Dark Elf: Corsairs

To start things off with this.. the guy on the left there was the color scheme and artist rendering that was provided to me on how I should paint up this unit. I am not quite sure that I hit it exactly, but I really tried my best. So with that being said...

The last of the major units is finally finished! What a relief I can tell you! I have to be honest, but this was probably the worst unit to get done just due to the amount of angles, pieces, colors, etc that needed to be done for it. I only mean this in the way that it is extremely different than the rest of the army itself, and thus threw off my stride. Also the manner in which they were painted ( parts separate, painted, and then assembled ) drove me nuts for infantry models. Large models, I can see this happening, and am ok with it, but for Rank and File guys.. not so much. Less so when you have 50 of them to finish up! And I was just crazy enough to do them in a BATCH OF 50!!! What the hell was I thinking?

BUT.. that being said, they were a great unit to learn some new techniques on. Yeah yeah.. shouldn't be testing with clients models, but actually that is just how I roll so.. and in the end, they get better results because of it.. usually..

This was one of those times when they got a better result out of it.

One of the biggest areas that I have difficulty with ( and I think I am not alone in this task ) is to get the eyes done properly. Without making them look like the model is shocked, or droopy, or cross-eyed, or just plan old batty! After checking through google, and looking at some photos, I came across several places that just painted eyes in a completely different manner.

So what was the change? Well, normally I am painting the eyes up with the white being the base color, and then trying my hardest to get the black dot to line up in the middle, while touching the top and bottom of the eye socket, or else they look shocked with dilated pupils. The challenging part here is to line up that black dot in the middle. What I have seen others do however, is to base the eyes in black, and then dot the whites on the sides. When I first saw this, I was thinking "Really? Would that not be harder since the hardest part is to get the brush to hit those spots evenly enough as it is?". Surprisingly.. this is not the case. In actual fact, I am now finding that it is easier to hit the whites than the blacks. This is mostly because I am not aiming for the middle anymore, but just trying to fill in the sides of the eyes. So I have a gauge to work with which is the corners of the eyes.

Results? Well check for yourself, and let me know what you think..

For the rest of the models though the painting was not as "easy" to be honest. I did however again test out my ability to use the Airbrush on infantry models. I was able to get the Bronze, Green and Skin colors on the cloak done with just the airbrush. From here, I continued with normal brush for the washes and highlights, but I have to say that I am thankful that the airbrush I have is allowing me to get those aspects completed faster, and reducing the one aspect of the model I hate doing the most.. block coloring! So yay for that!

Colors used are for the most part the basic army standard color scheme. After chatting with the client last Saturday, we agreed that the underclothes would be purple, but not fully highlighted. The breastplate would be Bronze, but with some portions of it Silver. This was decided it would be better to have the belly aspect in silver, as the full Breastplate in silver was a bit much. The swords I did a bit darker than normal, only using the GW Boltgun Metal coloring here. I did wash them heavily with Vallejo Black Wash, and then redid the edges in Boltgun. I think the effect came out nicely, and I might be doing it more in the future also.

The rest was basic skins, purple, and such recipes seen previously with this army.

More photos below..