WIP Eldar in Acid Rain

Joona

New member
After getting the urge to buy an airbrush (Badger 105 Patriot), seeing various articles, pictures and videos from scale modelers, I decided to try something new. I've been painting for three years now (iirc) and though I'm a gamer I tend to like painting more and more as time passes by. I've always liked the looks of Eldar, there's just something very nice about them. I started painting these in a green colour theme but didn't get too far, some basecoats and a couple of finished models. Then I got bored and left them alone in a box for a while. Now I took 'em out again...

These would probably be considered Exodites, the more nomadic Eldar that left their Craftworlds and settled on actual planets before bad things happened to the lazy bastards (bad things may contain nuts and chaos). There are some Eldar that have battle damage painted on them but most them are rather clean and pure, quite many are brightly colored too. I wanted something different so I decided to do some good old-fashioned weathering. I imagine these Eldar might have survived for a long time on a planet that has a really acidic atmosphere with all kinds of nasty poisons.

This is the first time ever I've used an airbrush I spent a whole few minutes experimenting on paper, then grabbed some paints and started painting the Wave Serpent. It was easier than I thought it would be, though I didn't paint anything too complex. Controlling the amount of paint isn't as hard as it sounds. The colours are rather similar to the ones used in the Miniature Mentor Dreadnought tutorial. I really liked that look.

I grabbed some W&N Artisan Oils, they aren't real oil paints, they can be mixed and cleaned with water. They take a couple of hours to a day or two to dry depending on the thickness of the paint. They can be diluted with pretty much everything that people usually use with paints. I'll be doing most of the weathering with these and Pigments. I'll have to get some flow improver, add a bit of soap or get some turpentine to get rid of the surface tension of the water though. It sometimes leaves marks of pooling when well diluted. This doesn't happen with turpentine that seems to seep everywhere on a model if you're not careful. A good and a bad thing.

I'll do some experiments on battle damage too, probably something with my trusty Dremel copy, plastic putty and some careful application of fire.

The army (if it ever becomes one, I have most of the models ready to paint though) will probably consist of a few Wave Serpents, Wraithlords, Wraithguard, Dire Avengers and maybe a Seer Council. We'll see...

To the pictures:

gaggaeldar1.jpg


This is the Wave Serpent with the base coat applied. Some Vallejo Model Air Radome Tan, Dark Earth and a mix of some green, blue and white paints. I'll have to get a light greyish blue for that though so I don't have to mix it every time I want to paint something.

gaggaeldar2.jpg


Some greenish weathering applied. This is something along the lines of some of the poisons and acid in the atmosphere affecting the wraithbone and other fine materials that Eldar usually build their machines out of. It could also be some algae growing on the craft as these might even work under water.

I applied a lot of small dots of paint to the model, green, yellow, blue and red, then started smearing them all over in a downward motion and applied more and more water to the model. Then I washed some of the paint of in proper places to create the streaks. This part is now actually finished on the whole model.

gagga3.jpg


This is the first experiment on a more rust-like weathering, I mixed up some browns and orange and then started applying them in small streaks which I then washed and scrubbed away with a wet brush. Once the first layer of weathering dries a little bit more, I'll continue with this for the rest of the model, I'll add some more colour to the brown too with something else, maybe a little blue or something along those lines.

Then I'll try to finish the rest of the model, some small details, guns, gems, vents and stuff like that. After that it'll get a thin layer of matt varnish, and then some reddish pigments on the largest rusty parts. And some browns for mud where it might pile up. Pigments create a little more texture to the model and make it look like it was even more corroded.

After this is finished I'll probably try to paint some Avengers or Guardians. I probably will only use normal acrylics on those, the details will be so much smaller that the use of oils probably won't be that beneficial. I really hope that this project will hold my interest until it's finished. It might turn into a really cool looking army.
 
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flunkUtron

Member
its looking great so far. What is going to be your primary colour of contrast? Might I suggest doing the gems blue, I think it would make for a great colour combo with the bone. Keep it up its gonna great when your finished, weathered Eldar are rare but amazing pieices when their done.
 

Joona

New member
I'm not sure about the gems yet. I tend to like magenta, so I might use a dark magenta shaded with purple. Some neutral darker blue might also look good as the final weathering will filter the colour more to brown and red than the current green. Then there's the decision if I want to some how weather the gems too or not. But this will all be easier to decide once I have to whole ship ready for details. I'll probably put up pictures tomorrow if I have time to finish the second layer.

The technique is quite quick so I'll probably basecoat a Wraitlord or two tomorrow. The paints dry fairly slow so it would be better to have multiple models to work on.
 

Meph

Cat-herder Extraordinaire
That's looking great. The streaks look superb on the curves of the skimmer, looks very cool.
Oh, a vision! Why not go for the used old look throughout and make the gems 'hazy', like matte glass. As you've got an airbrush, you can mask off the area's around the gems and give them a soft airbrushed highlight instead of the usual blended, harsher transition. Perhaps go from a soft amber colour to faded, white-ish yellow highlight? Perhaps paint in some thinned and faded slightly darker spots with a slightly darker amber first before highlighting so they shine through from the depth.
 

