Biel-Tan Wraith Guard

Ive been waiting on some models to arrive for commissions. Not one to be kept idle for too long I decided to paint up some Wraithguard. Ive not painted this craft world before and this was just an excuse to try some pearl effect paint. The usual paint scheme is white and dark green. I went for a more "real" natural green and then used the pearl white on the head and back vanes. The clothe I kept an off white to be more natural. Its not a traditional paint job.....but I think it turned out well.

Ulthwe Wraithknight Showcase

Some better pictures of the finished model, just waiting on a Tau commander and he will be next. Whilst I've been waiting I have been experimenting with some Alpha Legion models. Its a fun paint scheme and I will share with you my interpretation.

Airbrushing Eldar, Ulthwe Wraithknight. Completed.

So its done. Im at the stage now where if I do anymore I could do too much. Im really pleased with how he turned out and I will be adding more pictures when I put him up for auction. My wife is far better with a camera than I am and I'm sure she will do him more justice than I can. But there we go 10 days from start to finish or there abouts. I would say about 25 hours of time went into him. Loved the time I spent.  The main transfer were yellow so I painted over the transfer in black to match the scheme. Im not the best free hand artist but it turned out pretty good. He has had a flat coat of varnish with a gloss over the gems. Feel free to drop me a message if your interested in purchasing him but if not he will be going up for auction in a few days.

up next is a Tau Commander commission with a really cool paint scheme that has some lovely spot colours that will make it really pop on the table. Im just waiting for the model to be delivered and its full steam ahead with that project. Really looking forward to it.

Cheers

Joey

Airbrushing Eldar, Ulthwe Wraithknight w.i.p. update

Just little update. The models coming along nicely and I have enjoyed building and painting it. Mostly a pleasure with a few fraught moments. The helmet was contaminated with some very minor over spray and the OCD kicked in and instead of leaving it.....I started again with it. In the above pics you can see I have redone the visor and once the varnish has dried properly on it I will mask it off and redo the bone work on the rest of the helm.
As you can see the weaponry is all interchangable  and nearly done. I have some gold painting to do on the swords handle, the shield and some of the joints as well as the trim around the centre gem on the chest. after that he will get some transfers and then a flat coat of varnish all over followed by gloss for the gems. He is supposed to be going on eBay but I'm tempted to keep this one.

How to Magnetise an Eldar Wraithknight, or how I got on.

 I followed Nicks tutorial pretty much as he suggested and I am very happy with the results, I magantised all the weapon options as well as the various pods to match the two different cannons.
One thing I have learnt for myself is how to match up your guide pins to the holes your going to drill on the corresponding piece. In the above shots you can see I have done as Nick did and added two pins to help hold the torso in place. I was worried however that the holes in the bottom of the torso might not match up with the pins. Solution was to blog a dot of PVA or white glue on the heads of the pins, place the torso on the pins and your left with two spots telling you where you need to drill, paint could work too but the PVA is what I prefer.

 Making sure your polarities are correct is also a must, I use a big stack of magnets like this to make sure both ends are the right way round.

Its all pretty much ready to be painted, I need to do a little drilling in the arms next to the magnets for the various positions but thats literally 5 minutes work at most. I like to airbrush big projects like this and above you can see its all ready to go. Various pieces mounted on cork to make things easier and to prevent cross contamination of colour (over spray).
I am 65% sure its going to be a Black, Bone and Purple colour scheme, so if there are any differing opinions please say now as I plan to start painting in the next day or two.
Once again I have to say thanks to Nick, his tutorial really was excellent and very easy to use. But then its not my 1st use of Nicks conversion ideas. The Cannons on my Eldar Jetbikes was another. I knew I was onto a winner.
IDICBeer The Wonders of Warhammer 40K Heres the link to his channel, well worth a look.

How to Magnetise an Eldar Wraithknight by IDIC Beer

My next project as I posted previously will be another Wraithknight. Ive magnetised all sorts of models but nothing quite as big as a Wraithknight. I did a quick search on youtube and came across this excellent video by Nick on his channel IDIC Beer. I subscribed to his channel a couple years ago and he really has a great archive of tutorials both hobby related and tactics.
I thought it was a very good video to share with you and I will absolutely be using his technique of magnetising the model. If this is something you have thought about its well worth a look as is his channel. Its excellent.

Still not decided on a paint scheme yet but I've narrowed. Saim-Hann, Iyanden, Biel-Tan or Ulthwe.

My head says Iyanden again, but I think a sweet Ulthwe paint scheme with pearl effect bone and purple gems would look great with its sleek black paint scheme.

Airbrushing Eldar, Iyanden Wraithknight Showcase

Here is the Wraithknight from my Iyanden collection, painted using the exact same scheme as the rest of the army. I did deviate slightly with the addition of green gems on the shield arm. Im not sure if I like that or not but I felt they would pop against the black and complement the purple on the shield more than red gems would have. All the blue areas of the model were painted separatly and you can see a w.i.p picture of that in the title picture of this blog. Whilst the blues and the extreme highlights I gave them are not very realistic I really liked the effect. This model was completed last year. I do plan on adding a second to my army in the near future and I am planning on doing a progress log on here.

I know many of you players will notice I have given the Knight 2 of the Scatter Lasers. Any player will tell you that a Monstrous Creature such as this can actually only fire 2 weapons per turn, so with the addition of the sun cannon it does make 1 of the Scatter Lasers a waste of points. I don't actually use 2 on this guy but for the sake of symmetry and maybe a little OCD I felt the model looked better with 2.

If anyone has yet to buy one of these, I can tell you it was a lot of fun to build and paint, but please even if you plan to paint by hand don't completely build it before painting. I can imagine for many painters it could be a real nightmare of a job to paint fully assembled.

Group shot of all the Eldar boys so far, You will notice that despite saying in my earlier posts about sticking to a paint "recipe" I did deviate with my Jetbikes. These were painted in Saim Hann scheme as I felt that reds suited the models better. Plus it gives me an excuse to start that craft world too.

Next up it will be my Wraithguard

Airbrushing Eldar, Iyanden Wave Serpent Showcase.

Heres another few pictures from my airbrushed Iyanden project, this time 3 Serpents. They were painted in exactly the same way as my Crimson hunter but I have yet to do the Canopy frames. These were really a joy to build and paint. Whilst we can all agree Games Workshops newer kits are really great and well put together theres something to be said for the simplistic nature of these older Eldar skimmers. I bought all 3 at the same time and "batch painted" them together in sub assemblies.

Again as with the Crimson Hunter these guys were mostly exclusively painted using my airbrush.

The paints I've used for this project are all from the Minitaire range by Badger. I really like these paints and they have some really vivid colours in their range that are just right for war gamers. The main colour used for my Iyanden is a colour called Craven. Its a lovely yellow and I think it gives the Iyanden colour scheme a more real appearance than the very vivid and bright yellow Games Workshop used in their army.

Heres some work in progress shots to show how I painted the yellow.


1. The Wave Serpents were primed in grey Vallejo airbrush primer, they were then pre shaded using  Minitaire "Red Clay"

2. The higher areas of the Wave Serpents were airbrushed with a white colour from the same range called "Snow White"

3. Finally they were painted with light, thin coats of "Craven". You can see where the "Red Clay" pre-shade and "Snow White" pre highlights are still visible and blended though the yellow.

4. After using lots of masking tape, airbrush templates and blu-tac to mask off other areas to paint the blues weapons and gems here is a pic of my 3 Serpents in their display cabinet. All in all I think these guys took about 4 hours from starting to build to ending up here. I think for a table top standard paint job they look great.

Next post I will feature my Wraith Knight.