The Veiled Path

So not exactly true kin but definitely inspired by the great discussions on this board.  I had a troupe and a solitaire from back when the book released but the terrible performance led to them joining the wyches in the b-team box.

Inspired to jump back in I picked up a death masque box plus some extra sprues for really cheap on ebay.  I think total spend is £73 and I have 24 players, 2 death jesters, 4 bikes and the voidweaver.  The Death Masque kit really lowers the cost of entry for Harlequins.  They're not the most competitive army but for such a small investment I have a pretty good 1500 points here with simple conversions to get the models needed for a masque or the revenge formation.


I've been pretty pleased with progress so far, assembling the first 10 players, jester and converting 2x shadowseers during the week.  I got them primed and made really good progress with the scheme:

Progress over the weekend was really fast!  Painting the 6 original players last year was a major headache and I quit painting entirely for a while afterwards.  Getting the motley to look good was a really tough experience but it seems like the lessons learned stuck - I got a lot done and even reworked some of the mistakes with the original players:








I'm really pleased with the shadowseers.  They're just players with a few easy conversions.  I hacked the backpack off with clippers and replaced it with a phantasm launcher from our DE warrior kit.  I had a couple spare but they're really cheap from bits resellers (for obvious reasons).
The helmets are reaver helmets, the hood is greenstuff and the mist stave is a banner arm from the wood elf glade guard kit.  The balls on the top and bottom are some ball magnets that were the perfect size.  Unfortunately I'm already regretting this idea since they stick to the end of tape measures - oops!




Apologies for my camera, it's having major trouble focussing so the pictures are a bit blurry.  Not so important for these WIP shots but I'll try and get something better for the final pics.

The rest of the Death Masque stuff should arrive next week so I'll try and get some build shots of the void and sky weavers. There's a lot more incoming so it's nice to have made inroads on this initial wave of figs.

Hope you enjoyed the images and maybe gave some ideas for other brave souls who want to try and play this silly codex!

Keen to see some closer (and clearer photos!) Looks good so far!

Advice for the camera: If you are using your smartphone (Android), it has different camera-modi. One of those is for close-up photos of >50cm away. Really good for photographing a squad or single models.

It's a crappy motorola with a fixed focus. Needless to say they didn't fix it for shooting pics of 28mm minis!

It's okay though, I had my S3 repaired today so I can use its camera. It's very nice and has the macro mode etc so I'll get some better pics this weekend!

As a quick update - the big masque box arrived on Monday and I spent the evening assembling the bikes and voidweaver.
Eldrad went together today - he's awesome! I'm not sure how to paint him yet. I'm thinking about going really over the top and using him as a testbed model for some airbrush techniques I saw recently:
http://infinitytheforums.com/forum/topic/35575-made-by-shizune-painting-armors-tutorial-pano-blue/

This week the rest of the models turned up - the eldar from the death masque plus two extra skyweaver jetbikes.  I decided it's better to assemble everything rather than leave plastic on sprues.  It's a shame to go back to assembly but I made good progress and it's all done now.

I've magnetised the arms of many of the players so there's lots of flexibility with builds.  Rather than do both arms I've either left them with swords and a magnetic pistol or glued down the pistol and magnetised the special weapon.  I don't like spending lots of points to multirole models so I figure I'm unlikely to want to build players for both CC and for ranged - hopefully I won't regret that choice!

In other good news I got the S3 phone fixed so I was able to take pictures that are actually in focus! Sadly the colours are a bit washed out so I'll have to check my lighting and maybe change things up when I have finished shots. Still better than the crappy moto though:



Eldrad rocks, I'm thinking of using him as my third seer/warlord for now rather than converting a third.  Mostly because I've run out of phantasm launchers but I did keep one player partially unassembled in case I change my mind later.



Here's the bikes and voidweaver.  I magnetised the gunner and rear shruiken cannon.  Hopefully I don't get an urge to swap for the haywire cannon since gunner and cannon are a single piece. I ran out of primer as I was getting these figs finished. I think it's enough to give the paint something to grip to but I'll probably go over it with some white as a base coat before doing the colour coat. I'm not sure how to paint these yet. It'll probably involve the airbrush and a fair bit of masking. I don't like the idea of using motley so I'll have to experiment a bit and see if I can find something I like.


