So so many of them... Dark Rider / Warlock update

well, kids been behaving this last few days, so i managed to rake up ALOT of hours worth of paint. I manage to ;

- Finish all Horses skin
- Finish all Horses Hair/eyes/teeth
- Finish the Latex boots on the riders
- Finish the purple part of the trouser on the riders
- Basecoated all the remaining metal on the Warlock riders and the horses
- Basecoat the skin on the warlocks riders.

Alot is done, but so much more left to do. A goal i'd like to accomplish is finish those before next weekend, so i can start on the executionner and/or Shrine. Because yes, i'm considering using a shrine, and a Dragon, for that matter...

But before getting ahead of myself, lets see what i accomplished.

5 of the warlocks as they stand right now.

Side shots of the same 5.

Have to say, when i started painting the horse, i didnt consider how they'd look with a "blueish" rider on them... now that its half painted, i have second though. Might dissapear once i start highlighting the skin and they don't look like smurf riding on purple horse from "my little poney"..

On this one, i went a little further and started working on the metal on the weapon, to see how it' would look. So much more fun to paint large weapon like that instead of little dagger like witches, i actually enjoyed painting them. looking forward to doing the rest.

Left to do ;

- Finish Skin. There's about 4 layer to add before i can call it finished. Right now, its only basecoated and washed.
- Decide on the front plate. I quite frankly have no clue what to do with it. I considered red, but i'm keeping red for blood... purple? could be worst. I tried painting it blue like the rest of my metal, but its a too large and flat area for me to do any good job...
- Paint weapons. Gonna be easy, and fun! those weapon actually made me look forward to paint my 20-30 Executionners.
- Pain the hair. Gonna be white, like the rest, but i'm thinking about adding more pinkish hue to it... i did add a bit of purple to the base of the horse hair, and i liked it, so i think i'll add that small tint to the rest of my model to divide the hair from the face/crown/whatever.
- Paint the hoof! look simple enough, but for some reason, not looking forward to it... a simple black might be too boring... i'll need to think it through.
- Figure out a color for the little chainmail line under the trouser. No clue what color to paint it... i tried white on a few of them, kinda make it look like fur... could work.

Looking at all that is left to paint, not sure i can achieve it in a week... But time is running out.

And then... Cavalry!

Almost feel like i'm planning to play Bretonnia. For the past, oh, two weeks, i been painting horse. Yes, horse. Not sure if anyone know how boring they are to paint or how i hate painting horse, but, i had to, so i been painting non-stop 20 of the new Dark Elves horses.

Quite frankly, i'm almost starting to enjoy painting them, as i've found a nice way to paint them, and actually make them look decent from a distance, and up close. 10 Dark Riders and 10 Warlocks. That's roughly 500 pts off my list i need to paint. Once those are finished, they'll go join the Cauldron, the Sorceress and the 20 Witches already completed. I'm tempted to add the Kharibdyss to the painted list, but i'm not 100% happy about him yet.

Before showing picture, lets talk about the idea behind thems. I basically had two goal ;
#1 : they had to follow the limited palette used for the rest of the army. So far, so good ; The horse skin is using grey which is also used on my Witches and Cauldron metal, and purple, which is used on my Witches hair and jewelry.
#2 : it had to be simple, but still looking good. It's not 100% perfect, but quite frankly, it been awhile since i had a model with such color transition that actually looked good.

As you can see, i started with a pretty much grey scale horse, and added purple to the horse. Then i finished him with white hair, to go with the Witches and eventually the Warlocks/Dark Rider's hair.

The final result is pretty nice imho, especially the pure white eyes, which make them really... weird, in a good way.

Obviously, it isnt finished yet ; i still need to paint the front plate, the harness, the hoof, the gum, the rider's legs...

But there's so many of them

Goal for 2014

2014 is less than 24 hours old, and its time to set myself some goal. Last year goal were far from completed, with a mediocre 29% success rate.

This year, i'm gonna focus on what i really want to accomplish, instead of just aiming at completing everything under progress...

2013 Recap

last year, i set myself 24 goals, aiming for a 60% success.
http://enkiel.blogspot.ca/2012/12/goal-for-2013.html

Lets see how i fared first

Warmachine 1/1
1 goal which was not to buy new model until everything is painted. I resisted, and despite not painting anything, at least i didn't buy anything. Success

40k 0/3
Paint a few model from my Dark Eldar. In the end, i didn't paint dark eldar, i instead started a new Grey Knights army. Fail X3

Fantasy 4/13
Nurgle 3/3
Finishing my army + presentation tray for ND Open. Success
Play at least 10 games. Success. I didnt play them before the tournament, which bite me in the ass, but at least i played with the army.

