5 posts tagged “elves”
I'm posting the progress of my elf army over on the Reaper Miniatures discussion forum because, well, they're Reaper miniatures, they're for a Reaper game, and it's fun.
I posted a quick update stating that I had used epoxy putty (green stuff) to mount the one-piece figures and since they didn't really look any different they could use their imagination.
And there's always one.
A very jovial post said that my loyal fans demanded pictures of the green stuff. Never one to disappoint, here's what they got.
But arranging the figures did show that one of the fairies had a wing malfunction. The giant eagle fell over after I took the original picture and clipped one of the wings. I can repair it while working on the rest of the figures. Better now than later!
So all the figures in this picture are ready for primer. Let's see if the weather cooperates this weekend.
No, it doesn't have a name yet. It's going by the clever code name 'elf army',
Here's the combination of primed and unprimed minis. I didn't get to filling in the gaps last night so that's something to do before moving on. Some of the unprimed ones are single cast (no assembly needed) so I can prime those whilst working on the others.
These are the elves that started it all. Mostly grunts there's a sergeant and a warlord in there somewhere. And I think a cleric. They kind of blur together when they're all in one place.
Got the reds pretty much done and started on the metallics. At least, figured out what will be silver and what will be gold and got the silver started.
Metals will be a combination of silver and gold. Technically both are neutrals so I'm good with having them both on there. Then it's just cleanup and I can call them done.
Still working on these little guys. I did get an idea on how to paint what from someone else who suffered through painting them so I'm well on my way to being done.
For those who don't paint minis, red is one of the more difficult colors to paint. It just doesn't cover and then you have to be careful highlighting it so it doesn't go all pink on you. I stopped tonight after getting everything red I wanted red. Trying to do more would have been .. bad. As it is I have a little cleanup to do where red went places I didn't want red.
I'm saying 'red' a lot but that's because it was what I painted tonight.
Here's a better shot of the violet skin and stuff.
For those who want to know, you get a good deep red by painting it another color first. Red by itself doesn't cover very well so you end up with splotchy coverage. I painted all the red areas a rust brown that has fantastic coverage. Then the red only had to darken that. It's what we call "a trick of the trade".
The person who sent these want them done in what is called the Fire Triad. It goes through oranges and yellow. So I'll start bringing the highlights up to that yellow, probably starting tomorrow. Then it's just the metallics and some detailing, like the horns on some of them, buckles, etc.
The end is in sight.
I did more than just these tonight but I didn't get pictures of one thing and the other isn't quite all together yet. So you're stuck with my WIP shots.
I coordinated an army round-robin kind of thing. For those who signed up, here's how it is going. The first person sends out four minis to each person in the round along with a color scheme. Each person has two months to paint them and send them back. Then the next person does the same thing and so on. This one takes more of a time commitment than a simple single miniature to be done in two months. *
These are from a Reaper Warlord Darkspawn army. I'm not familiar with this army so I was at a loss as to how to paint them correctly. I got some great advice from my buddy Shakandra so I have a much better idea of how to make these look right.
The fluff said they had either violet or purple skin. I can't remember right now. But the color scheme for this army is flame red so I needed to make the skin not clash. That's why the subtle.
The skin color uses undercoating. That means I put a coat of purple down and the brought the skin tones up on top of it. That tints the skin colors without having to mix the purple into every layer. I like this. It's my newest favorite technique.
The hair isn't finished. That's just the base coat. I'm going to take it up to a very light cream white so that vivid marigold is only in the deep shadows. That's another technique I'm liking but still practicing.
Once skin and hair are complete it's on to armor. Armor will be a neutral because of all the colors on there already. And I'm tempted to use my 'bad guy' leather colors. I found that using the tanned skin colors really creep me out when used for anything but skin. However using them for leather on the bad guy figures just makes them that much badder, in my opinion.
