While it has taken a couple of months to get back around to posting on the Eldar side, there has been a reasonable amount of progress happening in the background...
I have been mulling over a number of different schemes (well - approaches to the green & white Biel Tan painting) for some time. While finishing off my Blood Angels terminators I had also decided that my Eldar would be painted with a different set of goals in mind, wanting to be much faster than the BA style that I paint, with some other trade offs -
- Primarily kept to airbrush for as much as can be done
- Dial up the contrast with the airbrush more than I have before
- Avoid edge/line highlighting (if at all possible)
- See if possible to use an all over wash rather than recess (also saving time)
Basically I want to see if it's possible to drastically reduce the time it takes me to paint a squad, and being willing to trade off some of the detail/highlighting for speed. This post looks at a couple of tests done, and taking probably less than an hour in total painting time.
Maybe back in Jan I had a quick go testing out the classic white body with green helmet for Biel Tan using some apothecary white and slopping some warpstone glow on the head.
This didn't leave me too satisfied as drybrushing a pure white over apothecary contrast paint gives a dusty look (not really fitting for the sleek and shiny Eldar style). Edge highlighting over the white contrast looks better (but takes longer than I want), and still looks a bit too monotone.
In any case, I'd been mulling over flipping the colour set. Unlike pretty much every other Eldar craftworld, Biel Tan reverse the usual body/helmet colour for guardians compared to the rest of the forces. Warlocks, vehicles, wraithguard are all probably 90% green, with white helmets or details as the secondary. Ulthwe, Saim Hann, etc... all keep the same guardian helmet colour as the rest of their forces, and this looks a lot more unified as a group.
Going Dark
So... while not strictly following the classic Biel Tan style, I'd gradually decided I'd do green as my primary colour rather than white. This should be faster to paint, allow me to add some more light & dark patches using the airbrush vs doing a white, while making the colour scheme more balanced across the whole army. Better yet - using a green body/white helmet on other units like Dire Avengers and hawks fit the shrine style much more closely too.
I'd also been looking over some of the excellent guides from the Mighty Brush - specifically the Salamanders & Dark Angels styles. I really like the look of the Dark Angels he has done - slightly blue-green tint, very deep colour, and plenty of light & shadow created with the airbrush. My slight concern was that for certain units that have black vine markings painted on top, this would be too dark - the Salamander scheme on the other hand is maybe a little too close to a lime green...
Best option = try both...
Working out what to highlight on Eldar
For the initial test earlier in the year I had bought a cheap pack of 4x monopose guardians that I could muck around with and freely strip of paint... these are my test options for the second round with the reversed colours.
Something I wish I had done with my blood angels was dial up the airbrush highlights before picking up a brush. While there are dozens of guides on painting marines showing where the highlights should go, I haven't found as much on which parts of a guardian should be light and dark. Taking a couple of pictures under a light (while still in white primer) is useful to work out what needs focus with the airbrush.
From what I can see in the pics above - brighter areas with the airbrush should be the tops of the feet, backs of the calves, top of the arms, front of the chest, top of the backpack unit and tips of the vanes. Darker areas under the weapon, top of legs, underside of arms and most of the back. While not a perfect Carravaggio study... this should actually be quite useful as a reference for future minis as well.
Airbrush Colour Tests
Ok - finally onto some actual test models.
Below are lined up the paints that had been used in Luther's Dark Angels and Salamanders guides. Yes, best case at least one set of paints won't ever get used after the test models - but spending the extra $20 and being comfortable that it's the best choice is kind of worth it.
On the left - the DA scheme starting with my industrial sized bottle of vallejo black primer... and the salamanders on the right starting with a NATO green.
Primer Stage:
Right off the bat, we have some stark differences in how these guys are likely to look. The NATO green primer was lighter than I was expecting, even with 2x coats. Or maybe that is just the difference from standing next to black.
First Tone
On the DA we are working up from black, whereas for the Salamanders we add shadows using signal blue. The signal blue over the nato green adds a lot of dark, and blends together to give something that still looks green. This is mainly sprayed upwards or into the areas that should be shadowed.
The (still wet looking) DA have had a black-green sprayed downward across most of the model, leaving black on the undersides of surfaces. Still looks very very dark.
