# Zion Invades Realspace



## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Due to some dissatisfaction with the current CSM models (they're boring. There I said it, now everyone can be mad at me for it! ) I decided to go a different direction and do something different instead. So I picked up the biggest glass cannon army I could find because apparently picking up whole units at the same time hasn't gotten old yet!

That's right, I started a Dark Eldar army. Because I like my 40k on hard mode! :laugh:

Because I always like to start with a larger model to get some of my ideas flowing and to give me something to tie the army together with I began this PLOG with a Talos. I'll admit in advance my edge highlighting needs work. In my (limited) defense, this is the first time I've tried doing it and I'll be getting a lot of practice as I go on with this army.

Now onto the happy fellow himself:

































Not Shown: I actually went back and fixed it so his chest tubes were painted in as well, something I'd missed while working on him. I couldn't get a good picture of it though because I don't have a way to prop him up so that they're visible and lit well enough to see.


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## Tugger (Jul 22, 2013)

Looking pretty damn good so far.


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## Kreuger (Aug 30, 2010)

Mr. T looks decent. The soundly bits could use an accent color, I lean towards bronze or copper. A free if the arm houses child use another color.

My only real criticism is about the color scheme, because it's looks decidedly Christmasy.


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## ntaw (Jul 20, 2012)

Really digging the paint job Dave. If I were to humbly make a suggestion, I would do the green bits more like gems and add a bit of highlighting to them to make it look like there's some swirls of liquid or something going on.

I look forward to seeing more! k:


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Kreuger said:


> Mr. T looks decent. The soundly bits could use an accent color, I lean towards bronze or copper. A free if the arm houses child use another color.
> 
> My only real criticism is about the color scheme, because it's looks decidedly Christmasy.


Good point on the bits on the racks on it's back. I have no idea what you mean about the second sentence there though.

As for coming off "Christmasy", I didn't think the bright green would give that impression. I've got an alternate idea I can use instead though involving some blues though that might work better.



ntaw said:


> Really digging the paint job Dave. If I were to humbly make a suggestion, I would do the green bits more like gems and add a bit of highlighting to them to make it look like there's some swirls of liquid or something going on.
> 
> I look forward to seeing more! k:


I'm not Dave though. :shok:

Confusions aside, I'm not really sure how to make the vials more liquidy or gem-like. I'll have to look into that I guess.


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## ntaw (Jul 20, 2012)

Zion said:


> I'm not Dave though.


WOW. My apologies Zion, I don't even know what to say. I got my threads confused I guess :blush:

With regards to the liquid/gem-like stuff, I've always just kind of painted up one edge to a very thin white then used a wash of the base colour to bring it all together. I think my best example is the lenses above the lascannons on this dreadnought:


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

ntaw said:


> WOW. My apologies Zion, I don't even know what to say. I got my threads confused I guess :blush:


No biggie, just confused me for second was all.



ntaw said:


> With regards to the liquid/gem-like stuff, I've always just kind of painted up one edge to a very thin white then used a wash of the base colour to bring it all together. I think my best example is the lenses above the lascannons on this dreadnought:


Yeah, I see what you mean. I don't know how well that'd work on a cylinder though. I'm going to poke around and see what I can find. At the very least i'm looking at changing the color so I'll make it a two-fer then.


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## Kreuger (Aug 30, 2010)

Sorry Zion, that second sentence is the result of auto-correct when responding from my mobile. That should have read "the metal parts could use another accent color."


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

A much lighter set of colors than most Dark Eldar armies I see. I look forward to seeing how the army progresses.

...I confess, I've occasionally considered just buying a _few_ Dark Eldar squads based on how cool they look. Incubi, for instance. Perhaps a Talos and some Reavers.


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Mossy Toes said:


> A much lighter set of colors than most Dark Eldar armies I see. I look forward to seeing how the army progresses.
> 
> ...I confess, I've occasionally considered just buying a _few_ Dark Eldar squads based on how cool they look. Incubi, for instance. Perhaps a Talos and some Reavers.


If you look through the codex one of the armies that shows up is the The Cult of the Red Grief whose armored sections are a dark red (I used the darkest one GE has, Khorne Red with Evil Sunz Scarlet for my extreme highlights as it's a good contrasting red without going as far as getting Troll Slayer Orange out to do the same thing. It's a bit thin for my tastes to work with but it looks find when dried). 

There -was- a Dark Eldar army that also had a dark red look to them on the old codex that rivaled the Kabal of the Black Heart in size, but it seems to not have any models the current codex.

I'm using both as inspiration and basically combining Cults, Covens and Kabals with a unified approach to how I'm going to paint them. Plus black is such an over done color on the table top because of how easy it is to do (Step 1: Prime, Step 2: Maybe Detail, Step 3: Mock your friend for choosing to do an Imperial Fists army and taking so long to complete it because you're done!) that I wanted to go with something that was suitably dark, but fit the attention grabbing nature of the Dark Eldar.

