to do it until the escalation brackets begin.  I should be able to get everything base coated, shaded, and highlighted in time with help from the airbrush.  I enjoy free-handing the tattoos and glyphs enough to want them on every model so that will have to wait until after everything meets the painting minimums to play.

4 comments:

  1. Wow, I love it. It looks great and apparently doesn't take long!
    I've been considering an airbrush for a while, and maybe I'll have to invest...

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  2. In regards to saving time, do you find that the use of the airbrush depends on the type of painting that your doing, e.g. complicated blending etc.

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  3. Thanks Michael.

    @ Mordhel ~ The type of painting matters little, airbrushing is saving me time in each use. On the grotesques, I use it to save time applying a base coat of flesh tones taking about 5 minutes per model compared to 30-60min hand painting flesh tones on. I don't even want to consider the time difference is I were to try hand blending the same colors on the venom.

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  4. What do you mean when you say you paints the "top direction down" and the "bottom direction up"? Are you just talking about how you angle your sprayer? If so, how long are you spraying each part? Thanks!

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