Happy new year

 Here we are in 2024. We made it, well done.

2023 was probably the worst year of my life from both a personal and professional perspective. I won't dwell on the negatives, other than to say we're through it and I hope never to repeat the experiences, but it was a year where I was reminded how fortunate I am to be surrounded by so many wonderful people.

With that done, let's move onto the goals for this year ...

40k: Saim Hann Eldar

Yes, it's finally time to get these moving! After spending time in 2020 and 2021 collecting all the old metal Eldar, I started them in early 2022 then put it on hold in a fit of pique when GW released new plastics and suddenly everyone was excited by Eldar, and I sulked. Apparently I'm a grown man.

Kings of War: The Midden, Dwarfs

I spent a lot of time building these but painting halted and I'm excited to get round to finishing them. They are repetitive sculpts, but with a few donations from good friends I've mixed up a few elements to break up the monotony of the seven sculpts in the box. The fact you can field a legal unit of 20 with only 16 models, and don't remove a model from the unit, gives great scope for vignettes.

Age of Sigmar: Hammerhal Aqsha, Cities of Sigmar

I was enamoured with the release, and ... well, you know the story. Man buys box, man builds box, man stops and moves to another project.

I have other plans as well, but with far less structure currently. So let's start here and see where it takes us.

Biel-Tan Farseer & Weapons Platform

This was a Secret Santa on our hobby Discord. Trying to match the recipient's scheme was incredibly difficult. I only had two blurry pictures of models in a transport case to work from. Are they Biel Tan? Mymeara? Damnit. 

Educated guess took me toward Bien Tan, but I noticed my recipient had used more teal colour on cloaks, so I leaned into that, added some gold and yellow details and there we go.

Gemstones

I needed a scheme for painting gems on my Eldar. The easiest way to try it is on larger shapes that have a similar surface shape, and I had a couple of wraithguard heads sitting around. I was amused that the result ended up looking like anime eyes at this scale. Heh.

For the green version it was a basecoat of black, Pthalo Green base, bottom highlight was Pthalo Green/Slimer Green, Slimer Green, Slimer Green/Warm Yellow, white edge then Warm Yellow glaze, top highlight was Pale Blue,

For the blue it was Red/Pthalo Blue to make a purple, the Pthalo Blue and white for the brighter colours, and a little of the Pale Blue in the final highlights.

This approach gave me a useful idea quickly of how I wanted the colours to work against red and white.

Footnote for the Eldar purists. No, I know these aren't gemstones they're instrument clusters because they don't have a gemstone setting ring around them.

Eldar Guardian squad

 That's the first squad completed. Glad I found the black backdrop as it really helps the colour show accurately, compared to my terrible efforts at white balance on a white backdrop.

There's a pleasing coherency to the group, and that's what I need to keep running through the next forty of them.

 

Eldar Trader

Another Rogue Trader classic, the trader. I wanted to paint it to tie with the normal Guardians, but give him a more cultured feel. What says "fancy" more than striped trousers? Added a little detail to the cuff and then we've opted for white and blue hair to match up with the helmets.

 

Taal Spellsinger

I do love a musician in a command group. This one was a lot of fun. Think at this point I've nailed the feel for the rank and file troops and they're starting to get a little faster.

 

Eoan Fireheart

 

 

Tinboy

The idea that Orks would construct an Eldar Guardian lookalike is just another reason to love that late 80s/early 90s fun element to the Warhammer universe. Such a daft idea, and a required part of any oldhammer army.

 They only made three models in this range - Eldar, Squat and Space Marine (https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tinboyz).

Avele Swifteye

Taken a while to nail down a scheme I was happy with, but finally starting to finish some of the core models for the new Eldar army. So now we should be moving forward a little quicker.

 

Eldar Guardian

 I have quite an ambitious project planned for 2022. This is the first test model to see how that goes. It isn't based, as it's going to a friend to join his army, but overall I'm happy with the colours as a first draft.

Things that will change. More oomph in the red required. Gems need more contrast so I'll be pushing the darker edges to really drive that home. Undecided on how to paint the weaponry, as I'd like to go metallics because there's so many weapons, and it will be quicker, but there's always the lure of NMM.

Very happy with the purples and blues in the shadow of the white. It gives me a nice colour and I want to do more of that. The boots had a recolour, as the original brown was much too red and conflicted with the armour, so swapping to something with blue is a better fit.

 More WIP shots this time.