Green was going to be a kind of spot color for liquids and glowy bits (as it tends to be a kind of virulant (when a liquid) or eldritch color(when tied to anything "energy" related)) but now I think I'm going to do a kind of balancing act with different shades of blue thing which will serve as a spot color for the army (dark blues for cloth, bright blues for helmet lenses and hair). 

Skin is a bit of an odd duck and I'm still experimenting with getting it looking just right. I'm using Administranum Gray as my base color, washing with Drakenhof Nightshade (which is a purple color), touching up with the gray, and then, as lightly as possible, drybrushing Palid Wych Flesh over it to give it a more textured, dry skin look than the ultra clean, smooth lines of gradiant shading. It's my little cheat method for doing skin in general actually to drybrush that last color as it gets the most raised surfaces and tends to give the skin more of a textured feeling (in my mind at least). 

And for the record, skin is a lot easier when it's normal, human tones instead. This isn't impossible, but I did realize that it's odd painting such a different pallet on what your brain says looks largely human. Oh well, I'm building plenty of Wracks and Grotesques to practice with.

Also I found this thing on painting liquids in vials: http://eyeoferror.blogspot.com/2013/01/painting-realistic-fluid-filled-vials_7.html

And on a seperate note while at my FLGS today I grabbed a bottle of Doombell Bronze. It's a reddish metallic paint that almost seems a bit more like an ink, but applied over a silver it looks pretty good. I'm going to use it as an accent color for my metal (outside of using Runefang to accent the "edge" of blades, something that's hard to see in a brightly lit image because I chose to not wash all the metal in Nuln Oil in the first time in forever. Basically I wanted the silver to look darker, perhaps a little aged, but not like it wasn't well cared for as the Dark Eldar live, and die by their equipment.).

On a small side note, I also grabbed a Lelith model today because why not (plus she could be a fun alternate to throw in with Grotesques instead of an Archon if I want to use them to go mulch large units of guys) and I never knew she was wearing a thong. I though heels tended to make your initiative higher (as Death Cult Assassins like to prove) but apparently it's battle thongs that do it. Who knew?


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## Nacho libre (Feb 23, 2013)

I really like that technique for painting vials, I think that I'd put some ardcoat on after.


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Nacho libre said:


> I really like that technique for painting vials, I think that I'd put some ardcoat on after.


It's my experiance that 'ardcoat basically defeats the purpose of putting highlights on the model since it'll just create it's own extra shiny ones.


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## Kreuger (Aug 30, 2010)

The vial painting method is a good find. =)
I think it's rare that a tutorial has such good illustrations as opposed to model photos.


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## revilo44 (Sep 17, 2010)

Extremely impressive paint job. Can't wait to see how this develops z.


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## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

First off, good choice on the Dark Eldar and welcome to Commorragh.

That Talos looks great, I would favour a paler white colour for the flesh parts rather than a pure grey, but that is just me. As for the vials I would say use a gloss varnish on the liquid parts while making the canisters look as metallic as possible. Liking the choice of red for the metal carapace.


LotN


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Lord of the Night said:


> First off, good choice on the Dark Eldar and welcome to Commorragh.
> 
> That Talos looks great, I would favour a paler white colour for the flesh parts rather than a pure grey, but that is just me. As for the vials I would say use a gloss varnish on the liquid parts while making the canisters look as metallic as possible. Liking the choice of red for the metal carapace.
> 
> ...


The skin isn't a pure gray, that's just the base color. The drybrushing of Pallid Wychflesh softens the gray (which really isn't that dark of a gray on it's own, it's just a fairly cool one) too so I don't think I'll be changing t. It might just look odd next to the red, but that's not a bad thing for their skin to look a little odd...

Yeah, I'm considering doing the gloss varnish, but I'm changing the color first either way. Wrong kind of elves to associate with Christmas I'm afraid.  

I'm definitely going to be playing with it a bit before I finalize that (so yes, an updated Pain Engine will make a future appearance as soon as he's done).

And I like the Red too. It was really Red or a dark blue or purple color for the carapace and since the skin already has a purple wash I didn't want to push the model to far into looking monochrome (especially when doing models who wear fabric) so I decided to go with a warmer color instead.


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## SonofVulkan (Apr 14, 2010)

I like your choice of colours. The red makes a nice change from all the black DE armies out there. I've always rated DE as one of the hardest armies to paint, so I'll be keeping an eye out for your updates to see how you progress. Excellent start.


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## Iraqiel (May 21, 2008)

Nice to see a new DE army and a new paint scheme to match. I am getting increasingly keen to start one myself... if i only had the time and money!


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## Tawa (Jan 10, 2010)

Looking damn good so far, Z! :good:


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

So I haven't had time to paint in the last couple days (joys of college again) and I rand into a small issue with a model of Urien Rakarth I purchased (don't worry, GW is sending me a new one): namely there were some small casting issues (there is still one on his right arm that's actually on him here, but it's small and I'll probably solve that by shaving off that vial from his arm) and some small fiddly bits that were broken so I solved the issue by sneaking into some extra parts from my Talos kit as well as Lelith's extra CCW arm (to give him something nice to prod the slaves with) and did some kit bashing to make him a generic Haemonculus (since I only have one and could always use more). 

