Dark eldar 4 wip

Hi all

So yet another dark eldar warrior. I wanted to try out my retarder on a full model to see the difference and for me anyway its been a huge help. I feel its my paint stroke holding me back now, which I'm fine with as I can improve, rather than the paints limiting me.

Think this guy is looking the best of the bunch (I hope!)

Anyway here he is, hope you like.

Paint retarder, a revelation !

So I know this is probably explaining how to suck eggs for a lot of people but I had a bit of a revelation last night with my painting.  Basically with lots of thin lines of these dark eldar I was really struggling to get a nice crisp line.  I was thinning my paints,  using different size WnN7 series brushes and have a steady(ish) hand.  Why were my lines still looking chalky ?

Anyway by chance I decided to try some drying retarder that I bought probably a year or two ago and couldn't believe the results.  The paint changed from chalk to silk.  Suddenly I was getting the kind of line I was looking for.

I guess it is doing two things,  obviously stopping the paint drying but to be fair my paint is on a wet palette and thinned down so it should be ok anyway.  The second I guess is changing the opacity and consistency of it.  So I get a smooth finish that is slightly less opaque so therefore slightly more forgiving.

Anyway  I thought I would show an example.   One leg painted without drying retarder,  and which I spent a lot more time on,  vs the drying retarder version.  Hopefully I don't have to explain which is which.

So there you have it,  I know its not going to make me a golden demon winner but personally its a huge leap in terms of the crispness of lines I can achieve which is the direction I want to be going in.

Anyway heres the pic and thanks for reading :)

Will.

Sorting out my hobby!

Hi all

So a couple of years ago I spent some time,  and money,  sorting our office room of our new home.  We had a huge desk area made,  ,lots of drawers storage etc and I was really happy with my hobby area.   I could finally pick up and put down my brushes in the same place and have a permanent area for my hobby.  previously I was painting on the old computer desk pulling everything out and putting everything away each time,  very annoying!

Anyway,  fast forward two years,  and like any "new" hobby,  my collection of just about everything has expanded three fold at least.   The drawers became overflowing and my ability to sit down and paint turned into sit down,  sort through the mess on the table,  find the right paint pot,  hope the airbrush is clean etc.  I get very little hobby time with two young children and so when I do get the time I want to enjoy it and it just be the nice parts.  |The irony then when I get a day off with just me and the house to myself,  that i choose to spend non of that time painting.  I instead decided to sort out the hobby room.

My main issue was storing paints,  airbrush equipment etc.  With big open drawers they just rolled about all over the place so I wanted something where I could whatever I am looking for instantly and also something where I could open and close the drawer as much as I like without everything moving about.  I went very low tech after looking at just about every option available,  ie premade,   boxes,  also some laser cut mdf plans which I drew up in illustrator and got some quotes on.

I ended up with some 90 degree strips of plastic from BnQ glued to some mdf.  It couldn't be easier.  I also got a happy accident when I realise that the GW paints actually stacked up perfectly upside down when using a certain size of plastic strip.  This was perfect as it stops your paints drying out and also lets you see the colour of the paint easily.

So I now have a couple of daylight bulb each size,  one with a magnifying glass (which I hardly ever use but wish i did),   paint brushes upside down on the wall  ( I need better than blue tack for these really ),   an ultrasonic cleaner for the airbrush which actually fits all airbrush parts in,  hairdryer,  hobby drill,  airbrush holder, two water jars,  basic hobby tools,  cutting ,at and underneath you can just make out the airbrush compressor and also the airbrush studio which folds out and works really well.

Anyway,  here are the pics of my hobby section of the office so far.  It still needs some tweaks but its getting close to being exactly what I want.

Dark eldar 3 wip

Hi all

Another small update on a new warrior. I'm trying some bounce light and a tighter paint scheme with similar pallette to my last guy. Very much enjoying painting this guy more than any model I can remember. Lots of freedom and room for experimenting with this style. Wish I had a steadier hand with these highly detailed models though. Especially around the eyes I am.struggling to get the lines tight enough. I don't think the red is helping. The green was far easier to work with for osl.

Anyway hope you enjoy

Dark eldar 2

Hi all

Quick update. Got a bit of the this morning before the grand Prix to get this guy finished. Its definitely a more loose style than my first guy and I kind of like it. Not sure if the eyes really pop as much as the green of the first guy so looking forward to trying out another style of a third guy.

Hope you like!

Thanks

Will

Dark eldar number 2

Hi all

So in the spirit of more regular updates here is my second dark eldar wip. The first guy was very easy metal style, although far from their standard. This second guy I want something more emotive and sinister. I like this style, its a lot more fun and mistakes can become happy accidents instead of laborious errors. Looking forward to hopefully finishing him (or her) tonight!

Dark eldar

Hi all

Two posts in one day??? What's going on?
Well not only has my PC been dead for the last couple of months I also broke my phone recently too and its taken about 5 weeks to replace! I do almost all my blogs using my phone using bloggeroid app. Its so easy. Take a pic on phone. Write up the post and done. Well I now have a PC and phone and with winter coming I should hopefully be blogging a bit more regular.

Back to the model. I've always thought the dark eldar range was the best model range gw ever made. Its almost a shame that they still are as let loose this is what we should expect for all armies. Anyway I got the urge to just paint as the grey knights modelling time has taken up 95 percent of my hobby time for the last couple of months so I wanted to get some easy models to get back into painting.

I've kept the gw paint scheme to keep things even more simple, with a more extreme osl on the eyes. Quite happy with this guy, who knows, he may be the first of many :)

Hope you guys like!

Will

Work bench

Hi all

So summer happened and also I got married  :)   It's been,  and still is a great summer in the UK,  particularly for the north west,  so time spent in the hobby room has been less than normal.  However things are still progressing.  I thought I would just add a couple of pics from the workbench.   The 5 Grey Knight models are now all finished and I'm really happy with them.  They were a challenge and I found my inability to decide on the smaller details proved the biggest issue in finishing them.   However the paint job on the first guy I thought was just looking a bit boring to be honest so hes going to get another coat of paint and I'm going to be adding battle damage,  rust etc to try and add some character to them.

Ive also started work on, for me,  my most complicated conversion so far,  a true scale terminator.  I know the Space Wolf Lord is I guess a true scale terminator,  but this guy I think is a lot bulkier and probably a bit taller too! You can see the scale in the pics he's looking pretty huge and in terms of what I have to do,  theres not too much there,  just lots of layers of putty etc. I like that in the first pic the scale of each model relates to how they should be in the fluff.  Should be fun!

Finally I will post up a recipe for the space wolf armour in the comments below some time this week,  sorry for the late reply on that one!

Hope you enjoy the pics :)