Here's some better shots of the part-painted models:






These are my converted shadowseers:


The troupe master is virtually complete so gives an idea of what I'm aiming for with the rest of the masque:

Now that we can see them just a tad more, I can say they're very, very nice, I really like the purples and yellows for the masks especially. They have a colour combination thats noticeable despite it not feeling regimented and the diamond freehands look quite well done too.

Good luck with the vehicles, i'm sure you're already aware but just in case... Falllout Hobbies make excellent Harlequin stencils that could really help make your bikes and weavers pop, keep us updated!

Korona wrote:

I magnetised the gunner and rear shruiken cannon.  Hopefully I don't get an urge to swap for the haywire cannon since gunner and cannon are a single piece.

You can simply remove the haywire barrel and slot in the prism barrel instead (if you haven't glued it).

Nice thinking!  I tend to use superglue so I could snap it out if needed

This week I focussed on the jetbikes and voidweaver, I've been pretty uncertain about these models and knew it would be some trial and error getting a look I liked.

During the week I roughed out the motley for the pilots and riders and blocked in most of the base colours (bascially procrastinating so I didn't have to make a decision about this tricky scheme!)

I'd been playing with some ideas in my mind over the last few weeks so on Saturday I fired up my airbrush and gave the first a go.

The GW paint scheme for the Veiled Path uses a very strong mid green as its main colour which I don't like.  The green in the hand drawn artwork in the codex is very different, a lot more of an olive green which I like a lot more so that continues for the bikes and voidweaver.
The two accent colours in the GW scheme are purple and yellow, which is fine to use, and they also use black for some reason which I don't like.  The idea for the diamonds was to have a bold yellow then use masking and the airbrush to create a gradient down to purple.  I've done this trick for some 6mm epic Eldar and it looks pretty nice.


The idea was to do the bright colours with the airbrush and then mask off before spraying the whole model in the darker green.  Working down is much easier than working up, especially with yellow which is so translucent even at the best of times.

This was the first of several major headaches - The can of primer I had used was running low and was spattering when I painted the bikes and voidweaver.  What looked like small drops of white were actually slightly raised and marred the smooth hull.  Even worse I had left the models in a box over the week and they had picked up fluff and dirt.  As I applied the paint I could see the fluff standing out.  Oops!




I cut small lozenges from Frogtape, which is a really great brand of masking tape, very low tack and great for use on delicate minis.
Cutting them was fiddley but I liked the absolute control it gives over the pattern.

Here's a closeup of the voidweaver.  I've already started adding masks.  After I do a layer I sprayed a thin coat of purple to the surrounding area, stepping the colour down a bit each time.



Repeat 3 times to get an effect like this:



Yuck...

I think it looks something like a military vehicle that someone's gratified on...

So that was Saturday evening pretty much a wash.  Lots of lessons learned and at least the extra layers of paint will help to smooth off some of the dust!

Sunday was a new day and I tried a new idea.  Instead of having each lozenge a slightly different shade I decided to just apply the gradient to the base coat first and then use a lot more lozenges.  Instead of an erratic pattern I decided to use a regular grid more like what GW used for its Midnight Sorrow scheme:



Doing the gradient in one step is MUCH easier.  An artist friend said to always have the lightness gradient go light/dark from the front of a model to the rear so I've done that:


(Pretty!)

Needless to say building up the grid with tiny pieces of masking tape was a tedious process.  I picked one of the jetbikes to start with since it's a smaller area so means less work to redo if I don't like it.

Fortunately I think it came out really nicely!



I added a fake opacity gradient to fade the lozenges out as the grid travels towards the back of the model, something I think is a missed oppertunity on the GW scheme.  I also blocked in some of the other colours and added the WIP crew to give some idea of how the models will look when they're finished.  Unfortunately I'm really struggling to get the camera to quite focus.  I'll set up a proper light box when it's done which will hopefully be kinder to the camera's finikety machine spirit:



I can't decide if I should have extended the diamonds over the rear wings of the bike.  I think it might look good but once the crew and rear flaps are painted in properly it might end up looking cluttered.  I'll probably finish this model completely next week and assess if it needs any more airbrush work once all the other colour is in place and final.

