My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 1.2.2014

Re: My speed-painted Dark Elf Army (3rd edition models) Fini

Hello! Just to let you know I’m not dead :razz:

Actually I’ve been working with some terrain comparable with my dark elf army. I build a Watchtower for the army and got bitten by the terrain bug. Therefore I decided to make a whole WHFB terrain set. I’m not sure if this is proper place to post mainly terrain pictures, but here we go. At least the scenery has some Oldhammer components like old plastic shields and a couple of miniatures.

Here’s a picture of the whole set:

Allter_zps579cf869.jpg


The whole set is 22 pieces. Basic stuff is 3 hills, 3 woods, 3 obstacles (fences), 3 buildings, 2 swamps, a pond, and a stream. In addition there are special pieces: 3 impassable rock formations that can be used as ruins, a well, a hill tomb and a statue pedestal. I constructed the terrain with the idea that it should a) be playable and b) not be too high standard (I wanted to complete the project in reasonable time). I also tried to use the materials I already had as much as possible... and no foam :)

Landscape:

Riverflow_zps58c9d26b.jpg


Landscape from the other side:

Reverseriver_zpsd5205164.jpg


I don’t have a board and thus I used a piece of old tent mattress to simulate grey ground. Might look a little better than white background.

Here are some WIP pictures of the individual pieces:

combo5_zps0da4345f.jpg


If someone’s interested I can tell a bit more about the techniques.

In last month there was an uncomped tournament and I acquired a second hydra for that (the one on the front):

okh_zps8076d4ca.jpg


After the tournament I came into conclusion that I’ll expand the army a bit. I acquired a second unit of Harpies, a second unit of Shades, some Crossbowmen and some Witch elves. More about these later...

Thanks for looking!
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 4.7.2013

That all looks great! I particularly like the thatching on the roof of the house.

Cheers,

Blue
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 4.7.2013

awsome scenery, definitely worth a tutorial dude !

Everything looks perfect and th egrey landscape is quite refreshing
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 4.7.2013

Blue in VT":2w5u2r4e said:
That all looks great! I particularly like the thatching on the roof of the house.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the compliment, you trusty commenter ;) I also like the "thatch", which is made of lumps of cheap horsehair brushes and toned with "Soft tone" ink.

Asslessman":2w5u2r4e said:
awsome scenery, definitely worth a tutorial dude !

Everything looks perfect and th egrey landscape is quite refreshing
Click to expand...

Perfect is a pretty strong word, but thanks :) I chose grey 'cause it's the colour of my army's bases. I also thought that there's enough "standard" terrain in the world already - this is like a desert table, but grey. It's a bit unnatural, though (in the real world salty soil might look grey... but this is fantasy :razz:). I suspect the colour is a bit of hit and miss.

I'll think about a tutorial if there's reasonable demand. I'm not sure if the techniques I used are that special. It's also quite time-consuming to write one.
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 4.7.2013

pahvivalmiste":1ju5y1m1 said:
Perfect is a pretty strong word, but thanks :) I chose grey 'cause it's the colour of my army's bases.
Click to expand...

Well, I admit perfect is quite a strong word, it would need boobs, a railgun and chaos mutations to be perfect... However, it's really good looking, well designed and very different from the usual stuff

pahvivalmiste":1ju5y1m1 said:
I also thought that there's enough "standard" terrain in the world already - this is like a desert table, but grey. It's a bit unnatural, though (in the real world salty soil might look grey... but this is fantasy :razz:). I suspect the colour is a bit of hit and miss.

I'll think about a tutorial if there's reasonable demand. I'm not sure if the techniques I used are that special. It's also quite time-consuming to write one.
Click to expand...
A grey table doesn't look that unnatural to me. You can find near shore landscapes of limestone or sandstone with very close colours, I believ it would only take a little more vegetation to make it look natural.
A tutorial is very consumming, that's for sure, would you consider giving us tips and materials used at least so we can get an idea. I'm personnaly very curious about your watch tower and the houses.

Thanks
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 4.7.2013

Nice terrain set. I do love the idea of a good terrain set to match your army. I have to agree, I love the thatch too, it really sets off the houses.
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 4.7.2013

Thanks for the more elaborate analysis of your opinion, Asslessman :) Do you think I should consider more vegetation here? Any ideas? Also, thanks to Mr. Saturday for the comment.

My intention was not to be iffy about the tutorial – I’m happy to share info about the building process of the buildings.

The watchtower was built from small rocks which I attached with milliput around a styrox cone. After that I “washed” the whole structure with Fimo Air modeling putty. This filled the gaps between rocks, covered some depressed areas and gave some form to the structure.

With the houses the process was a little different: I cut the four wall shapes out of cardboard and then glued the stones of the edges, lower windows, and doorways. After that I just poured glue and then stones to the empty area I wanted to be “stone” (the whole small building and the lower floor of the bigger one). Then I applied the Fimo (upper floor of the bigger building are just Fimo). Voilá!

Well… almost. I glued the slightly twisted (due Fimo and glue drying) cardboard pieces to the base and then some stones to the corners of the buildings. After that… Fimo :razz: The Well, the chimneys and fences were just stones glued on top of each other and covered with F... you get the idea.

I built the roofs from wooden strips, glued the chimneys and finally added structures on the roof, doors, and windows. The door was milliput and the windows old Citadel shields + milliput. Then I turned into straw… thatch man. Margaret That!

I found a picture I took during thatching:

HouseWIP_zpse002cdb2.jpg


The picture illustrates the construction of the walls a bit too. Thatch was made of brush hair. I cut it into lumps which I attached to the roof base with PVA. This took time and would have looked even better if I had more time and experience. Then I added the support wood structures (obechi + thin wire).

