40k Exodite Eldar - Wraithblades complete and army complete!

After a loooong hiatus rife with technical difficulties uploading pics to my website galleries, I'm happy to report that the Exodites of the Tanelorn Wood are complete! Finished off the final unit of wraithblades (pics below), then schlepped the whole force down to the local GW shop for a family photo!

This was the first time I had them all out at the same time, and I gotta say I'm well pleased with how the colors flow across the army, it's cohesive and contrast-y without being too garish (or as least as subdued as purple, yellow and green can be)!

While I was about it I broke out the lightbox and re-shot the whole force for a final record before they wing their way to their next destination (more to come on that front).

HQ - Avatar, Spiritseer and Seer Council, all got the ghost-green treatment to help denote their mystic connections.

TROOPS - The Glade Guardians and the Rangers are more in the orange hues, in a somewhat ham-fisted attempt to make them autumnal. May have over-corrected into hunting-season blaze orange!

ELITES - The surprisingly-simple-to-convert Wraithguard and Wraithblades add some punch to the force, and the addition of an old-school Bonesinger to help keep 'em up and fighting can't hurt!

FAST ATTACK - The second-creepiest models in the force, the Wasp Assault Walkers are a natural counterpoint to the big-ass spider coming up in the next section!

HEAVY SUPPORT - The conversion that started this whole silly idea, the wraithlord is probably my favorite conversion of the bunch. That said, the Nightspinner is by far the creepiest!

Where would a project-complete post be without some spreadsheet porn? It always feels good to turn that last box green!

Next up, back on the Heresy train! With NOVA coming up in just a few short months, I need to finish off the force intended to travel out to D.C...

40k Exodite Eldar - Glade Guardians and Bonesinger painted!

In between alternately slicing open and gluing my fingers together while working on the wraithguard, I got some brush time in and finished up the first squad of Glade Guardians and a Bonesinger (Woodsinger?) to accompany the various wraith constructs the force will include.

Keeping the same scheme as the Wraithlord from earlier meant that the armor would be varying tones of brown and bone, which meant for quite a while during the process the models looked TERRIBLE. Gotta love that interim stage in the painting process where you can't help but think to yourself "Well, these look like garbage!". Persevered and got the oranges, reds and yellows in place and they started to look a bit more autumnal - I think they'll fit in nicely now!

Due to the fact that the force is going to include a ton of wraith constructs, I dug out an old Bonesinger that had been rattling around in the Closet of Doom for ages. From an aesthetics point of view he's not particularly converted other than the addition of some bugs (a common theme across the force). It was fun to finally paint a model that's been languishing for well over a decade!

Apparently they did a brief re-release of the model late last year, and included a set of rules for him for 8th. Perfect timing!

As alluded to above, I spent a little more time hacking apart the plastic kits and finished up the first full unit of Wraithguard (Branchwraiths?). Really pleased with how they've come along, and can't wait to get some paint on 'em. Now if only it wasn't currently snowing outside I could get them primed!

As the Kurnoth Hunters come three to a box, there was one leftover body, so I took the opportunity to test build the first of the Wraithblade models - I think I'm going to do a 5-strong unit with twin swords and a 5-strong unit with axes and shields. The running poses of the Hunter models lend themselves well to the melee style wraithblades, not to mention it opens up the pose a bit allowing for the cool hollow torso detail to be seen (well less so in this picture, but still). At this point I ran out of bits and have to wait a week or more for the next order to arrive, but all in all the army is shaping up nicely!

Eldar - Wraithblades painted

Disaster struck today when I didn't pay heed to my instinct that it was too humid and tried sealing some miniatures. Frosted the lot of 'em. ARGH.

However, this isn't the end of the world, and I've found that brushing on some gloss varnish over the worst of it and re-spray-sealing the models they can usually recover from my rookie mistake. The Wraithblades were the least affected so I snapped a couple pics:

The blades were done up in a graduated red which sets off against the blue and yellow pretty well. They were done by starting with a dark flesh basecoat, then worked up from gory red through hot orange, followed by a wash of carroburg crimson. The blue and gems follow the same recipe as found on the other Alaitoc models in the army. Easy peasy!

Definitely a fun unit to build and paint, and they've worked rather well on the table so far as well! Next up is the Seer Council, which were unfortunately a bit more effected by the frosting and actually required some full-on painted touch ups... That'll teach me to disregard my own advice on spray sealing, I guess!

Eldar - Not exactly batch painting, but still...

No painting time this morning (the snooze button's siren call would not be denied), so just a little forward progress today. At this point in the process, I broke up the batch into smaller groups so I could focus on the colors that wouldn't necessarily be shared across all the models. On the other hand, I ended up working a little on each of 'em so it's still sort of batch painting! Heh.