Overall a pretty brutal week in terms of setbacks but it feels really nice to have some certainty about my direction for these bikes and the voidweaver.  The only question mark now is Eldrad and I'll not be crossing that bridge for a good while yet!  The next few weeks will hopefully see something of a routine emerge.  I'll aim to get some of the figs completely finished and figure out the camera issues too which should improve the viewing experience for people.

Thanks for following along, it's fun to keep a log and share this work with everyone!

They look great! A lot of trial and error, but it's definitely paid off

Cheers buddy, it's weird to have a project where I don't really know how it will look when I start out but it's quite fun!  It feels a bit bad to go with the GW scheme layout but 'when it doubt copy the pros' is a good mantra for art.

I didn't understand a word you said but the models look great!

Hah I suppose I ascribe to the Ad Mech philosophy of human inspiration.

There's so many creative people out there, that genuinely new stuff is so statistically unlikely that really people are only taking elements of various things they've seen other people do and mixing them up in a pot to come up with something unique.

Originality is simply a product of hiding your sources well

In other words, no problem with pinching the GW scheme for harlies

haha yeah "The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is nothing new under the sun." I think that one's been knocking around a while...

I finished the jetbike ahead of schedule so I thought I'd share and get some feedback!  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, I added some lines to the chequerboarding to try and tie it into the style of the rest of the model, which I think works:








I'm still not sure if the pattern should be repeated over the wings. I'm thinking probably not but after staring at it all evening I think it needs a fresh set of eyes:

Yeah that looks phenomenal

For me, I think both options for the rear wing look equally good, and given that it's excess painting for no gain, start on the next one instead!

Hey, that looks really, really nice, lots of trial and error at the begining it looks like! but you got there in the end. Very nice.

Another thing I've just thought, if you have diamonds on the winglets, would you expect them to continue on the colour gradient from the front?

Lastly, have you got a touch of gloss on the facemasks? You've done a great job of making them look like ceramic

I'd not considered it, the paint did dry a little glossy. It's a nice idea though. I still need to give it a spray with varnish to protect it and that will matt everything down. I think applying a satin to the masks would be a nice touch - cheers!

No worries I've only recently discovered the wonders of gloss coats. Great for making anything look slightly glassy (or slightly wet if you've got things like exposed tongues or Nurgly things...).

Yeah I used it for the gems, it's such a great cheat!

I have a bit of a problem with my computer right now but it left time to do the rest of the tedious, intricate work with the diamonds.  




I thought I had run out of Russian Green and ordered another bottle...



Then remembered I already had a fresh one in my paint box!



Job done!  There was a fair bit of bleeding due to watering down the green paint.  I was trying to eek out the remaining paint and it soaked into the masking tape... oops...  I was able to scrape a fair bit away when it was still damp and I think the line work will hopefully help mitigate most of the rest of the damage.

I'll try and get the crews painted and the detail work done this week.  I'm really looking forward to getting these done, it's the first major milestone to hit!

Still making progress, but not a lot to show, I'm very nearly complete on the voidweaver and skyweavers but there's a fair bit of detail left:




However I did get a game in this evening and did a write-up to share my first 1500 points experience with this crazy army:

http://www.thedarkcity.net/t14618-1500-pts-harlequins-vs-csm#169605

Great work on those diamonds. I wish I had the patience to paint something similar.

Thanks, yeah it's a headache at first but I have learned quite a few tips to speed it up. I might do a tutorial if people are interested although it's still a lot of work even with some shortcuts!

I was ill last weekend so didn't get anything done.  This weekend I needed something to ease back into it and painting the detail on the voidweaver seemed a bit much.  Instead I did the easy stuff, blocking in the colour on the remaining plain troupe members.  I actually got quite a bit done, all the motley is at least planned out and some is actually finished minus highlights.  Still probably another weekend to go but I'm going to push this 15 through to completion now:

Here's the week's work:



Here's the rest of the infantry.  Only Eldrad and the Death Jester are yet to see paint, plus some "spares" at the front who aren't in my current build.  I'll paint those players at some point but I don't need them now.  I have one dude only partially complete because I'm not sure what I want to do with the model.  I might end up using her as another shadowseer.



There's also a Studio McVey lurking in there who I'm using as Inram's Spectre since I'm missing a third death jester.  I'm not sure what I want to do for that model, I'd like it to be a bit unique so either the old pewter DJ or a conversion will be needed.