Edit: I cut the "thatch" a bit with scissors after it was dry. If I'd used shorter hair the result could have been more realistic.

After thatching I painted the thatch: a coat of matt varnish followed by Soft Tone (army painter – it’s basically a brown ink). I considered adding a second coat of colour (Dark Tone) to simulate dark thatch but dropped the idea. Then on to walls… first a basecoat of grey, then a dark grey wash. After that I painted the lines between rocks (what’s the name of the stuff they use in masonry, I don’t recall the English word now?) with white to simulate stone pattern. That was slow.

The shapes of the masonry came partly from the rocks but I just made some of it up. The uneven surface of the Fimo helped to make the end result look ok.

Edit: I think I highlighted the building with white at this stage. I also made door handles and metal parts from paper. Rivets were made of acrylic putty (dotted with a cocktail stick).

Then I painted the doors and windows (light yellow followed by sepia ink for the wood, rims with metal), added and painted some shields (decorative) and finally I hit everything with thinned Dark Tone Ink. Well… there was a coat of matt varnish after that.

I hope this helps :)
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 4.7.2013

Thanks for all that info - inspiring I have to say and so simple.

I thinks the word you were looking for was mortar.
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 4.7.2013

Thanks for the compliment, Just John. Mortar was the word. Now I have to say that I forgot a couple of steps (door handles + highlights) but I'll edit the previous post to include those.

I "discovered" the stone method when building the watchtower - it looked weird with just the stones and milliput and I figured that it needed some filling. I'd previously bought some Fimo for my wife but she never used it. Opportunity makes a thief... :grin:

Acrylic Pumice was another stuff I used for the first time in this project. That thing I found when I looked for a quick method to make some kind of bark for the trees (the trees are cardboard covered with pumice) I ended up using it for edges of the stream, swamps, forest bases etc.
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 4.7.2013

Nice work on the terrain, Pahvivalmiste! It all really looks the part. Inspiring! I would like to do more terrain myself, I have quite a lot of Townscape cardboard housing, woods and large rocks but very few hills, ruins and multi level items. Main problem for me is I have a hard time deciding on how to do things. Go for pre-made items (GW houses and towers, for instance) or make use of all those whisky and pringles tubes I've been saving up. =)
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 4.7.2013

Hello,

it has been a while… I decided to return to my Dark Elf army as they got a new 8th edition armybook. There are some new units (Warriors with new weapon options, Warlocks, Sisters of Slaughter, Kharibdyss, Medusa, some chariot types etc.). Some old units also got options that are better than previously. Dark Riders, for example, are better with a shield than they were before.

So I started with some updating. Dark Riders shields:

DRshields_zps0c60546b.jpg


I just did the shields by painting a simple horse head on each of them. The head is similar to the one on their standard. Quite frustrating as some of the original models had shield boss which I removed abou a year ago… and now it would have been useful :razz:

Warlocks WIP:

Warlocks_zpsc8452cb7.jpg


These are wood elf models on old metal horses. There would have been more bare-chested elf figures, but I decided to go with these as I got them for a relatively cheap price from ebay. Not the most beautiful stuff, but will do. These are just painted with basic colous, dipped and varnished (matt).

Other new units are a bit hard to do with old figures – I intend to convert a dragon to serve as Kharibdyss (multi-headed sea monster) and there’s an old Medusa figure I will paint, though. I also have about 30 other Dark Elf figures that need some love. That inludes a 12-strong unit of Witch Elves.

In addition I might build a chariot-thingy for the medusa, but we’ll see... finishing the figures I mentioned is enough a goal for now :)
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 6.1.2014

For Malal' sake, I had to check twice the thread title to remind me it is speed painting. I'm not sure I would achieve this result with my regular painting... :?

I really like the coherence you've managed to give. I looked back at the previous pages to check but everything has its place and the very clever collection job make this DE army one of my favorites if not the bets I know. this is how I love dark elves. Very great work and you do mire than justice to the very excellent models you've picked. slow claps.
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 6.1.2014

Thanks for the warm words, Asslessman. I feel tempted to post you a link from a movie "Hard Ticket to Hawaii" (1987): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd_X-C5g29o

Erm... These days I mostly paint in the early mornings when our twins wake me up too early (they continue sleeping) and I figured out that this finishing this army is possible in a couple of months. I bought myself some historicals (Ottoman army), but I think I'll have to put those on hold. Those I'll try to paint at a slower pace. Still, I'm not sure if my normal painting it that much better than these speed painting projects - sure the shades are smoother and all, but I'd need to learn new techniques and practice a lot to improve my old-fashioned normal painting. And there are limits to one's abilities, too :)
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 6.1.2014

I'm a big fan of this army

hope to see more soon
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 6.1.2014

Yup still love this army, it's taking me alot of will power to not start a Delf force.
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 6.1.2014

pahvivalmiste":rxef0d2z said:
I was kind of afraid that you'd say something like that... ;)
Click to expand...
I'm actually not but there are some killer scenes like the nuked skater guy, the nuked snake and such... (not to mention the boobs).

Back on track, I think this leads me to giving a try to "dipping", form what I see, it works reallly great on skin so maybe a big batch of battlemasters Warriors of chaos may not be the ideal condidate to start but I think I could try with some archer thugs for instance. With the birth of my new born last week, I'll definitely need speed painting skills and from what I see in your thread, it's worth a try.
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 6.1.2014

Very nice stuff indeed! I think in the time it's taken you to paint a few more units I've only managed to undercoat my DEs!
 
Re: My Dark Elf Army (3rd ed, was finished but...) 6.1.2014

Those darkriders are many kinds of awesome!

It's impressive how you managed to keep all the dark tones together and still have a visually effective unit without muddying the total!
 
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