Briefspite's Dark Eldar

I have finally decided what my next 40K army will be and its Dark Eldar. Now I wanted to stay away from the hyper highlighted black that’s all the vogue at the moment with Dark Eldar. I also wanted to try something bold and brash.

After clipping, sanding and gluing for what seemed an eternity I finally got to play with my airbrush. I spent a couple of hours doing the initial basecoat and highlight. There are some bits and bobs to touch up before I start on the detailing but all in all I am pretty pleased with the result.



I have quite a bit more to paint up and a few kits to assemble as well, but this lot will leave me with plenty to do for the next week (month?) or so.

I have used mine for Space Marines as well, but I thought, what the heck, and sprayed my Dark Eldar as well. In my opinion the result is as good, or perhaps better, than the hyper highlights so common nowadays.

I am a bit of a novice with the airbrush but I am getting better and I think that after a couple of more armies behind my belt the airbrush will really start to shine compared to regular painting.

B.

Impressive stuff man I really like the use of blue with the dark red sails. Not every DE army has to look dark and brooding. In fact, some of the more striking armies that I've seen break from the dark colors(Think GAR's painting log, that army is BEAUTIFUL!)

That scheme looks fantastic, and the two warriors that you have finished detailing look awesome. This will be one hell of an army to see on the tabletop!

Great job!

Impressive.

As a whole they look fantastic. I can't wait to see them up close.

A couple of closeups of the (almost) finished test miniatures. I only had two light sources and no lightbox so they are a bit overexposed but they give a decent impression of whats what.

The "red" looks great on the venoms and razor.
Perhaps have a red prow on the raiders or some other red part except for the sail?

speedfreek wrote:

The "red" looks great on the venoms and razor.
Perhaps have a red prow on the raiders or some other red part except for the sail?

I am thinking about doing the first panel of the prow and the blue on the ram in red as your suggestion, however its a big step, once done there is no going back .

I also have a WIP shot of the Razorwing. I did some mistakes around the cockpit I probably won't be able to fix. I will add the missiles, some more highlights, a bit of weathering and perhaps some decals in order to finish it.

Great start to your army. I like your strong colors, and I can tell you have a nice touch with your airbrush

Long story short, I got distracted by life

8 bases of Razorwing Flocks are now finished.

8?(!) Your opponents must really soil their pants when they get charged by that!

I tend to run one unit of 4 birds, 5 dogs, 3 handlers (and the Baron). But in larger games I would like to run two such units.

B.

Yeye, real life and all that shizzle, in reality I had a painting burnout from painting a couple of hundred 28mm napoleonics. However now I am more or less back on track and I have finished my first Kabalite Warrior squad.

Great to have you back! Kabalites are looking good

This is looking awesome.
I love the colours, and how bright they are.

Can you please tell me how you paint your blue, it is superb?

Good work.

When you are in the zone I guess you just have to roll with it. I did some paintwork on a squad of 10 Wyches, lots to do but I am getting there.

Cavash wrote:

Can you please tell me how you paint your blue, it is superb?

Its probably overly complicated but what I do is,

Black undercoat

Airbrush a zenithal highlight of 3-4 shades of blue, I use Vallejo Air. The colours are, Dark Sea Blue (shade layer), Blue (base), Mix of Blue and Light Sea Blue (highlight) and sometimes a touch of Light Sea Blue. I dont wash out the airbrush between layers, spray it clean with water and some airbrush cleaner. Its hard to explain since its done with what "looks good" rather than some scientific measured method.

Highlight with a very thin light blue (the infamous milk like consistency). Kinda hard to explain but I build up in 2-3 layers. This is usually a mix of the airbrush colours mixed with water, it all depends on where I am highlighting on the model what mix I use. This doesnt really need to be super neat, since the glaze will tone down the highlights anyway.

I used to glaze with a very thin dark blue, now I just use the Guilliman Blue Glaze from GW. It gives me consistency and personally I find it nice to work with. I usually thin it a bit before using. Its hard to give exact measurements since, as mentioned before, I don't use any, I just roll with it. Its better to glaze twice if needed rather than doing one thick glaze that forces you to highlight again.

Touch up the highlights, sometimes up to almost white.

I have been toying with the idea of using sharper highlights and taking them further but I think I will just leave it as it is now. Hyper-highlights have been done to death anyways

A lot of the figures I paint now was basecoated 6 months ago, if I were to do it again I would use the airbrush to do more of the initial highlights instead of the brush as I do now.

I dont know if this answered your question, I know its a bit vague

B.

WIP shot of my Haemonculus and Wracks.

After I am done painting these I won't touch Finecast with a 10 foot pole. Its really to bad because the sculpts themselves are really nice and its sad that the material GW uses is so atrociously poor. I should probably have returned them to sender but.. yeah.. you know... zzz

Thanks.

Briefspite wrote:

I dont know if this answered your question, I know its a bit vague

B.

It has indeed answered my question, although now I have the sudden urge to purchase and airbursh.

Splendind Haemonculus, by the way.

I love that blue.
Reminds me of the 3rd Edition Codex cover.
Keep up the awesome work!

Four finished warp beasts, working on the beast masters, wracks, hamonculi and wyches... need to finish by friday for a tournament. That wont happen but its a kick in the butt

Beastmaster unit is finished, its night so the photo isn't very good but it was the best of the lot.

The guy with the halberd is a stand in for the Baron until I can make a proper conversion.

Love the colour scheme, not typical DE colours but look really really cool. Nice basing as well.

Occasionally it feels a little too bright for my taste, but it is nevertheless damn well done!

very, very nice color scheme - I live bright, vivid colors on DE... I mean, come on! With thousands of kabals and cults out there in commorragh they would soon run out of black+one-evil-colour schemes to distinguish themselves...
So a big + for giving up the black (like Madonna in BMW commercial - "The star" )