Aeldari Voidscarred Corsair, Part Two

Painting the Felarch

As the first model of this project, the Felarch sets the overall colour palette and character for the rest of the models in the Corsair unit. This turned out to be problematic as the Felarch’s armour is quite ornate and proved to be a challenging subject for a new colour palette. However, going in at the deep end made me work a lot harder than I might have done if I’d started on a standard trooper. In the end, painting the Felarch forced me to thoroughly explore and refine my colour choices, which can only be a good thing.

I’d put a lot of time into planning the colour palette for my Corsairs but I made one major change before I even picked up a brush. My idea had been for an overall warm palette with a brown hue in the shadows but I decided to change this to a cool dark blue/green hue. I felt this would help in creating more of an overall colour contrast. It also lent itself to the atmosphere I wanted to create giving the model a more muted and sinister feel. 

Before I started painting, I experimented with lighting my model and took a series of reference photos. This has become a regular part of my painting process. These photos give me a fixed point to refer to as the paint scheme develops. They are an invaluable guide to the placement and general shape of the highlights and shadows. However, it’s important to remember that the photos don’t show how different materials will reflect light. Metal, fabric and flesh will each reflect light differently and not in the same way as a plastic model.

An example of my reference photos for lighting

The very first step was to put down a base layer of colour onto the primed mini. Yes I now prime my minis! It’s only taken me forty four years, but I find the base layer goes down better on primer than it does on unprimed plastic, quelle surprise!

For this scheme I worked mostly from dark to light so I used a black primer. Vallejo Black Primer Spray is my primer of choice and I’m very pleased with how it performed. The base colour is a dark blue/green. I used a mix of Scale Colour Black and Vallejo Dark Sea Blue at a 50/50 ratio. Pure black shadows can be visually boring and the addition of the Dark Sea Blue adds some nuance to them. It also helps create a smoother transition into the mid-tones than a pure black would.

Aelderai minis have an undersuit beneath their armour. For my Corsairs I decided to paint this a dark greenish grey. This will be a common feature that helps to tie all the models in the unit together. Perhaps not surprisingly, I used Dark Sea Blue for this and lightened it with Rakarth Flesh for the mid-tones and highlights. These two colours are an interesting combination that I will further explore elsewhere on the model. In the case of the Felarch there was very little of the under suit showing so I quickly moved on to painting the armour.

Painting the gold armour

Inspired by John Blanche’s artwork I decided to paint the Felarch’s armour a NMM gold. In fact, it would be more accurate to describe my approach as painting a NMM yellow! Many of John’s drawings featured a strong yellow wash to represent gold and I wanted to bring something of this to my models. However, this is more about taking inspiration and seeing where it leads me than it’s about trying to copy.

Working from a dark blue/green base up to a yellow mid-tone inevitably results in murky green hues. I decided to play into this because I have a preference for cool greenish gold hues. To create this transition I used US Olive Drab from Vallejo Model Colour. I could have simply mixed the base colour with my yellow for a similar effect; but the Olive Drab gave me a little more variety in the shadows, especially when going back over earlier work with glazes.

To transition into the yellow mid-tones I introduced Sahara Yellow. This is a deep yellow with a slight greenish hue that worked well with the Olive Drab. I worked the mid-tones up to pure Sahara Yellow and then began to create the highlights. To do this I used Tenere Yellow from Scalecolour although Vallejo’s Ice Yellow would work equally well. For the final extreme spot highlights I used pure white. 

Part of the trick in painting NMM is to create contrasts by placing deep shadows next to extreme highlights. This is something I have to push myself to do, as my default setting is to create smooth transitions. Ultra sharp edge highlights also help to sell the illusion of a hard polished metal surface and the pure white spot highlights are an important part of the effect.

So far I’d worked in a systematic step-by-step process going from dark to light, however in an unsatisfying monochromatic effect. The transitions need to be further refined and the colour palette needs to be expanded to help create the illusion of a reflective surface. All subsequent work on the armour will be a matter of going back and forth between the shadows, mid-tones and highlights constantly tweaking and refining until I’m satisfied with the result. The techniques used are mostly layering and glazing but there is also some ultra fine stippling used to blend the transitions.

Introducing colour nuances to the armour

To counter the monochromatic look I introduce colour nuances. These help to create the illusion that the armour is reflecting colours from both the immediate vicinity and wider environment. For the environmental reflections I usually pick a warm and a cool colour. In simple terms these represent colours reflected from the ground and the sky. 

