Dark Elves (and first attempt at a topic)

My first decision was to do a Red army, since i've known two pure Khorne and Blood Angels players, I had never before wanted to do the same. I wanted to start a Fantasy Battle army, happy as I am with my 40K choices. Looking through the fantasy range, I most liked the Dark Elf range. Certainly not everything; silly posed shades and assassins, and i've always hated the spread eagle/bikini combo for both the witches and harpies. DE discussion boards held a general consensus that the greatsword weilding Executioners were not worth their points unless used in a specific army build. Another model aspect i dislike is the flying hair/ponytail. I understand the need to draw attention to, and highlight characters within units, but scaled three foot tall ponytails is not the way to do it.

My plans got derailed when 8th came out and Chis asked if i would trade models with him; skaven for high elves.

This left me with a very specific army build, and many models i had no plans for using, so i set about figuring out someting to do with them, and also a way to blend those models with the DE range that I wanted to draw from.

This is a heavily converted army, with few models done 'out of the box'. Hand in hand with my army choice, it's mostly the DE Warrior models which are unconverted.

The project began Jan 2011, and as of Jan 2012 there are 30 spearmen half painted, 18 Black Guard (halbreds) converted from Swordmasters (conehead greatswords), 5 Dark Riders, 1 sorcerer, 2 beastmaster, Bolt Thrower and Team, Lord and Lord on Cold One primed, as well as 24 Dryads awaiting conversion/construction into Harpys (well actually living shadows i will proxy for harpys).

After Gottacon i'll finish up those spearmen, and get pics of the shadows in progress...

Pics! PICS!! You're so damn good at the painting part we gotta see the pics. Plus I'd like to see your conversions.

Starting with this double Island of Blood set, I had to convert all these *cone head*, *feather waving* models into sleek, mean killers....

I got a Warrior box at the same time as the Big sets, to have a few DE bitz to work with, since I built them as xbowmen, and had about 18 spears to use, they went towards scratch building Halbreds for my Black Guard.


My brother, who wanted to get a River Troll box, was only going to use two of the three, and so traded me the third for my second (redundant) Gryhpon that he's since converted into a Giant Raven.

I'm having trouble uploading pics at the moment, but i've got some pics of my unfinished stuff that i'll get up soon so you can see some of my processes.



The helmets had to GO, along with the plumes and GIANT ponytails. Mission 1.

Try uploading to something like photobucket, then just linking to the pics, its what I do.

OK, got a photobucket hosting album....

https://s1156.photobucket.com/albums/p561/Handsome_Moose/


no real closeups of my xbows, and there is a pic of the Gamezone miniatures Dark Elf Chariot.


With the Drow theme, i've considered what animals they have access to; Suberranian. so the Manticore scheme is based on Underdark tunnels emerging onto mountain tops (golden eagle), while the lizards are all a pale theme to represent their subterranian lives. I also intentionally painted a bit of different paint schemes on the chariot lizards since they seem a bit different species.

Love the colours and painting jobs. Sorta hate you cause it is so good too.
The 7th pic, of your mage I think? Love that one, especially the crisp colouring and the jewels.
Would love a front pic of your cold one knights, as they look awesomely painted as well.

Yah, with such large model counts, I've concentrated on repeating my painting steps the same way every time, and keeping strong themes.

I'm using red for the armour plates; I'd like to give the feel of giant insect carapace, scavenged from the Underdark. I'm also trying to impart a feeling of utility and plainness with the dark steel, and plain brown leather and cloth.

The Characters with higher status a. Usually are wearing heavier armour, which naturaly confers a more red appearance, but I can add to their sense of weath by painting the cloth, which adds the brown to the lesser models, black or (in the case of mages) red.

I've also tried to strictly adhere to colour themes for materials and status

I've assembled a couple of test models that I will be using as Harpies. I'm using the dryad models (tree daemons) to make flowing shadow daemons. specifically i'm shaving off all the leaves, rounding all the branchy knobs, and the tree growing out of their backs, i'm flipping upside down and shaving to make streaming shadow substance. this looked a bit sparse, so with extra bits i'll be adding a second 'steamer' from between the shoulder blades. The model comes with a hair piece that sticks to the back of the head. it is very leafy being at the top. I found by flipping it upside down, it looked less like hair, hid the scraped leaves and exposed the underside showing lots of flowing branches!

The painting of these 24 models, i intend to be the fastest I've ever painted 24 models. should take me aobut 1-2h total for the 24 shadows.

1. Prime black
2. Directional spray grey
3. Light grey drybrush (this will take the bulk of the time)
4. Dip ink to restore a really black look with only hints of highlight. (I'll either buy a very black Minwax or use my India Ink, test to come when they are all assembled)

So with the Inks done on the spearmen




I'm waiting for a longer session to do some of the highlights.

in the mean time, i've assembled my first test models for my Shadows (used as Harpys)

Prime black and being impatient I did the highlight spray in white, cuz the building used the last of my grey. I'll likely wash them, drybrush, and wash again to fade out that white.






If these photos don't post you can see these through my previous photobucket linc