Tag: Eldar

Diy alien grass with sawdust

The homemade crafting part of miniature gaming always interested me. As a kid I tried making a river crossing out of cardboard and foam. Never had a mentor to guide me tho, which youtube has helped with. I looked up homemade grass recipes and found a few for sawdust as a base. One trip to the hardware store to scoop some off the ground later I was ready.

Thanks lil sis for leaving this paint lying around

The recipe is simple, paint, wash stock and sawdust mixed up and left to dry.

Handy old toothbrush as stirrer
Foil over this bowl for easy cleanup after the mixture is done drying
Pva glue applied to the bases and then stuck them in the purple grass

While this application worked, the grass is still liable to come off if you touch it. My thought to solve this was to put a second layer of pva on top, diluted with water this time.

50/50 pva water applied

I did one test model with a mix slanted more towards pva and the result was sturdy but had a gloss finish. Didn’t think to try different ratios with these models besides 50/50. either way i think i can matte it down with the drybrush i want to give the grass anyways to elevate it with contrast. I also bought a thing of matte medium at the art store awhile ago so maybe applying that over top will do the trick?

Brightening white

Added a little layer of this to the whites

The blue tinged everything looked cool with these white bits but i was dying to see how they looked with a true white highlight.

Maybe too washed out now but can always do more shade work. I also think the head will help the look since it will be largely white as well.

Prepping for a final coat of white

For a while ive decided i like the white helmets on my eldar but havent taken steps to change them from various blues and blacks. Using buff as an undershade this time as opposed to the more orange skin tone id used before lets see how it goes.

If only i had the brush accuracy to not spill buff into the face mask i want to stay dark
Too hasty too hasty

Pink mohawk kabalite

She’ll fuck you up mate
Fierce

Just like with the yellow/red/orange mohawk i did before, i basecoated some light flesh tone over the black primer before proceeding.

Unsure with what pink to use since i dont own a premixed pink, i mixed up two for starters.

On the right is model color vermillion plus model color ice yellow from vallejo. On the left i mixed vermillion with game color glacier blue. Inexact ratios, roughly a drop of each paint.

I tried both over the flesh basecoat and preferred the glacier blue mix that reads more pink than red.

All credit to vince venturella for giving me the idea to use a bluish white for pink in his exploring pink video.

I painted the reddish pink as a base with blue pink over it to give depth.

Neither pinks have great coverage so it took a few layers

After a few layers trying to be neat i felt like there was no depth, however, so i turned to my washes. I tried red on one side and purple on the other.

Purple gave the desired effect.

As i went to wipe off the red wash i got more than i bargained for on the napkin.

I tried to put new pink to cover but i accidentally wiped off all the paint down to the black primer on the raised edges. Since washes take awhile to dry i will let it sit overnight before i fix it up.

At last i touched it up, gave it purple shading, then hit it with some generous drybrushing of pink. The shading got washed out a bit more than i might like so maybe i hit it with some more purple.

Ive also since done up the bases on this squad of five. The recipe is black primer, dark brown, dry brushed ice yellow, then painted a thin layer of reaper rich leather brown. I may hit it with more ice yellow drybrush tho to add contrast.

My last little touch on these warriors for now was an ice blue drybrush on the black of the guns. And a drybrush of buff on the bases and the mohawks. Almost imperceptible that drybrush but i swear i did it.

Kabalite warrior update: highlights and a mohawk

Decided that these warriors came out a bit blah so hit them with some dry brushed scale 75 Heavy Metal to get silverish highlights. Subtle but nice. Maybe i try a brighter silver if i think they could use more contrast.

I also tried painting some purple into the little poison canisters on the guns and I’m not a fan right now. Not sure what I want to replace it tho.

Step one of this mohawk was to cover the black primer with a layer of light fleshtone. This will help with the bright colors i want to add, letting me get more done with less layers of paint.

Next comes base coats of color.

A little messy but next comes a wash to tie it all together:

Applied liberally

And that stuff takes a while to dry.

