The Finished Dire Avengers

I had quite a productive weekend painting, in between sitting out enjoying this heatwave here in the UK! Heres the finished unit and a more detailed 'how to' below.

Note most of the citadel colours I'm using are from the 'old' set, as they run out I'm replacing them with the current paints.

The models were undercoated with Humrol matt grey

The blue was painted first with Citadel Blue Wash 

A thick line was painted around each armour plate in Enchanted Blue

A finer line was painted with a 50:50 mix of Enchanted Blue and Ice Blue

A final fine line was applied to only the uppermost areas of Ice Blue.

Guns are painted with a base coat of Karak Stone this is highlighted up first by adding Bleached Bone then up to a very fine line of skull white.

Gems are painted using crescent shapes with Mechrite Red, Blood Red, Fiery Orange, Sunburst Yellow and Skull White reflections.

Below is a side profile so you can see the plumes more clearly. 

Oh and yes I painted the base edges Goblin Green, I was feeling nostalgic painting Iyanden Eldar, I have fond memories of the 1st plastic guardian squad being proudly advertised in White Dwarf's from the early '90s painted in the Iyanden colours and couldn't help myself.

Dire Avengers

As I said in my previous post, I intend on keeping the momentum up so here is the first Dire Avenger model. I'll be painting this one as a test model to see if I'm happy with the colour scheme and techniques.

I'm using a blue wash over a humbrol matt grey undercoat, this gives good blue coverage and at the same time provides the first stages of highlights and shadows, its also fairly quick. From the photo you can also see the bone coloured shuriken catapult, the colour I'll be using for all of the armies weapons.

At this stage, the armour is complete, as is the gun, just the helmet, plumes and few other details to go.

I'll be painting the unit in two further groups, the next group will be five avengers and the second group will be four avengers including the Exarch.

My first blog article

So here it is, my first article for my new blog, I'm going to document the rise of my Craftworld Iyanden, Eldar army.

I'm going to aim to create a 1500 point force quite quickly and 1850 shortly after that. As I play games with the army, no doubt it will evolve and some more units will be added. Lets see how it goes...

To start off here is a picture of my Farseer, Trevor. OK so I know its not a very Eldary name, but he seems to like it and it suits him.

The Farseer was painted with a mixture of new and old citadel paints, appropriately the yellow starts off as Iyanden Darksun and gradually is highlited up to Badmoon yellow. I've chosen to paint much of the weapons of the force in a wraith bone colour as apposed to the black seen elsewhere, for no real reason other than I prefer it.

Next up will be a unit of Dire Avengers, fortunately I picked up a box when GW kindly gave us 10 models in a box!