Dark Elf: Beastmaster on Manticore

Another monster entry for this army.. and what a monster it is.. this beauty was a royal pain in the backside to paint up, but was made a lot easier with the assistance of the Airbrush. Without it, I would probably still be working on it. And it probably would not look half as good.

Biggest problem with this model, bar none, is the fact that it is a large metal miniature. In the beginning I was attempting to hold it while painting it, but holding from the base was not enough, and from the model took paint away. In the end, I had to tac it to the Army Painter dipping can to use as a base. With half a pack of stickytac holding it to the can, I had an easier time with the painting of the model.

Skin was interesting though, as I had wanted it to be darker, but not black. What ended up happening was a technique I had not tried before, but will give it a go further in the future. Starting with the mid tone coloring ( in this case VGC Dark Fleshtone ), and then highlighting and shadowing it with more browns. This is not new per say, but normally when I am shadowing I use mostly washes to achieve the effect I am looking for, however this time I used VGC Charred Brown as a shadow color. It was hidden in the back of my paint drawer, and turned out to be the perfect color to shadow Dark Fleshtone here. Again, everything was used via the airbrush, and I really worked out some detail work out of it for a change.

Highlights included Vallejo Air Color ( VAC ) Radome Tan, and VAC Khaki. Both at different times, and at different ratios that I could not replicate even if I wanted to try. Thankfully it is a monster, so I don't really have to either.

Once all this was done, then I did some slight Sepia/Ogryn washes in a few places just to highlight or bring out the richness in a couple of colors, but no devlen was used on the skin.. which was shocking! Normally it is my go to color for these areas.

Rider was done like normal colors. Again this was a pain, as I am used to holding the model quite close to the brush itself, but because of its placement, and the weight of the model, my comfort zone for painting was off. I am still shocked that the eyes came out as well as they did, but again I took a different approach to painting them than normal. Normal I paint everything white, and then try to aim a black dot somewhere in the middle. This time, taking advice from other blogs, I reversed that. Starting with everything being black, I aimed to get the white sections put into the eye sockets. And I have to say, Emo goth makeup appearance aside, it turned out much better than my normal method. Guess those Golden Daemon winners do know a thing or 2.. :)

Base was just done in browns and greys. Proper basing materials will be added on top, but didn't want to leave what was already on the base in primer black.

Total time on this model was close to 6 hrs. Longer than the Hydra or the Dark Pegasus, but worth it in the end.

Corsairs are up next.. real big batch of 50 of them!!! Will see how I get on with them.. I expect this to take a while since they are complicated sculpts, and are all in different states of being assembled also.

More pictures below..