The Eldar Project

Chapter 2: Painting Basics and the Guardians

By Anthony Karl Erdelji

In the last chapter we discussed the color schemes and visual anchors for my Eldar Army. In this chapter we will choose my highlight and shade colors, go over some painting basics and begin painting the Guardians. I am starting with my Guardians since they will be my troops anchor and most prominent on the battlefield. Let's begin with the assembly.

Using a pair of clippers each part is carefully clipped from the sprue with a pair of clippers or a hobby knife. Simply tearing the pieces off the sprue may damage the parts. Any remnants of the sprue are removed with a sharp hobby knife. Next the mold lines are removed. Hold the knife at a ninety-degree angle to the mold line and gently scrape the line away. With metal miniatures mold lines are removed with a knife and file, but files can damage the soft plastic and leave burrs, so the files stay in the drawer for now. 

Now we got a nice pile of parts and its time to put them all together. My preferred plastic cement is Tenax the "space age plastic welder". Being a bit hard to find you may need to use another brand of liquid plastic cement, which is fine, but I have yet to find a stronger bonding plastic cement. Use whatever you can, but stay away from plastic cement in gel form. It’s completely useless for this type of work. Many plastic cements come with a brush. If yours does, throw it away. Instead use an old painting brush. It will make it much easier to brush on the cement and is less likely to leave streaks in the plastic.

Starting with the legs and working up, one side of each joint gets a tiny amount of Tenax applied with a brush. The parts are then pressed together for a few seconds until the glue dries. With many types of glue the dry time can take up to a minute, which is another reason I prefer fast drying Tenax. Once the figure is completed and the cement has dried all the mold lines and joints get a second coat of Tenax. This helps to strengthen the joints and removes the last remnants of the mold lines. This is a dangerous stage since plastic cement cannot tell the difference between details and mold lines. Don't flood the figure with cement or continue brushing an area already soaked with cement. Done with the assembly the figures are sprayed with Formula 409, or any common household degreaser, to remove any residue and dirt from the casting process and handling. They then get a bath in some running water and set aside to dry.

Next comes a solid coat of primer. Priming plastic figures is much different than priming metal figures. The propellants in a can of spray primer are highly toxic and can melt your figures if your not careful. Some cans of spray primer are safer on plastic than others. For instance the Games Workshop primer available in the United Kingdom works much better with plastic than its United States counterpart. The following method I've perfected using Krylon sandable white primer, which is very harmful to plastic, so this should work with almost any primer.

The key to priming plastic is speed. You want the propellant to contact the plastic for an extremely limited time. Hold the can about 6 inches from the miniatures. Press the nozzle and spray ONE coat onto the figures as fast as you can, then release the nozzle. You should be spraying for only about one second. Do not go back and forth continuously spraying the figures. After the first coat wait a few seconds for the coat to slightly dry and spray them again, remembering once again just ONE coat. It will take multiple coats to completely cover the figures. Once the first side is done let them dry for a half hour then flip them over and repeat the process. Let the primer cure of at least 24 hours before starting to paint.

I have my base colors, now I need my highlights and shades. Since speed is defiantly a factor in painting this army I'm keeping it simple by using mainly black and white. Normally I would use a darker shade of the base color when shading, and a lighter color for the highlights. For example, when painting blue, dark blue is my shade and light blue is my highlight. While this will achieve better results than using black and white it would become too tedious mixing up special colors for each part of the model.

It is at this time I have to weight my desire for a well-painted army with the need to get them painted in a reasonable amount of time. Quality versus quantity is a decision everyone has to make and its up to the individual to decide in which direction to tip the scales. For myself the scales are tipped mainly towards quality, but not completely. I would love to spend endless hours painting Eldar, but I don't have endless hours! In turn I would be using black and white to shade and highlight, lots of washes, and keeping my highlights slightly thicker than usual, which means less layers to apply. This army would be in no way my best collection of models I have ever painted, but they would be painted well enough to make me happy.

Now lets discuss two painting techniques; washes and highlights. Let's begin with highlighting. Highlighting is also known as layering since your highlights are applied in thin translucent layers. Our goal is not to cover the previous layer of paint, but to tint the color to a lighter shade. Once we work up to the highlight color currently being painted we can move onto the next lighter highlight color and repeat the process. Each highlight is place in successively smaller areas until we reach the final highlights, which are applied to the "tips" of the model. If you are not sure where to apply the highlights, hold the model under a single light source. Notice how the light is concentrated on the top and follows the contours of the model until they fade out into the shadows. It’s your job to replicate this using paint.