For my warm nuances I used Citadel Layer Wild Rider Red while Citadel Base Thousand Son Blue provided the cool nuances. Both of these colours are very saturated and need to be mixed with the mid-tone colours. This will desaturate them and help to incorporate them into the overall colour palette. The mix ratios vary depending on their placement. Knocking the colours back like this helps to make them look like reflections on the metal surface, as opposed to being splashes of colour. 

The colour reflections from the model’s immediate vicinity are taken from elements of the Felarch’s costume. These are Citadel Layer Xereus Purple reflected from the lining of his cloak and a mix of Vallejo Model Color Dark Sea Blue and Citadel Base Rakarth Flesh reflected from the sashes. As with the environmental reflections its important to mix these colours with the mid-tones used on the armour. Placement of these reflections will depend upon the model but where an area is close to the armour it is likely that it’s colour will be reflected there. 

Finalising the paint scheme on the armour took quite a bit of time and effort. As is often the case when using a new colour palette there was a lot of trial and error to get through, and the process was not straightforward. However, all the hard work has paid off resulting in a scheme that I’m very satisfied with. There is every indication that painting gold armour on other models in the unit will now be a more straightforward process. 

 

 

Aeldari Voidscarred Corsairs. Part 1.

Picking a new project.

I decided on my current mini painting project quite some time ago. The release of the ‘new’ Aeldari models had me hooked from the moment I saw them; and lets be honest, when it comes to Warhammer, if I’m not painting Nurgle it will probably be Elves of some kind! So, it was an easy choice when I got myself a box of Voidscarred Corsairs back in July 2022.

Over the years I’ve painted many types of Eldar or Aeldari, as they are now known. Back in the ‘90’s I painted Guardians, Aspect Warriors, a Harlequin and an Incubi. In more recent times I’ve turned my hand to a Farseer, Drukhari Scourges and a Haemonculus. But I’ve never painted any Corsairs and, now that I think about it, that feels like a big omission! 

 

Corsairs have been around for a very long time but it wasn’t until the release of the Voidscarred Corsairs that I felt inspired to paint any. The models in this Kill Team have a tremendous amount of variation and feel like a group of distinct individuals. That’s exactly what I need if I am to have any chance of painting a unit. Only time will tell how many models from the box I paint but I’m confident that I will paint more than one!

Corsairs can come from any of the Aeldari or Drukhari factions and this is reflected in the design of the miniatures. That’s something I particularly like about these models and, together with the background information, it began to give me some ideas for a paint scheme. Back when I was first painting ‘Eldar’, I had a very black and white view of them as good Eldar and bad Dark Eldar. I don’t think that was ever really the case and, over time, I’ve developed a more nuanced view of them with human notions of good and bad not really being applicable to the ‘alien’ Aeldari. Some of the newer models also seem to reflect a blurring of the boundaries between the different factions. This blend of design elements has created a striking aesthetic for the Corsairs.

Finding inspiration

The independent and adventurous nature of Corsairs suggested that I shouldn’t be too bound to the idea of creating a uniform paint scheme. Rather the unit should have a shared palette and iconography that allows for a lot of individuality. That, together with the individuality of the sculpts, should provide plenty of creative opportunities.

Amidst the background information for the Aeldari Corsairs, certain words began to jump out at me: wild, unrestrained, garishness and ostentation, for example. These characteristics fired up my imagination and I decided to go ‘Full Pirate’ in my treatment of them. After a moment of reflection, I decided that peg-legs, hook-hands, eye patches and parrots might be too ‘on the nose’, but only by a little. The models would require some modification to achieve my full vision.

Thinking time is just as important as painting time. I especially enjoy the early stages of a project where anything I can think of is a possibility. As my ideas for an overall approach to the Corsair model developed, I began to consider a colour palette. I decided upon was a dark and sinister blue/green contrasted with saturated red/oranges and purples. That’s a colour scheme very much to my taste with strong light/dark and warm/cool contrasts. 

 

However, I began to go off this idea. It felt a little obvious and very similar to other schemes I’d done, most especially to my Farseer. I was making the mistake of sticking to my comfort zone and, as a result, the scheme I planned didn’t really excite me.

It was at this point that ‘taking my time’ really began to pay off. Once I’d rejected my initial plans, I indulged in a little leisurely research by reading up on Aldari Corsairs and searching through images of both artwork and painted models.

