Been busy trying to get content out and more regular. Thankfully am now caught up on most of my commissions. I have a huge space marine commission left and several Eldar ones that will be given to me in the next few months as they are assembled.
Wave Serpents, I have been commissioned to do a Eldar Army in stages as the owner gets them prepped. The latest part of this vast army is the wave serpents.
The models came to me with the red and black base already applied. Most had a metal dry brush on the engines and exhaust points.
The main part where I have been asked to focus on is the detail work. My client on this project has given me a good amount of artistic flexibility but only within a certain space.
The models scheme needs to be close to the pictures on the Codex or Box covers. The client through out the project is given regular photo updates as I move to different stages.
One of the bigger areas right out of the gate was making sure all the reds matched. I did some highlighting, blending with Dragon Red and Pure Red from army painter to achieve this goal.
The model come primed in pure red primer from army painter.
Next I applied black lines.
The markings on the Wave Serpents was a are that changed multiple times on the suggestion table. We would settle on one style then adjust to a different style. These models are being matched into an existing army that the owner didn't originally paint.
After looking to picture of the existing models, Eldar Codex, Box covers and random google searching we rested on a two black markings just on the wing tips.
I was able to add the second markings pretty easily. The Silverline air brush gives me alot of control on the width and speed of the paint sprayed out. This allowed me to put them on without having to get to crazy on masking, the interesting factor to this job is I kept getting model added. This commission being completed am still expecting a few more Wave Serpents to land on my desk, this is a huge reason as to why the scheme is simple but solid in application. We wanted something that could be repeated with little room for error.
Once all the main coats where done, I moved on to oil washing the lines into the Wave Serpents. I applied gloss varnish to the models to protect the paint. I will apply a satin varnish after the oil wash has dried and any over wash spot have been cleaned up to draw the shine back down.
Here is after all those step repeated 8 times..
The oil wash really splits up the field or red and adds debth to the models. This is partly why we didnt do large black markings, the client didn't want there to be to much black. He is going for a very new, elite looking force that is still earning its place of honor.
Started to apply Army Painter - Plate metal to all places that needed to become gems. This is a are where I was clearly instruct to keep the gems in a very small quantity. The Codex and Box covers show only a few gems, while several other red scheme have gems all over. This is something the client didn't like and I agree. Even on my space marines am trying to be closer to the fluff.
I really wanted to do some battle damage on these, but there where several factors as to why we decided against doing alot of it.
I was on the big weathering kick and battle damage but the thing is alot of these 40k vehicles are very well taken care of and as a result are not miss treated. Any soldier will tell you most of what they do is maintenance and prepping equipment so it works when needed for the fight. The client being a retired marine and my parents being retired air force really valided this point across to me. Space marines for example consider nearly everything a Holy Relic, they also have servitors, humans and there own hands to tend to their equipment. If you consider something Holy you don't let it sit beat up and rusted...
Eldar vessels have this regenerating bone, that there vehicles are made out of so they would not be extremely rough unless right in the middle of a fight with constant damage being inflicted.
Some exhaust weathering was done using metalic and exhaust black weathering powders.
I ramble on... The end result is no battle damage.
I put green gems on the black portions, then did some other touch up on other small details like control panels, buttons etc..
Am pretty excited to continue helping finish this army.
Hope you all enjoy this post.
No comments:
Post a Comment