The seers with witchblades and singing spears got their blades done up in purple (still in progress, gonna try and add some lightning), and I started blocking in the areas which will eventually be white with Shadow Grey - This will then get passes with fortress grey and ghost grey, with only the very uppermost edges with pure white. The farseer's cloak, the fur on one of the warlocks and the hair on the other will all end up getting the treatment.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with the spiritseer and bonesinger spot-color-wise yet, so they just got a little touch up here and there. Eventually they'll get runes and such on their cloaks in white, but I want to work the purple from the warlocks and farseer in there somewhere.

On the advice of my buddy Dave, I'm going with red blades (which will eventually transition up to orange and yellow). So far, I'm really digging how it sets off against the blue!

Last up are Illic Nightspear and the Autarch - started blocking in their cloaks, though in retrospect I'm going to re-do the Autarch's cloak to match Illics. Think I'll save the white for the seer council models.

I always wince taking pictures close up like this. It definitely shows up all the issues and mistakes and places I've missed that I still need to address - oof! However, looking at the pics helps me understand what I need to practice on!

Eldar - Painting the yellow and general cleanup

Pressing onwards with the group painting - laid down the yellow and did some general cleanup of things I've missed on the first pass. My yellow recipe is pretty straightforward, I start off by base coating anything that's intended to be yellow in Hot Orange. Much like the bone in the previous post, the yellow is very translucent, and I find that painting it directly over a black or other dark undercoat it tends to look very patchy. The orange 'shines' through the yellow and gives it a nice warm glow.

Once that dried I hit it with a quick drybrush of Fiery Orange - I was in the zone and didn't take a picture of that step though. Once the orange is on, I went in and layered on the Golden Yellow followed by a quick hit of Casadora Yellow wash.

At this stage I discovered a couple things I missed on the bone color step, so I went back and painted in the weapons on the Autarch, as well as the knee and elbow joints on the Wraithblades. I also started blocking in the areas that will end up being leather (boots, pouches, etc.) with Earth Brown.

At this point I'm thinking it's time to break the batch painting up into its constituent parts to do the final detailing. Expect more pics of various parts of these guys in a completed state soon!

Eldar - Painting the wraithbone

A bit more forward motion on the Eldar this morning and this afternoon after work - finished up the wraithbone, and took some pics between each stage to show how I do it:

Starting off I basecoat anything that's intended to be bone with leather brown. The vallejo bone color is pretty translucent and the brown helps give it a warmer undertone than painting it directly onto a black or blue basecoat.

After that is dry, I give the area a few coats of the bone color. Essentially I do a really heavy drybrush, leaving only the very deepest of recesses showing any of the leather basecoat. Another way of saying that is "missed a bit, there". Heh.

Next up is a Devlan Mud wash (aka army painter ink strong tone), to bring a little depth back to the recesses and stop it from looking as flat. This is applied in the "slather a bunch of Devlan Mud all over everything" method.

Once that is fully dry I go in and give the areas a light-to-medium drybrush of the bone color again, concentrating on the upper surfaces especially. That helps the model stop looking like I just slathered a bunch of Devlan Mud all over everything in the previous step.

I'm pretty happy with the psyker contingent thus far, I especially like how the amount of bone steadily increases as it goes Warlock > Farseer > Wraithseer > Bonesinger. Next up is the yellow stage - chugging right along!

Eldar - The last of the army; batch painting begins!

With just a double handful of models left to finish in the Eldar army I figured I'd do my usual batch painting process to get as many of the colors common to all the models done at the same time. At some point in the process I'll have to break them out into discrete groups to finish them off, but the blue, yellow and bone are all going to go on them in one big group.

I'd posted a pic of the models with the initial midnight blue, and this morning before work I got up and knocked out the rest of the blue process. After all the relevant bits were hit with midnight blue, I did three more drybrush passes with ultramarine blue, magic blue and ice blue followed by a guilliman blue wash. Next up will be all the bone color (leather brown > bleached bone > devlan mud > bleached bone), followed by the yellow (hot orange > fiery orange > golden yellow). Once that's in place it'll be detail work aplenty!

So far so good! Definitely on track to have the army done by the end of the week, then up on the auction block it'll go!

Eldar - Warp Spiders painted

In the home stretch now! Finished off the Warp Spiders this morning and snapped a few pics. I have to say that these are my least favorite models in the range - I feel the sculpts are just a little too chunky and static compared to the current plastics.

I went with a really deep blood red and bone as the main colors, similar to the Crimson Hunter but a tone darker overall. The heads needed something to help them pop so I went with a gold highlight and a black helmet. The weapon barrels and hoses were given a pass of jade green and scorpion green.

On the back I tried my hand at drawing in some spiderweb patterns which aren't brilliant, but they'll do the job. My buddy Dave suggested adding the spider-y aspect symbols on the webs, so I'm practicing drawing it before I try my hand at adding them to the models (and cleaning up a little of the sloppy webbing).

At this point there are exactly 13 models left to paint - a 5-strong unit of Wraithblades and a mess of characters. In order to keep the blue consistent I figured I'd do them all at the same time - at a certain point in the process I'll split them into smaller groups (or individuals), but for now it's a good way to get a big chunk of the color scheme out of the way all at once!