Highlight colours
I've kind of smushed 2 steps together in the photos, although this test scheme was pretty loosely applied anyway as I am more interested in the colours than precision. The DA scheme has had gunship green and duck egg green highlights added with airbrush. This looks very light but should come down next step. The lighter salamander scheme has had a hint of vallejo ivory added over the top surfaces, then a thin spray of FW light green ink.
Washes and general colour
With the airbrush part basically done, I gave the helmets a very rough job with corax white just to get an idea of how these will look, then a couple of wash options.
I had done 2 of each colour set to see how some alternatives would go - one of the darker ones got a wash of biel tan green, the other a coelia greenshade (mixed with about half medium to thin it). The salamander scheme has had one washed with biel tan green, the other with more of a recess wash with the coelia.
The darker options probably appeal more than the lime green - so the last thing to do for the day is adding the other details quickly & roughly.
Detail areas
Definitely intended to give more of a sense of the colours than precision painting... this was to add several colours using...
- Black templar (contrast) on the gun, tubing and over gemstones
- Leadbelcher on the wrist & ankle tabs, hose fittings and chest gemstone
- Vallejo ferrari red gemstones (bottom half) and thin line of panzer aces new wood
- Gemstone dot and squad markings with corax white
- Vallejo grey wash in the helmet recesses
And that's about it... probably only 10-15 min per model to take it from washed armour stage up to an essentially finished mini. That part makes me very happy.
Having said that, it does come with some trade offs - the gemstones really need a bit more time and effort than I gave them on the test models. They do look quite sloppy, as do the eye lenses (which was a quick attempt at using winsor & newton crimson ink).
For a couple of the gemstones, I tried a method that Les Bursley did much more effectively - starting with a dry white gem area, cover the whole thing in ink (vallejo red), then drag a black wash into the top third and let them mix to create the soft blend in the middle. I struggled to get this to work at all... I kept getting a dodgy brown, hence switching back to layer paint instead.
The black I'm a little torn on - black templar gives a really good colour and is almost a wash consistency so it's very quick to apply. The downside is it either needs a bone basecoat (and then 2 applications) or applied over the airbrushed colours... has a slight hint of green coming through.
The vallejo grey wash over white came out horrible. Nothing about this looks like it worked, even allowing for the rough/speed nature of doing it quickly. I think it may be partly due to the lack of gloss varnish (which helps most washes get into the cracks), but this has both bled as well as had some kind of grainy residue form in the crevices that looks like dirt.
I'll need to find a better option for shading white.
Bottom line for the test models...
The good:
I think I've got some really quick options now for painting up a large number of troops quite quickly. I really like the switched green/white colour set with darker body; and the airbrushed dark angels colour gives something close to an emerald green finish - not too blue and not too lime. I think this should be replicable on a large number of models.
I think going straight to black templar for filling in all the dark areas straight over the airbrushed coats will be ok - it's going to leave some slightly rough finish but will be super quick and 95% effective, which I can live with. Similarly, the squad markings look average to poor when zoomed in... but they are fairly quick to do and look pretty decent to good at tabletop distance.
The bad:
It's the missing thing too - the edges of the armour would look so much more crisp with an edge highlight. It's taking some effort, but I *know* that adding that extra step will blow out the time taken by ~30-40min per model; literally twice as long as it has taken to paint the weapon and other details in black and silver. This will bug me - I just need to remember that I've saved 20-30 hours on painting guardians in the future.
Gemstones will also need to be done manually, rather than what I was hoping would be a quick ink/wash slap down. I guess if that adds some little areas that look super detailed and professional, it might help offset the lack of edge highlights, so... net outcome is probably ok.
The ugly:
Oh man. The grey wash, and by proxy, how I'm going to paint any white areas in future looks rough. This is going to take some more experimentation using either watered down grey paints or (with some practice) using apothecary white in recesses only. Not sure how to solve this yet, and might need a little more research on options.
So... overall - have learned:
- A lot about how and where to paint different parts of the standard guardian
- Have found some quick and efficient ways to mass paint the green armour for the army
- Have a 1-pass option to do weapon, metallics and most of the basic troop details
- Only thing that will take some time is painting the red gems and eyes with couple of layers
- Still need to solve the 'white problem' using some test washes or thinned paints.
Next up - will need to also nail a colour scheme for the bases before I start to hit some full squads with the airbrush.
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