Sunday, June 16, 2013

Eldar - The Transports begin...

While rooting around in the Closet of Doom I uncovered the box of Eldar bits which happened to have not only the rest of the bits to finish off the second Wave Serpent but also enough bits to build an entire Falcon! ...And a War Walker, but that's going to have to wait for a bit. I started off with the basic blue sponge technique I used on the Wraithknight which turned out pretty well on the larger flat surfaces. It's really quite simple - started off with a basecoat of midnight blue, followed by sponged-on ultramarines blue, magic blue and ice blue. After that, it's all tied together with a guilliman blue wash.


Once the wash dried I blocked in all the areas that were destined to be bone with leather brown. This took a lot of coats to get a decent coverage, but is key to the whole process. The bone color doesn't go on well directly over a black undercoat in my experience, it tends to get splotchy. Painting the bone over a brown undercoat is far more forgiving!


Next up, the first pass of bone goes on, and the models really start to come together - I'm considering doing the vanes on the Wave Serpents in bone as well. It's at this point where I need to think about what I'm going to do for the requisite yellow to fit the Alaitoc scheme. I'm planning on keeping the yellow fairly minimalist, probably just a few select panels, or perhaps some chevrons.


Step three in the bone process is the wash it all down with devlan mud. Once that dries I'll go back in and add another pass of bleached bone on the upper surfaces, but that'll have to wait for a bit. It got far too hot up in the hobby loft and I was forced to retreat until this evening!


10 comments:

  1. Seriously loving your blue method sir. Fits perfectly for Eldar.

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  2. Agreed, the pattern looks great!

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  3. I'll have too agree on the blue looks really good. Has a very fitting electrical and tech-camo look to it.
    The bone is shaping up nicely as well, I'd suggest also working a brighter brown, like bubonic brown, in there as well - perhaps on the pointier bits or the deepest recesses of the vents.
    With regards to yellow you could choose the classic and paint the gems(cannot remember the right name right now). Something different could be just a couple of stripes, going across one or both wings - like unit markings or something.

    By the way - the closet of doom gotta be huge :D

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  4. Really nice work, and thanks for the step-by-step as well. I agree with Manus, it looks great but some kind of unit distinction would be cool, say two or three small diagonal stripes, like barcodes or something like that. Great stuff, as ever

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  5. The blue sponging looks really good, double bonus as it's so simple to do!

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  6. @Dai: Thanks! It's been fun using these new techniques!

    @Jugger: I appreciate it!

    @Manus: Good call on the wing stripes. I think that's the way I'm gonna go!

    @Colonel Scipio: Cheers! I'm scheming on some chevron style stripes similar to how the GW studio have done the Saim-Hann tanks, though in blue and yellow rather than red and black!

    @Sir Tainly: Thanks! The whole blue process only took about 15 minutes from start to finish. Super easy!

    Cheers all!

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  7. Once again, I'm really loving this scheme and method. I'm going to be hard pressed not to steal this method when I paint up my own Eldar, which I'd been planning to do as Blue and Bone. Excellent as always.

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  8. @Evan S: Thanks! Steal away, it's really quite quick and I'm rather pleased with how it turns out!

    Cheers!

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  9. That mottled blue is absolutely beautiful, Sir!

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