Ogre 1/4
Well, this gonna be painfull, as i didn't really touch them, except to play with them once in awhile....

Finish Stonehorn. Failed. Didn't touch him at all.
new BSB. Failed. Didn't even start thinking about it
Tattooes. Failed. No real reason.
10 Games. Success!

O&G 0/6
Even worst than my Ogres, those werent touched, not even for playing....

Terrain 2/7

 adding terrain to 40k Failed x2
Basecoat or paint 40k building Failed x2
Build and Paint 2 Tabletop Failed
Build and Paint 2 tabletop forest + add another terrain to my fantasy table. Success. I call it success because i fixed my forest problem by purchasing 4 already painted GW Forest, and also added a used skullmantle big ass terrain to my roster.

Total is 7/24 for a very bad 29%... Lets sets some goal that are actually possible, even with a "i dont wanna see anything warhammer related for the next 6 months" phase...

Dark Elves ; Presentation Tray Part 1

Lately i got a bit burnt out from painting (after less than 10 witches, its a bit frightening), so i did other things, like playing XCom and Dota 2. That get old fast so i started another part of the project to ignite a new spark ; my presentation tray.

My goal is pretty simple ; either the Dark elves are about to invade a very quiet little city in the middle of nowhere, or they just left it ablaze, not sure yet.

First thing first, placing the different building ;

I wanted some kind of city on a cliff, so went for a 3 level city, containing 4 building ;
a windmill
2 hourse
a forge

I never really managed to get much done with styrofoam, so i did some quick test on how i wanted to do the cliff

Basically big rocks. I'll add small one to fill in the hole, but that's about it. doesnt look like much, but once a bit more is done, it's starting to take shape!

I'm still undecided if i want to keep the tray ,as its very big, so it's stalling for now, but i'm hoping to finish at least building it in the next 2 weeks.

Dark Elves : Cauldron of Blood WIP

Spent roughly 10 hours on the model so far, and i can say its about 60% done. My airbrush's needle finally gave up on me, so i got a major setback to finish the rest.

I tried to use as much of the current army color as possible, without adding a new one. So far? So good. As you will see, the color i used on my NMM (can it be even called NMM anynore) is... um... i don't know, i think the blue and the white are a bit too contrasting on large surface. But still, i'm happy with the result, its all that count!

Dark elf : Witches #2 finished!

Today is a good day. I'm realizing that i really like painting that kind of NMM and end up spending hours without even realizing it. It's always fun when that happens.

So today i finished my second Witches, and i'm once again thrilled with the final result.

Exact same look as #1

Dark Elf ; First Witch done !

Last night i painted until very, very, very late, and managed to finish my first witches. I have to say, i'm pretty happy with the result. At first i wasnt sold on the NMM, but after adding some edge highlight on the weapon, it really helps pop the blue out of the weapon.

The Metal Bra came out pretty nice too. It doesn't really look that much like metal, so it might not annoy painting judge too much.

Sorry for the blue tint, i can't get that out of the picture without changing too much the color

Dark Elf ; NMM Part 2

That test was just a tease for myself, i HAD to try it on a model, and i did.

I have to admit, from afar, i wasn't sure, but its very quickly growing on me. On this next model,  i did the shoulder pad, the weapon and her crown. the crown is very lightly highlighted, still undecided if i want to go lighter or not.

Dark Elf ; NMM Part 1

Today, i finally had enough time to sit and try the color i wanted to use for my NMM. I wanted to try a "cold" NMM, going for dark blue up to white. The effect is imho not so bad, for my first attempt at that type of NMM.

First attempt. its not 100% perfect, but if i could pull that quality for my 35 witches, i'd be happy.

Weapon test #1. Obviously, its not perfect ; the transition is just average, and the white line dividing the two is pretty wavy. But from a safe distance (say, a feet), it looks perfect. Especially when you consider i'll be painting all my witches metal that way (Weapon, crown, and yes, Bra and Panties).

.... wait, bra and panties?

Yes, bra and panties. Sound weird to paint them that way, but seriously, those witches are some weird pissed off girls, so it would just barely surprise me if they had their private parts locked in metal panties.

Part that will be NMM painted are basecoated, and a quick cut'n'paste job ;