Craftworld Aiam-Varr

[Captain Coolpants]

That's a super paint job on that model though. So absolutely don't get disheartened if you can't get it quite as smooth

[Tyriks]

So I have been making slow progress. Its hard for me to paint during the week but tomorrow I might be able to get the first five rangers done, more or less. I used to hate highlighting but I've enjoyed doing the volumetric highlights on the cloaks, maybe just because I am so happy with the results. I haven't taken many pictures but here's a preview. Still need highlights on the bronze and leather and some general cleanup, and I'm sure there are details I'll decide to pick out once it is more done.

Edited March 3, 2022 by Nemesor Tyriks

[MithrilForge]

Looking good there Bud, ( Also I love the warpaint on the combat Thumb  )

That Blue works really well with the Bone! , I'm glad you're Pushing through em slowly but surely!

 

Cheers, Mithril

[Tyriks]

So, I have been making progress, just very slowly. I still have not been enjoying the Rangers and Shroudrunners. I'm not sure if I would be happier if they are awful and I never use them (and therefore never want more) or if they're amazing and I use them all the time (and the annoyance was worth something). I have one squad of Rangers almost fully done, just need to wash the bronze for the guns (I think), and the other is mostly done. I wasn't happy with my original leather and didn't feel like experimenting more on these models so I just went with Snakebite Leather for simplicity's sake.

 

I started on my Fire Dragons also. Seeing paint on these, they don't look as good as I remember, haha. Might have to convert some new ones after all. I'm struggling with how to paint them. Normally I think the warm bone color and cool blue balance out nicely but there's no cool colors associated with Fire Dragons so I'm not sure if I can accomplish the same kind of color balance. I may do black or dark gray helmets to represent smoke and see if I prefer that. Here are some of the color tests I wasn't super thrilled with.

 

I also started base coating my Warlocks. The weather is supposed to be good the next few days so I should be able to finally prime my Wave Serpent, too, and finally get that started. I have built a ton of the new stuff and a few older things so once I plow through the Shroudrunners I'll have a lot more to work on.

[The Yncarne]

@Nemesor: I've got that same mini painted up in a virtually identical scheme. I think the red can be toned down with ink, but think it looks good as-is.

[MithrilForge]

In regards to the Fire dragons, I'd do orange bodies ,the helmet in bone with your signature blue on the crest (that is if you were trying to tie them in with the rest of your force )... "OR" paint blue on all those lil gems running up beside the crest of the helm and make the actual crest Black....

If you do that the bronze guns will contrast nicely with the orange bodysuit.

Note* what orange colours are you using ?... Troll slayer orange will probably be your best base colour here

here is a pic of my mates Fire Dragons from Artel-W he's working on at the moment (it's troll slayer orange)

Cheers, Mithril

[Tyriks]

The paints I used here are ProAcryl Orange, Red and Burnt Orange, respectively. Pretty much all of my base paints are ProAcryl these days. Still use some Contrast paints and GW washes, though.

[Lysimachus]

These are lovely, the blue and bone work really well together.

 

For the Fire Dragons, what about keeping the bone on the body and bronze gun, but fading a light blue into an orange on the head. It would tie in the Craftworld colour but also look like a gas flame which would fit the Aspect?

[Mazer Rackham]

For the Fire Dragons, try inverting your colour scheme.

 

Blue uniforms, bone helmets, keep the bronze guns.  This will keep the helmet colour warm, make the models visually different at a glance, and maintain palette cohesion.

 

My tuppence.

[MithrilForge]

The paints I used here are ProAcryl Orange, Red and Burnt Orange, respectively. Pretty much all of my base paints are ProAcryl these days. Still use some Contrast paints and GW washes, though.

 

Well I like the first one which is the straight orange, I'd use that on the Body and as I suggested -  bone and blue helmet, 

I only say that scheme in the sense of you still want them to look like fire Dragons but still have a connection to your main Army theme...

