Paid To Paint!?!?

Of course, with my acquisition of a hundred dollars worth of models (a 500 point Chaos Daemons army consisting of Pink Horrors, Plaguebearers and the Lord of Change), I began to actually play the game. Basically to tell a long story short (because there are OH GOD SO MANY PICS), my friend JT, who I began to game with, was very impressed by my Plaguebearers, and offered me to paint some of his Biel-Tan Eldar for $50 (20 guardians, a Wave Serpent, a Wraithlord, and an Avatar of Khaine). I had no clue what I was doing but I graciously accepted. I found it pretty awesome that I could be paid to paint miniatures. Especially because I was so new, I really got to experiment and learn a lot. I acquired more paints (on JTs dime!) Good times over the next few months! Here are the results.

First off, the Wave Serpent (or Falcon? - I can never remember). This was a really fun piece to work on. He requested a racing stripe, but otherwise, I was given free reign. I chose to stipple various greens over a black basecoat, because I really enjoyed the Alatoic paint scheme. Unfortunately, I didn't know much about painting white, so the white areas are completely unshaded, and pretty thickly painted. It's worth mentioning that at this point, I was using mostly undiluted paints (except for the stippling). I also included a few pics of the base, because I especially love it! I used a few spare Eldar bits to represent ancient battleground debris. ALSO, I made a stencil to paint on the Biel-Tan craftworld rune, which I was pretty stoked about.








I wasn't excited with the results of the Wraithlord. The paint scheme was the inverse of that of another Wraithlord JT has; This would have been a little better if I'd had the courage to highlight the model, but I did not. I also did not shade the whites at all. Sad panda.




These guys were the bane of my existence for a while. There were just... 20 of them. It sucked. White on black. Awesome. Anyway, I finally found the inspiration to finish them. I did 2 squads of 10 with different static grass. Please excuse the horrible background on the first pic, and horribly painted unmasked models with wild anime eyes.





Well, what can I say? I was excited and nervous to paint this model, and I smartly left it for last (although I made his base very early on in the process). This is by far the best model I've ever painted, and it was an amazing experience. The model is so detailed that it's just quite easy to get to look good. I tried a new technique with the blending on the antlers, and a bit of highlighting; I also perfected my tried and true stippling on his sword.








I also took it upon myself to base some more of his models, which Austin had previously painted, to give the army a coherent scheme. I put some battlefield debris (and tried my first transfer) on the Wraithlord's base. I got lichen and used them for the snipery guys whose names escape me at the moment.