It starts! Paint area, ideas and stripping...

Hello good people of the internet!

I figured i'd show off a little of my working area, a stripped model that I got off ebay, an initial idea of how my icons etc could sort of look when painted onto the models and the start of a long learning curve in painting again.

First up a couple of snaps of my desk, cluttered yet workable this will be the hub of my modelling activities over the course of this blog. You can see in the pic the collection of paints I picked up online, second hand.... from ebay.. Yes, yes I should really stop going on there, fear nto i have actually purchased some undercoat and a load of paints directly from GW to compliment what I currently have. I have to say I was somewhat dubious as to getting second hand paints, minatures can be stripped etc so even if they look naff you can pretty much get them back to a 'fresh model' with a little bit of work, but paints could be in any state as you rarly get to see inside the pot's on the pictures. Out of 31 paints only a couple needed some life worked into them(read some water added and beaten into submission with a cocktail stick) and one is pretty rubbish it was pretty much set in the tub. They were all hardly used aswell so i managed to pick up a bit of a bargin. :D

A quick note on stripping models, you can see an example of a second hand war walker (old style) currently on my desk, I used nothing more than some nail varnish remover and a toothbrush to get rid of the old paint job each part was soaked for 10 minutes then rubbed down till the paint was gone. Cheap and easy to do, but only really works with the metals. I've got some stuff on order to do the plastic models as the nail varnish remover kinda makes the plastic go soft so isnt advisable for using with them, so i'll update with more details when I have tried that out.

So onto my paint stuff, as i've said before i'll be painting my army in the green and white Biel-Tan colours, i've shown some examples of their colours and icons used, excuse the bad photoshop skills but this is a close approximation to the freehand stuff I will be aiming to do on some of the larger models. I was trying to get a blended effect on the colours with some shading aswell, hopefully after some experimentaation this will look better on the model than it does in photoshop. :S





Also for your viewing pleasure an example of my attempts at blending on a jetbike model that wont be used for anything other than spares / practice as it was part of a job lot of stuff I bought from ebay and I already have a lot of jetbikes in much better shape to work with.

The pic with the seat to the left side I have tried to use a 'wet blend' fading from a dark angels green through snot green and finally goblin green at the bottom and around the edge. Wet Blending btw is a process of mixing very diluted paint while still wet on the model itself to achieve a smooth transition of colour from one shade to the next. It was only my first go at the technique and I think all I managed to do was make a new green and put some lighter green on one edge.


The other side was done using a 'dry blend' approach where I painted the dark green towards the top, the snot green at the bottom and slowly worked the snot green into the dark angels till there was no paint left on the brush. I'll then add a highlight around the bottom edge with the goblin green to finish it off.






I much prefer the pic with the dry blend aproach, this was also significantly easier to do than the wet blend method, so I think i'll stick to the dry and try to refine that going forward. That about wraps up everything I have to say at the moment, I'll try to get some stuff up as and when my new purchases arrive!!!

So I've been spending a bit of time over the past week or 2 looking at all sorts of painting guides, techniques and what not. When it comes to Eldar there are 5 'main' craftworlds each with their own colour schemes and army types; Alaitoc(Blue and Yellow), Biel-Tan(Green and White), Iyanden(Yellow and Blue), Saim-Hann(Red and Black) and Ulthwé(Black and Bone). Note the colours in brackets denote the primary colour first followed by the secondary one. Each has a main symbol / icon / rune associated with it; The Eye of Isha - Ulthwé, The Shrine of Asuryan - Iyanden, The Cosmic Serpent - Saim-Hann, The Reborn - Biel-Tan and The Doom of Eldanesh - Alaitoc.

Personally I particularly like the Biel-Tan colour scheme which focuses on Green and white with 'The Reborn' (The symbol looks a bit like a cross with a cup on top with a heart in it and symbolises reincarnation). An Example of this can be seen here (note this is a games workshop image I'm simply using it to illustrate):






You tend to find with a lot of Biel-Tan armies the standard green white combo. some favour white as the primary colour, some favour green, some even use greys instead of the whites for a more unique looks. A common feature of Biel-Tan armies, the vehicles in particular, is a stylised thorns pattern, commonly found on large areas of solid colour such as vehicle armour. Example here, this one is used on a banner in conjunction with 'The Reborn' symbol (again this isn't mine I'm simply using it as an example):

Now while I do like the thorns style generally speaking I'm going to be attempting something a bit different with it... Which I will put some pictures up when I've worked on it a bit more.

I've also been on eBay again. :S Picked up a codex and some paints, 31 to be exact, and have tried my hand at 'blending' on a mini that was kinda unusable so I will put some pictures of that up too.

So here's the list of minatures i've managed to pick up, some old models and some new, all of them are in various stages of completion / need of repair, some are in need of striping, some just need a repaint, some will be canabalised for other models and some will just be used to practice techniques on. I have a codex on its way, once that arrives i'll total up a rough points equivalent although i'm not expecting it to be a competative list by any means:

67 Guardians,
8 Guardian jetbikes,
5 Howling Banshee's,
3 Dire Avengers,
3 Support Weapon Platforms with crew,
2 Striking Scorpions,
1 Swooping Hawk Exarch,
1 Ranger,
1 fire Dragon,
1 Falcon Grav Tank,
1 Night Spinner Grav Tank,
1 Vyper Jetbike,
1 War Walker,

All in all this would have cost in the region of £340 brand new, but I paid around £110 so I cant really complain! And here's some pictures of the assembled/unassembled masses:

More on colour schemes, idea's and inspiration in the next article....

So a long long time ago I was a collector of citadel minatures, were talking 8-9 years ago now, I had a small wood elf army for Warhammer and ultramarine and chaos for 40k. I'd go along to the stores and have the odd game with my pals, never really entered any tournaments or anything like that, then I discovered a more outgoing social life and money that used to be spent on gaming was oriented more to going out etc. A friend of mine recently started collecting 40k chaos marines and it sparked my interest up again, initially I was very hesitant as I knew if I started up the hobby again I would end up spending lots of money that I dont really have, saying that I did say to him at the time that if I was ever to pick up the hobby again i'd more than likely start an eldar army and take it from there. Moving on a few weeks i'm finding myself needing to go to ebay rehab after picking up one bargin after another at a more justifyable price for my wallet!! So much for being hesitant about getting back into the hobby.....

I'll add up what I have got and provide a list with pics in a future post but suffice to say I have a decent sized army that is in various stages of completion. Should have plenty to keep me occupied over the summer!!