Check in after dinner and it’s dry:

Now it’s due for some highlights to bring back the vibrancy of the colors while keeping the added shadows from the wash in the recesses.

Highlighted. And blue on the poison can now which I prefer to the purple.

Knives are sharp mmkay?

This picture is *after* I stopped the bleeding.

I think I know how to avoid it again but yeah. While fiddling with some dark eldar weaponry and sprue nubs i had the knife fly right into my finger.

I think next time Id do better to trim the nubs shorter with clippers before going at them with the knife. My knife was sharp already, fresh blade, so I dont think that was the issue. Perhaps a clamp of some kind would work in the future so my finger isnt in harms way but I dont know how i would set that up.

Funnily enough I read somewhere that super glue was first invented as a medical adhesive so I tried using it to seal the flap of skin over the cut. An awkward location for a normal bandaid, so close to the nail. And it worked ok. The glue would kind of flake off after several hours but then I would reapply.

Not much painting from me for now while Ive been in pain from some combination of computer use, bad posture, sedentary pandemic life, and whatever else may have contributed.

Got this beaut waiting for me when im ready though:

Bye for now 👋

Old school Kabalite warriors with a dirty gold scheme

My lastest Work in Progress (WIP):

Got my hands on some dirt cheap old Dark Eldar kabalites (thanks ebay) new on their sprues and have built and painted a few so far.

So hard to decide on what colors I want the accents to be but I feel set on this golden armor theme.

If for no other reason than to simplify my further choices lol!

I got the gold by first painting every armor bit silver. Then washed with brown ink. Then drybrushed gold. Then highlighted silver. The silver highlights scare me though so i havent done much of those. So easy to make them ugly ugh.

Eye lenses red? Blue? Orange? We shall see.

The poses on these have surprised me with their finnickyness. Ive gotten the arms wrong on one so far and I almost didnt have a gun that didnt cover the woman warriors face (her boobs stuck out too much for the weapon on her sprue to sit in front of her chest lol).

I feel conflicted because on the one hand waiting could lead me to a eureka moment but not painting could leave me to giving up and leaving them unfinished. At least I built another model while i contemplated the paint job to keep my hands busy. But building and painting are kindof different skills that dont necessarily buld each other up.

Wile E out!

Guardian paint experiment

Added yellow to the helms and some highlighting to the left gun thats too subtle for this camera it seems

I feel dissatisfied with the yellow so I want to try some alternate shades. The white where the yellow is now wasnt my cup of tea either though.

Learning this hobby has gotten lonely and increasingly sporadic as my health fails to keep up with my ambition.

Frustration.

But hey the highlighting on that gun went ok. Some messy spots but for the most part I did what I wanted to do. Highlighted edges with a mix of the base color and ice yellow as per vince venturella’s advice for creating interesting lighter shades through paint mixing.

I feel the temptation to go full try hard and edge highlight the shit out of these guardians even though they’re disposable footsoldiers in game. I barely play the game so why should I care?

Anyways. Not in the mood to fiddle with painting tiny details today so the project can wait.

A new guardian paint scheme variant

White helmet looks fresh… the botched prime job leaves it with a gritty texture though

So I gave in and ended my hobby streak at day 47? I think? And I feel I got an admirable amount of things done for someone whose last projects were like 15 years ago. I learned things. I tried new techniques. I ended up with a handful of minis passable as ‘done’ and a bunch of WIPs.

I tended to follow a schedule that focused on paint effeciency over model completion. As in, don’t use a paint until I have multiple uses for it lined up to minimize waste. This method let me try out a variety of painting techniques in the last month. But the lack of finished products rubs me wrong. I think going forward I may have to bite the bullet and accept inefficiencies for my sanity in order to finish more minis. Which opens me up to the risk of staying on a project too long, but given my adhd approach so far I predict that going the other way with the pendulum will help me learn new lessons that help in the long run.

Wile E outta here 👋