Friday, November 6, 2009

Beil Tan Eldar...

Now that I have finished (for now :) my Tyranids I wanted to try something new, specifically new techniques for painting. My current Ulthwe Eldar army is around 6 years old. Since I started painting it GW has come out with completely new ranges of paints. One thing I noticed after doing my last tournament is not many people noticed my Eldar army since they were so dark. It is very hard to pick up on how much high lighting/design work went into them. I want to do a bright Eldar army for 5th ed and I have decided on doing a Beil Tan army as my next army using new techniques and the new paints.

This is my Fire Dragon test model. I used mostly foundation paints and ALOT of washes. I am trying high lighting to an extreme, then going back over with one of the new GW washes to dull it down, then going back and doing some small touch ups to bring the high lights back. I think it worked really well for the orange and yellow of this guy and helps give both colours some more definition without having to do many more layers. As I practice with this technique my models will get cleaner as I feel this one is still a bit sloppy for my liking. I also was wracking my brains figuring out how I can tie in the Beil Tan colour scheme of green and white with the multi colour and I think what I did for this guy worked out well. I am also going to have dire avengers and their Helmets will be White with Green and Back on the back of them and some green on the white tabbards. The banshees I am just going to do in the regular Banshee colour scheme since it IS Beil Tan. The last thing I am trying to figure out is exactly how I want to do the bases.


- Miniman

3 comments:

Dverning said...

I've noticed the same problem with some of my figs. To quote a friend regarding a Callidus Assassin I'd done, "In this lighting, it's just 26 shades of black."

Another time there was my Space Wolves army... They're covered in greenstuff, conversions and painted to a display case level. They were an "in the field" style army with no banners, muted heraldry, subtle highlights and lots of weathering, battle damage and "grit". First tourney I took them too, I scored 4/30 painting points. When I talked to the judge about it later and had him actually look at the force, the comment was "Oh, your army is beautiful up close, but from 6 feet away they look a lot like bare plastic with minimal color. Sorry." (The scores weren't shown until after prizes were awarded, so the ruling stood.)

So I understand where you're coming from. My current Eldar reboot has a lot stronger color contrast and highlight scheme than my other forces for exactly this kind of reason.

So my current Eldar reboot is using much stronger highlights and color contrasts too.

Anonymous said...

Wow, how have I missed this blog? Tyranids, Biel-Tan, and Ultramarines (Albeit in a less than upstanding fashion). Welcome to my blogroll!

By the way, I've thumbed through a bunch of your posts and really like your paint jobs. I appreciate this one in particular because it's such a classic 2nd edition scheme.

Hopefully you don't mind me adding your site to my blogroll...

Big_Willie said...

Thanks! Feel free to add us to your blogroll. This sight actually has 3 contributers:
Bigwillie - does the grey knights, imperial fists, Deathwing/Ravenwing and Space wolves
Greedo - Imperial guard, historical stuff (like flames of war)
Miniman (myself) - Eldar, Tyranids currently although I will be posting some actual Ultramarines not getting blown to bits in the next month or so

As far as the paint scheme for this guy that is exactly what I am going for. The entire army is going to be a kind of throw back to 2nd ed when the 3 of us started :)