Guest Blog: Iyanden #4 Falcons and Serpents, Oh MY!

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends,
We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside.

I try to find fun images for Honda's blog posts. Couldn't resist an old school Eldar vs Orks :).

Let's get dirty now, shall we?

While Greg was out gallivanting around...wherever, "some" of us were staying busy, eagerly awaiting his return. Well, maybe not "eagerly", but you get the idea.

So, as I've been putting things together, I'm sure the understanding between us is that eventually they would start to get some color on them and emerge from the "Legions of Grey".

As I think I stated in one of my earlier posts, I was going to do a variation of Iyanden, substituting the glaring yellow for a more sand color...which was fine, but as I got closer to the task I began that "it's one thing to have an idea" and "it's quite another to translate it into something more tangible" feeling.

So after fiddling about with my airbrush, I ended up here.

Now, that's kind of interesting and it's not bad looking, but I wasn't sure if that was what I wanted. So, I finished them up so I could just look at them for a little bit. As the days went by, I arrived at a point where it appeared that I was going to use one of two techniques to finish them. Those were going to be either a wash along all the armor lines, or something that I've had a lot of fun with before, which is a application of artist charcoals.

I really don't think I was too crazy about doing all that line work and the other thing that was going through my head is that I wanted my Eldar to be different, and that difference ended up manifesting as "dirty". I've never been a fan of "pristine" armies and as I thought about it more I didn't see any reasons why Eldar couldn't be dirty either.

So I went with the charcoal technique.

Basically, I take a stick of charcoal, scrape off a portion with my X-acto blade, dip a brush into the charcoal and then paint it into the recesses. From there, I have one of those make up brushes that the ladies use and I lightly brush the charcoal off the model, always moving the brush in one direction. After that I spray hairspray as a fixative on the entire model so that I can finish detailing. In this case, that meant painting the canopies, exhausts, and gems.

While we're still here in "Big Greg's Base-o-rama", here are the bases I did up for the Serpents. Again, I am using the air dried clay to fashion boulders, then impressing them with the foil ball to provide texture.

These were sprayed black, then I found an old bottle of dark blue craft paint which I thinned down and painted all over. After that dried, I dry brushed it with a light sand, then a light grey to get the basalt effect I was looking for. Then the rest of the base had sand applied, painted and et Voila'!

So here are the Serpents.

And this puppy was one of those...I wonder if these things will go together.

Actually, the idea was spawned from looking at some of my IA books and seeing the Firestorm. The Firestorm seems like a pretty cool tank to me and it will be effective against skimmers and most flyers,  though I don't think Storm Ravens are going to worry about it too much.

Anyway, there I was liking the tank, but not too crazy about the turret. So then I let the gears turn and ended up with a Fire Prism turret with scatter lasers. The only annoying thing was while acquiring the casings that go over the gun mounts I got two of the Fire Prism beam thingie on the right side thinking that the cases would just fit right over the gun.

I was half right.

I came to realize that the right side carapace fit just fine because it's designed to fit on that side. The other side is canted to the opposite side. Not a good deal. So after some grumbling, I took my file and forced it to fit. Next time, I'll spend the extra few dollars and get the matching gun covers.

Anyway, it didn't turn out too bad and I like the look. The only other down side is that I currently have it mounted on a Serpent hull, which has a back extension that sticks up hampering the turret rotation, so eventually I'll put it on a Falcon base.

Now, if you are wondering whether or not the charcoal technique can be used on figures, the short answer is "Yes", but also "it depends".  I know, how Eldar-ish of me.

I've not attempted it with something like Ghost warriors, but that is my intent. So stay tuned and we'll see how it goes.  

Next time I'm targeting some dead men/elves walking.

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