Sunday 30 April 2017

Power from Paint: A guide to painting Dark Eldar Vehicles

Welcome back to the Webway! One of the first articles I wrote for the Vault was a painting guide for Imperial Guard (mainly so I would have a handy reference for the next time I decide to paint some reinforcements), and I thought it would be useful to have a similar set of notes for my Dark Eldar vehicles.

I remembered to take a few work in progress shots of one my Venoms so I can illustrate the notes.

Time to bust out the paints!

So first of all prime the assembled model with Army Painter Wood Brown spray:

Primed
The flags have been magnetised for ease of transport (to avoid breakages, the curse of Dark Eldar models), and the top splinter cannon is also removable for painting. Note there's no clear plastic canopy piece in place, and no pilot model (as I've got something special planned for this model).

As usual, its a mix of paint ranges depending on what is in my paint box.

Stage 1: Paint the chassis:
i) Overbrush Skrag Brown
ii) Overbrush Kislev Flesh
iii) Edge highlight with Bleached Bone
iv) Hit the extreme pointy bits with Scar White

Chassis done
Stage 2: The metal work
i) Basecoat Warplock Bronze
ii) Add a layer or two of Hashut Copper
iii) Edge highlight Chainmail
iv) Wash with Biel-tan Green shade.

Very metal!
The next stages have been started in the picture above (i.e. the details)

Skulls
i) Basecoat Rakarth Flest
ii) Layer Bleached Bone, avoiding recesses
iii) Wash with Argrath Earthshade
iv) Reapply Bleached Bone where necessary
v) Highlight with Scar White

Gems/Spirit Stones
i) Basecoat Knarloc Green
ii) Wash Biel-tan Green

Flags
i) Basecoat Mechrite Red
ii) Apply a couple of layers of Scab Red
iii) Edge highlight Fire Dragon Bright

Canopy
i) Paint the underside of the canopy with Abaddon Black
ii) *Carefully* paint the canopy struts with Warplock Bronze
iii) Paint the canopy struts with Hashut Copper (still being careful....)
iv) Glue the canopy to the chassis (small dabs of superglue are sufficient)

And done! It's a nice and simple paint scheme so each vehicle can be cranked out in an hour or two (which is great as a typical Dark Eldar list uses a lot of such vehicles). Enjoy the pictures of the finished model.

Right side
Front view

Left view
On a more general note, the painting for Mayhem is now complete. Next time will be some shots of the completed army (and if you are lucky some pictures from a recent practice game). Until next time faithful readers.

2 comments:

  1. Great post Bryan. It is always good to see how other people go about painting. The green wash over the bronze gives a nice effect. The tinted canopy looks really good. I would not have known how to do that.

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  2. Thanks Amit. Always appreciate it when you take the time to comment.

    I'm really pleased with how the army is looking; especially the massed skimmers.

    With regards to the canopy, that was an experiment which is half the fun of the hobby. It does look pretty good.

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