We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside.
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.
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.
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.
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.