But lets see what you do with all these colours at your disposal.

I heard ProAcryl are good paints  ?? ...

 

Mithril

[Tyriks]

I've had a busy couple weeks. I've done some painting, but not as much as I would like. But I have finally gotten a few games in over the last few weeks, which has helped kindle my motivation.

 

First, I finished my rangers for now. I need to pick out minor details and do edge highlights on the guns but I'm very happy with how the cloaks turned out. This picture sucks but I just needed a quick picture, I'll slap them back in the light box at some point.

 

I'm also calling these done for now. These models made it really hard to want to paint so even though I haven't done any highlighting on 4 of them I'm moving on for sanity's sake. I'm sure when I have more painted it'll be less annoying to come back and fix them up a bit but I just need to move on.

 

Fire Dragons are well underway and the Wave Serpent just started getting a basecoat. Warlocks are all over the place at the moment but the Farseer is the only thing left I'm concerned about, because it'd be easy to rush it which I don't want to do but I do want to finish this vow and maybe do another. We'll see.

 

Game play wise, I am loving this codex. I have always loved fast armies that hit hard, but the armies I have played most the last five years are Necrons and Thousand Sons so not at all that. I have a small Dark Eldar army that I played for a bit but I couldn't get into it - despite that they were strong it just didn't click for me. But Eldar I feel like I really get even though I have a lot to learn with them. List building is still tough for me because I want to just bring a bunch of stuff I can't fit. My next game is probably going to try going troops free and just going full Aspect Warriors in a Vanguard with Avengers to act as troops. Can't wait to play again!

[Tyriks]

So, I couldn't make my scheme work on a lot of models. Everything large and some random infantry just didn't look good. So I decided to try an airbrush again. I still couldn't make it work so I just gave up and started over. This scheme still has some kinks to work out but so far it's MUCH more visually striking (at least in person) and I can still finish a model faster.

These Guardians were the first test models. They were just Talassar blue airbrushed over white. I didn't thin it and I used a LOT of paint. I like them fine for troops but decided to try something a bit more refined.

So for this I primed gray and then drybrushed white, and then airbrushed with less paint. I really like it so far. It's incredibly vibrant in person, I'm not sure why. I've used talassar blue a few times before and it never popped like this.

So I tried this. I did a sort of reverse drybrush. Primed white, heavy drybrush with light gray, moderate with a medium gray, light with a dark gray, then sprayed over it. It looks much better than my initial attempt at a blue glow!

I've already used this airbrush more than the one I tried out 4/5 years ago. I don't know why but it feels like something really clicked this time that didn't before. I'm trying some zenithals now but I don't have a good picture yet. I'll post more when I do.

Edited May 24, 2022 by Nemesor Tyriks

[Tyriks]

Here's my zenithal test. I primed mechanicus standard gray, then sprayed white. Then the contrast. This was a fraction of the work of drybrushing but looks really good to me so this might be the way I move forward.

Lighting was suboptimal, sorry

Edited May 27, 2022 by Nemesor Tyriks

[Tyriks]

Took a bit of a HH detour for a bit but spent some of the weekend working on my Eldar again. I have some Guardians done aside from basing and I've worked on my Autarch but I don't have pictures of those.

I spent a lot of time trying to make vehicles look good reliably. Since I'm using contrast for the blue that's been a real problem. I couldn't get consistent smooth results so I tried a few different colors with normal paints. I can't match the vibrancy of the contrast but I just might have to accept my vehicles will be a different shade of blue.

I did get some good results using the Artis Opus "drybrushing" method to paint wave serpents. I did two in different colors trying to find the closest match. I've been using this technique on my SoH to great result so I figured, why not use it here?

The one on the left is brighter and more vibrant so I settled on that one.