I apologize about the quality of the lighting, unfortunately I don't have the best set up right now for taking quality pictures and I'll need to try and work something out to fix that.


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## Nacho libre (Feb 23, 2013)

Zion said:


> So I haven't had time to paint in the last couple days (joys of college again) and I rand into a small issue with a model of Urien Rakarth I purchased (don't worry, GW is sending me a new one): namely there were some small casting issues (there is still one on his right arm that's actually on him here, but it's small and I'll probably solve that by shaving off that vial from his arm) and some small fiddly bits that were broken so I solved the issue by sneaking into some extra parts from my Talos kit as well as Lelith's extra CCW arm (to give him something nice to prod the slaves with) and did some kit bashing to make him a generic Haemonculus (since I only have one and could always use more).
> 
> I apologize about the quality of the lighting, unfortunately I don't have the best set up right now for taking quality pictures and I'll need to try and work something out to fix that.


Damn finecast.:ireful2:


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

I've got mistcast Sisters too (one missing a foot, the other a hand) so it's not like it nver happened in metal.


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## Nacho libre (Feb 23, 2013)

Zion said:


> I've got mistcast Sisters too (one missing a foot, the other a hand) so it's not like it nver happened in metal.


I remember I had a finecast space marine Libby that had a crease down the middle if it's shoulder pad.


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## ntaw (Jul 20, 2012)

Nacho libre said:


> I remember I had a finecast space marine Libby that had a crease down the middle if it's shoulder pad.


It took three models and a coupe hours of work to finally get me a Libby in TDA. GW is super willing to fix their mistakes but it still disheartened me that it happened.

That is a super cool model. I wish I knew anyone who played DE so that I could see how I fare against them.


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

ntaw said:


> It took three models and a coupe hours of work to finally get me a Libby in TDA. GW is super willing to fix their mistakes but it still disheartened me that it happened.
> 
> That is a super cool model. I wish I knew anyone who played DE so that I could see how I fare against them.


This is what Urien normally looks like for comparison:









I didn't _have_ to swap his arm out with the weapon, I just did that so that when I field Urien properly he won't be as easily confused with the converted one.


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## ntaw (Jul 20, 2012)

Zion said:


> I just did that so that when I field Urien properly he won't be as easily confused with the converted one.


Good call. Can't wait to see this guy all painted up!


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

ntaw said:


> Good call. Can't wait to see this guy all painted up!


Plus every good Haemonculus needs something to prod the slaves with! I mean, why dirty your hands when you have a good slave poker right there?


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## Nacho libre (Feb 23, 2013)

Zion said:


> Plus every good Haemonculus needs something to prod the slaves with! I mean, why dirty your hands when you have a good slave poker right there?


Dark eldar are very resourceful.


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## Nordicus (May 3, 2013)

Dark Eldars are probably my favorite army regarding pure aesthetics, beyond Chaos. When I'm done with my 2 Chaos armies (in 2031) I will most likely start a Dark Eldar army.

I will be following this with interest!


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Well it's snowing out so that really puts a damper on some of my plans, as such I won't be working on getting anything primed today (and likely tomorrow) that wasn't already primed. 

Good thing I've got stuff I can still be painting then!

Well because of the weather I'm not going to get to spring these guys on you fully painted, but at least I can show off the small kitbashes I did to them to give them all a different look/feel from one another (since the kit is identical with no real extra options for most of it):








And yes, those are Cronos and Talos kit pieces again. I must say that that kit goes a long ways if you're into conversions/kitbashes.


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## Mossy Toes (Jun 8, 2009)

It does indeed, it does indeed. Nice conversions--very much in the feel of the unit.


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Thanks!


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## SonofVulkan (Apr 14, 2010)

Nice subtle changes there to your grotesques, just enough to make them all look different. Looks like you are going for a Haemonculus style army?


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

SonofVulkan said:


> Nice subtle changes there to your grotesques, just enough to make them all look different. Looks like you are going for a Haemonculus style army?


A mix actually. Got some Wyches (still need Venoms for them) to have run around with Haywire Grenades for instance. Kalibites in Raiders are a given too.


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Speaking of Raiders and Kalabites:









So a few things I learned today:
1. When airbrushing, the paint goes pretty damn far. I'd only put maybe a 1/4 of the cup with paint and then thinned it with water and did all of that.
2. Gloves make clean up easier and I need some.
3. No matter what the image looks like on my phone when I take the photo, the red comes out looking lighter and maybe even a bit pinkish on my monitor so I can't tell if my color balance is a little off for this thing or that's how the photo actually looks.
4. Why in the hell didn't I start using my airbrush _last year_. Christ this thing makes getting stuff base coated a breeze!


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