Thursday, 27 June 2024

Dark Elf Executioners and a Chaos Familiar

Hey folks!

Long time no blog, so I figured I'd just update this now with what I've painted over the past year or so (to completion!) along with some paint recipes and a list of some work-in-progress models which is actually quite big

First up, l fnally panted my six Dark Elf Executioners from when I was a mere teenager starting out in my Warhammer career!








The technoque is fairly simple, everything is basecoated, highlighted, shaded, then parts of the shaded model are rehighlighted with the base paint again. These are the paints I used (they're moreso for me remember what painted I originally use than anything else, which is why the list might be phrased oddly in places):

Old Gold

Natural Steel

Regular purple with magenta highlights overbrushed

Light Flesh with Agrax Earthshade for skin.

Black trim with dark seagreen (grey) trim around cuffs and skirting edges as well as the straps on the side leg plates

Hair is black with basalt grey from the one used on trim. Tried skygrey in places too and it worked okay-ish. Didn't use skygrey on second model

Base Goblin green, dark grey/black highlighted with regular grey then a really bright one (Basalt grey and US Bluegrey?)

Regular gold and silver go over the gold and Draich after each are washed with Agrax. Steel coloured parts get another natural steel brush over after the wash too.


Next up is a familiar guy who took a meer less-than-an-hour-maybe?



And lastly for completed models, a Mantic dragon/Wyvern that I painted and converted for a friend as a Christmas gift. The eyes were hollow and it bothered the crap out of me so I  sculpted eyes and eyelids for it. Unfortunately I neglected to take a picture of the finished product (it's actually shaded!), but I did manage to get a picture of it wearng it's hat at least:



Lastly I should mention a few reasons for the big gap between this post and the last one. Executioners are a bit of a drag to paint but I kept torturing myself over painting them. I think I had model-painters block and really wanted them finished but didn't enjoy the process of painting them or how long it was taking to finish them. I kinda solved it by just half-painting a bunch of random stuff that's now strewn about my desk but this has caused a second issue, that being that I haven't finished a model fully in a long time. I enjoy it more, but I now have a Black Dragon, Manticore, Reaper Bolt Thrower + Crew, three Witch Elves, five mostly done Dark Riders, five more Dark Riders that are barely started, a Hydra, five Cold One Knights and a Sorceress on a Cold One. This probably doesn't sound like a big issue, but they're aaaaaall sixth edition models, meaning a lot of metal, which means a lot of mold line removal and pinning before I can even prime the model. This on top of my NEED to add/convert older models to make them make "sense" has translated into a very slow production line of model painting. For example, my Cold One riders all have chain reins and what I think is called a "snaffle, my Reaper has a couple of massive bowstrings, my Hydra was converted to be standing on a big converted rock/cliff thing (complete with skeleton bones all over the place) and the sorceress is another one of my teenage me's models so I wanted to convert her up a good bit, so overall this takes a huge amount of time unfortunately! There were a few other things like my old house in Clonard not being a great place to paint for ages and moving everything in and back out taking forever, but what this all added up to a lack of overall progress on my part sadly. The good news is that I now have a bunch of older models that I could go nuts painting some weekend this year and suddenly have a big dragon, unit of cavalry, etc, finished for the Old World, so I'm looking forward to that! I've also joined a local Old World podcast and played I think 12 games of it now.

I have a few more paint recipes saved via images on my phone, which I'll add to this post as I find them again too:

Dark Riders boot straps - cork brown

Leather boots/gloves/saddle German Campbell Medium Brown drybrush with tan earth 

Hooves - Ivory

Yellow Ochre wood on crossbows/spear

Horse black undercoat and basalt grey drybrush

Light Flesh

Horse mane Dark Bluegrey overbrush then Us bluegrey pale light drybrush

Natural steel

Old gold

Hydra:

Ivory for scales, London grey and basalt grey (can't remember what was used for base and what was used for Hydra hide) 

Manticore: 

Brown sand and flat brown 50:50 mix for wings. Brown sand for skin/wing membrane, flat brown for fur then the 50:50 mix again for the mane


Thats pretty much it for now, until next time!

Thanks for reading,

Marc