Learning how much to thin your paint is the key. You have to take into account two factors; the thickness of your paint and the quality you want to achieve. Different paints need to be thinned with different amounts of water. Vallejo, which is fairly thick, needs to be thinned much more than Coat d'arms paints. When is comes to painting the general rule of thumb is the thinner the paint the better your results, HOWEVER the thinner the paint the more layers you'll have to apply and the longer the model will take to be completed. Thinner paint means there will be less noticeable transition between each highlight layer, which means smoother, more realistic results. For this project I'll be thinning my paint to a ratio of 1:3 paint to water. That is for each drop of paint I add 3 equal sized drops of water. Normally when painting single models I would never keep my paint thicker than 1:4.

Now we have your paints properly thinned and our brush is loaded and we're ready to paint, right? Wrong! If we were to begin painting with the paint thinned as we have it now then it would simply bleed all across the model like a wash. We need to be able to control were the paint goes. Before painting take the brush loaded with paint and wipe it a few times across a cloth or paper towel. We don't want to create a dry brush, just remove the excess water. If you've removed the correct amount of moisture from the brush the paint should go on smooth and dry almost instantly. If a small puddle of paint forms at the end of each stroke your brush, then there is too much water in your brush. Wipe it once again across your cloth.

Our next technique is a wash. A wash is simply ink or paint thinned with water and brushed onto a model. The wash naturally settles in the tiny crevices on the model providing instant shade. However there are two problems with washes, the first being that they are inaccurate. Unless they are applied carefully, (and we don't want to do that because speed is an issue), they tend to dry where they want with little control by us. The second problem is one many have faced. Have you ever applied a wash and had it dry forming a ring AROUND the crevices of a model instead of drying IN the crevices? This is caused by the surface tension of the water being used to thin the ink. You may of witness this same effect when you've spilled water on any smooth surface, like your kitchen counter top. The water will form a small bubble instead of flattening out. Well, it’s doing the same thing on your model. What is need is something to break the surface tension of the water. There are many chemicals and products that can be added to water to alleviate this problem. A bit of Liquitex Slow-Dry can help, or a tiny amount of liquid soap, or a mixture of rubbing alcohol and water works, but there is one product that works much better than all of these; Future Floor Wax. Yes, the same stuff you use on your kitchen floor. Future is clear, acrylic based, and when mixed with an equal amount of water makes the perfect thinning medium. I always keep a small squeeze bottle of this "magic wash" next to my painting table. Future has many other uses in painting miniatures as we will learn about later on.

In the past I've painted gems with a base of metallic paint, a coat of Tamiya clear paint, and a coat of gloss varnish, but I was never completely satisfied with the result. Painting gems with normal highlights and shade looks good, but takes too long considering the number I had to paint. After some experimentation I came up with the hybrid method below.

There are dozens of way to paint your bases. When deciding on a base color I take into account two factors; does the base fit with the theme of my army and does it fit with the table I play on. Snow bases look great on Space Wolves, but look silly when placed onto a green gaming mat. A brown base with green grass is basic and will fit most armies and game tables.

Last is the decal. Decals work better over a glossy surface, so the helmet gets a layer of straight Future Floor Wax. The decal is cut from the decal sheet with a new (it must be very sharp!) hobby knife. The decal is then soaked in water for a ten second. Using a pair of tweezers the decal is removed and placed on some newspaper for one minute.  Before applying the decal the helmet get a coat of Testors Decal Setting Solution. This helps the decal to form to the helmet and dissolves some of the film surrounding the decal. Holding the decal with the tweezers slide it onto the model with an old brush. Use the brush, or if necessary a hobby knife, to properly arrange the decal onto the model. Once placed properly take a lightly moistened tissue and wrap it around a finger. Starting from the center of the decal and using gentle pressure roll the finger along the decal to the edges. Don't rub or put too much pressure on the decal as this may tear it. If there are any wrinkles left in the decal they can be burnished out with an old brush. If they still remain, brush on some more setting solution, let it sit for a minute and repeat the rolling and burnishing process. Once set into place let the decal dry for two hours. The helmets and decal then get a coat of Future to complete seal it and help hide the decal film.

The last thing to do is to give the models a coat of flat varnish. I've tried many over the years and none have come close to the quality and protection offered by Testors Dullcote, also sold under the name Lusterless Flat. The models get a good solid coat of the Testors varnish. After 12 hours they get a second coat. Two coats will protect the paint more than just one, but two coats are also necessary to cut the gloss left from the Future. 

So there we have it! The first few Guardians are done and only fifty more to paint! Since there are so many Guardians to paint I will be painting them in small groups and painting other models between each group. I don't want to get burnt out painting Guardians before getting to the rest of the army. So what will I work on after this group?