Here it is after picking out other parts. I might look for a metallic pink paint to replace the cockpit, right now it's just Volupus Pink. But that works in the meantime. This technique took maybe an hour and a half start to finish (not including drying times when I worked on other stuff) so it looks great to me for the amount of work, and I enjoy doing it. So I think this is how I'll move forward with everything vehicle sized. For stuff like War Walkers and Jetbikes I'll probably do the vehicle this way but the driver with contrast to tie it all together.

My wife got me a great architect lamp for my desk and I have to say, proper lighting makes a world of difference. I set it up after taking these pictures and immediately noticed splotches of blue I missed on the black parts.

[Tyriks]

I ended up having a bit of time last night so I blocked in the black and white parts on this Wraithlord. I'm undecided on the Blade color but I'm leaning towards pink power blade style, which I've never really done so it'll be a challenge but I think that's what will look best.

Hopefully I have time to start tonight. Still need to decide on the color of the sword's handle and how I want to highlight the black.

[TrawlingCleaner]

That's some rad looking progress, Tyriks! I use Volopous Pink for my power weapons in my Eldar force too!

Spoiler

 

 

[Tyriks]

Is it just over white? Highlighted white? Looks great

[Tyriks]

Had a bit of time so I tried to paint the sword. It turned out better than I feared but worse than I'd hoped. Probably overall better than I should have expected. The blend is ok but my ability to edge highlight remains subpar.

I think I'm OK with it. Lintara the Hellmaiden inches closer to complete. I'll have to prime the next batch to work on soon.

[TrawlingCleaner]

15 hours ago, Nemesor Tyriks said:

Is it just over white? Highlighted white? Looks great

It is indeed! You've done a great job here, as someone with shaky hands the middle bits of the blades are the hardest parts for me!

[Tyriks]

I've been struggling to motivate myself to paint and build lately but I got a decent amount done over the weekend anyway. I built one of my two Fire Prisms during a work webinar:

I started painting over my previous attempt on Jain Zar and some Dire Avengers (bonus progress on my second Wave Serpent in the background):

Made progress on my Farseer:

And added worldrunes to the first Wave Serpent:

Still not great at the freehanding but I am absolutely getting better. I need to paint the turret weapons and then I think I can call this done.

[Tyriks]

I had a little time to paint last night so I did the white helmets on Jain Zar and the Dire Avengers. I am hopeful I can finish the DAs tonight, but I need to decide how to paint cloth. Maybe keep it purple since that'll look good with the blues and pinks.

I unfortunately didn't take a picture of my progress on Jain Zar, but that was substantially less work than the DAs anyway. No idea how im going to tackle her hair yet.

[Tyriks]

Didn't have as much motivation as I hoped last night. Still made a little progress.

Unlikely to have time tonight but I'm off tomorrow so hopefully I can finish some units off and start new stuff. I just picked up some metal Warp Spiders so maybe I'll start fixing them up and get them primed.

[TrawlingCleaner]

These are looking so rad, Tyriks! I absolutely love the colour combo and I'm looking forward to seeing how these come out.

Great work!

[Tyriks]

Bit of progress this weekend. The Avengers just need some metal trinkets and details picked out and maybe a bit of cleanup here and there, then I can start basing them.

Blocked in some more on Jain Zar. I'm not sure if her triskele should have metallic blades or pink crystal ones. I'm leaning towards metal at the moment.

Also made some progress on the Farseer. I painted the cloth on him mostly black so he stands out since he's the overall leader of the Craftworld armies. I might repaint the banners when I have more practice at freehanding because neither turned out great, but at tabletop distance it's good enough for now.

I really want to start painting my Fire Prism but I told myself I need to finish units before I start new ones because I am really bad at finishing stuff. I think it's easy to rush through basecoating and feel like I'm making more progress but then never actually finishing units (and filling my workspace with unfinished projects), so I'm fighting that tendency.

[Tyriks]

Started building my Swooping Hawks out of Scourges. Any suggestions on helmets? I don't want to use Scourge heads because theyll just look like Scourges. Maybe Guardian helmets will be best.