Joona

New member
Small update

gagga4.jpg


Done with the second layer of weathering. On to the details, and other stuff. It took me a while to do this but I think now that I've got a hang of the technique it'll be faster. All in all, maybe three to four hours of work while watching TV, still that's a lot less than it would have taken to paint with normal acrylics. I'm rather happy with how it looks now.
 

ollieholmes

New member
I relay like the effect you have created on this model. Im going to have to try airbrushing some Eldar tanks now.
 

NightFallArts

New member
The weathering looks quite interesting.
It does have the feel of a machine that has been in battle way to long..
Nice work, keep it going...
 

JMichael

New member
Looking great. I have all of the Miniature Mentor videos, and learned a lot from the Dreadnought Weathering one. My Eldar are painted more clean, but I've always enjoyed seeing more worn and damaged Eldar. Really gives a feeling of hopelessness and a doomed race. Well done.

-John
 

Meph

Cat-herder Extraordinaire
Ive run into a bit of a snag here. When I use Load from scene, to duplicate the character, then replace with a different character, things break..morphs are controlled from the 1st character. instead the 2nd.It seems that it is the expressions that dont retarget.What is the best and/or fastest way to fix this?

Are you mumbling about 3D Studio Max here? Confusing...
 

Joona

New member
Bwaak. I started painting a test piece for Dire Avengers on last weekend. The theme is a faded turquoise with some brown dust and some green streaks from the rain. Besides that I've been working around eleven hours a day so there hasn't been much time to paint anything. Also there's a small painting comp going on which I'm trying to attend with a Ron&Bones miniature. So that'll probably take up some of my painting time.

Regarding the basing for these, I'm tempted to buy those Scibor Ancient Ruins Bases. Not the most Eldaresque bases ever but they are just so pretty. Something about those ruined heads. I did make some bases when I first started painting the Eldar. Simple bases with some round stone slates that have cracked and been ruined a bit. Made of some grey stuff or milliput.

oldeldar.jpg


The color theme for the Dire Avengers will be a well weathered version of this one.
 

Joona

New member
Still nothing much to update. Here's a Dire Avenger who still needs some more paint but looks good so far, at least on the table. I'm tempted to paint a little rust like effect on it but on the other hand, at this side it won't show too much anyway. Also it would be nice to make the cloth look more ripped but doing would probably a lot of time for so many Avengers. Unless I can figure out a quick and easy way to do it. So I just might have to stick to painting it to look well-used.

Good thing is that this was very quick to paint. I'd say after airbrushing it took me less than half an hour to get this far. A quick glaze with a darkish turquoise colour and then some selective application of Devlan Mud and highlighting with a bright turquoise.

I'll probably keep the white wraithbone parts some what clean on everything, just some green streaks.

dire1.jpg

dire2.jpg


As I had little time to paint I made the logical decision of ordering more minis. There should be a Forgeworld Revenant Titan with Sonic Lances and the Avatar arriving in a day or two :)
 

BPI

New member
There's some nice painting in this thread Joona :good: and like Khagrim I'm enjoying seeing some grungy space elves :)

Cheers, B.
 

Noddwyr

New member
Like the weathered eldar. they look great. particularly the wave serpent, it has inspired me to try my own one day,, Excited to see more.
 

Joona

New member
Threadromancy success!

Some dark spells later the thread resurrects to raze the minds of some individuals.

Sooo... I've been away for a while. Some stuff happened and I was rather busy besides painting. I started painting again a few months ago and expect to keep on going for a while again. To keep the project going, I entered one of those Tale of Gamers laa-di-daa thingies. We'll be starting with 500 pts and going for 1750pts. This means that I'll have to actually keep on painting even if I don't always feel like it, which I think might be a good thing considering my recent painting to worrying about the mountains of unpainted miniatures ratio lately. There's some 100 Skaven models (a stupid idea really) waiting for paint, along many Malifaux models and other stuff.

The thing is, I'm a bit in a slump with my Avatar. I've for most part finished the magma effect and most of the "skin" though there's some highlighting to do. The problem is the armour and those frilly supposedly metallic ornamental things. I can't really figure out how I should paint them. I'll probably try bone on the ornamental parts but the armour might be harder. Earlier I decided that I won't use metallic paints for this army and I'm not that good at painting NMM either. Okay, it's doable but... So, any ideas? Anyone? The gem's will probably be painted with a cyan colour similar to the Avengers.

View attachment 7893View attachment 7894

And here's what I've got so far... that's probably around 300 pts :D Some minor work to do with the Avengers too, mostly the exarch who's likely to get a special treatment. For this small army I'll be adding some Swooping Hawks or Warp Spiders and probably some Rangers. Later on I was thinking of Fire Dragons, Striking Scorpions and Wraithguard, maybe a Wraithlord or two too. And Wave Serpents of course. We'll see... And there's someone a bit bigger in the background :) He's waiting for more paint also.

View attachment 7895

Oh yeah, I've got quite a many of those Scibor bases for the army along some of those face bits. The damn things were expensive but I'm happy, the quality is rather amazing and I got the Halloween special dwarf for free, yay!
 

Aureo

New member
Very nice, these are looking great. I also really like seeing some dirtier eldar...that weathering looks awesome, especially the wave serpent. What about a darker warm grey for the avatar armor since you already plan on doing the white wraithbone with blue gems? Or perhaps do the armor similar to your dire avengers...a faded teal blue, and do the gems in a gold/amber/bone color?
 

borg

Administrator
Wow, I am not really an Eldar fan at all, but these look really interesting, keep up the good work and keep posting progress!
 
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