I started out painting minis sometime during February 2009. I have painted 806 out of 1385 points worth of Mark 1 WARMACHINE Cygnar. It takes a little time but I can whip them up to table top standard and play with them. I do enjoy painting them a lot though, even more than playing most of the time. I tend to loose more often than win when I play, but when I paint I always win :)
That being said I have embarked on a new journey. I have bought my first plastic model, my first model purely intended to be assembled and painted for fun and not for gaming (even if it might end up in games in the future). This lot fell on the Eldar Falcon Anti-grav Tank. I chose it because my local game store had it, it's a plastic model, and I enjoy the Eldar models. I wanted something very different from the very detailed Cygnar models.
Next I got the parts off the sprues and dry assembled the whole thing to get a feel for the model. I also got terribly confused about the possible additional weapons. I do have the Eldar Codex, but it doesn't really feature good pictures of what different weapons looks like for the Falcon. I do feel a general confusion that lies over Games Workshops products. I look forward to Privateer Press new "Forces of..." books to see what they might come up to. I also feel a frustration to the point of wanting to write me own ultimate "Codex: Eldar" that is clearer and more logical. Go figure :)
So I decided that I wanted to paint my Eldars in some kind of official colors, or rather base it on official colors since not all of the models are represented in official colors. I settled for Alaitoc. It's a deep blue with yellow details. I haven't fully decided on everything yet, but that is the basic theme. It is pretty close to what I have for Cygnar, plus it reminds me of my home country a bit. I did decide to go with a few metal parts though, so they will get done in gold instead of yellow.
I will keep the canopies clear and paint the pilot and gunner. I just find that niftier and while they do have details they are far from the most detailed I've painted so I want to do a good job and make them look as cool as I can. I will also keep the back door operational and paint some of the interior. Not yet sure if I should keep most of it black, or go with painting it yellow inside. Not many will ever look at the inside of my Falcon, but that's not the point. I will know which makes all the difference.
Having cleaned off all the plastic pieces with a knife, which took me several hours, I put the pieces into three different plastic bags to keep them separated a bit better. I realize that I have to be very thoughtful when I do start to actually glue things together, as otherwise I might do things in the wrong order and really screw up. So slow moving is the key here. I am starting with the main fuselage and the three big pieces which looks like this:
So pretty much just plastic there. I decided to quickly paint at least something today, so I chose the inside part that I wanted gold colors on. I realized that I probably need to paint a few more areas before I am done with it, since it will be hard to reach parts, but either way it turned out quite neat. I was happy with the result, which is something like this:
The metallic golden should go well together with the dark blue patchy pattern. I do have to think about how I want to paint the details as well. Some seem to just paint it as if it was a big area, while others pick the details out and paint them in a different color. Saim Hann goes all red for instance. But I kind of want to make some of the details pop a bit more. We will just have to see where I take this :)
I am also thinking long and hard about the blue pattern. I've read two ways of doing it, one where I mutilate a brush and kind of drab the color onto the surface, and the other I take a drybrush brush and push it down on the surface and then rotate the brush. Both seems to work, neither seems to quite make the pattern I want. I don't want the color patterns be that distinct so I think that I will use colors closer to each other, no really bright blues for the pattern, and I might just try some kind of sponge for it. I realize that I need parts to try this out on before I pain the actual plastic :)
The future will have to tell what happens!