There was plenty to be inspired by. But when I came across some old John Blanche illustrations of Eldar and Eldar Corsairs, they fully grabbed my attention. I knew these images from years back but I’d forgotten them. John Blanche’s artwork is in the very DNA of Warhammer and its influence can’t be overestimated! I first found John’s work in the pages of the 1979 Tolkien Bestiary, long before I was aware of Citadel miniatures or Games Workshop. However, John’s artwork is not something I’ve been consciously inspired by in my own mini painting … until now that is.

Seeing John’s Eldar illustrations afresh gave me quite a jolt because here were some of the very qualities I wanted to put into my models. John’s Eldar had a baroque, barbaric look that triggered my interest and imagination. Not for a moment am I pretending that I will take a ‘Blanchitsu’ approach to my painting but rather John’s illustrations have provided inspiration and a starting point for my ideas.

The style of the illustrations reinforced my resolve to modify the models but it was in the choice of a colour palette that they provided the greatest inspiration. I began to experiment with a warm palette featuring red, dark brown, black, white and greenish yellows. This is a very different sort of palette for me and I spent some time playing with these colours in my notebook. I wasn’t 100% there but my ideas were coming together! 

Building a ‘better’ pirate.

The model that most troubled me was the Felarch. When I first looked at the Corsairs I wasn’t at all sure what to do with this model. There is nothing wrong with the Felarch that comes in the box, but it lacked the over-the-top ostentation I wanted for my Corsairs.

I didn’t have to look too far for replacement parts. The Visarch, Champion of Ynnead is a model I had in my collection and I’d noted that his armour is a good match with the new Corsairs. It’s styling is more baroque and that’s exactly what I needed! I began to see how I could use him as a donor for multiple parts.

I said earlier that I’d rejected full-on pirate trappings like parrots and peg legs, but those thoughts wouldn’t go away. I combed through Games Workshop’s range for a parrot equivalent. There were several possibilities but the one that really caught my interest was the Wyvach familiar that comes with Kyria Draxus.

Kyria Draxus is a beautiful model in her own right but I thought the Wyvach would be a perfect pet for my Felarch. The Kyria model has this creature perched on her outstretched arm, which is wearing a power fist. I can remember when the Eldar models first came out and many of those early models had power fists. The power fist on Kyria is comparatively lighter, more delicate, than those worn by Space Marines. As such I didn’t think it would look too out of proportion on an Aeldari model. So I decided to use the entire arm - power fist, Wyvach and all. I also removed the skull pauldron from Kyria’s other arm to use on my Felarch. These additions certainly bring the desired garishness and ostentation but they also add a barbaric touch that works well for my Blanche-inspired vision of the Corsairs.

Putting all these parts together into one cohesive model was fiddly work, so I proceeded with due care. I started by assembling the Felarch’s Torso and cloak from the Corsairs set. To this I attached the legs from the Visarch. I had to do a little carving to enable them to fit at the angle I wanted and then pinned the parts together for strength. This left a fairly large gap that had to be filled and sculpted over with greenstuff. I decided to leave the power fist and Wyvach unattached to make painting easier. But these parts are a crucial element of the overall pose so I prepared them as a sub-assembly that could be attached on a temporary basis. The left arm also came from the Visarch and could be attached with minimal trimming.

I’d decided to use the Visarch’s helmet, which is very similar to the helmet option for the Felarch, but more elaborate. I removed the spike from its crest and replaced that with the plume from the Felarch’s helmet. Rather than simply putting the Visarch’s helmet onto the Felarch’s torso, I also used a portion of the Visarch’s neck and collar, which brought another ostentatious element to this character.

The final piece to add was the skull pauldron. This comes in two halves so I had to assemble the Kyria Draxus torso first and then cut the skull from it. To my surprise this came away cleanly and only needed minimal trimming to make it fit the Felarch’s torso. 

 

I took my time customizing the new Felarch. Details like the relative angles of the head and limbs make a massive impact on the overall pose of the model and I wanted to get this right. I can remember all too well how many times I had to tweak my Tomb King before I was happy with his pose!

Originally I hadn’t intended more than a head and arm swap but I’m delighted with how my new Felarch came together. I now felt that I had a striking and unique model that would be enjoyable to paint!

So where have I been and what have I been up to?

Following The UK Golden Demon in 2022 I dived straight into my next project a unit of Voidscarred Corsairs. I was on a roll coming up with an overall approach to the unit and devising a colour palette. I set to, customising the first of them, which was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, but when it came to start painting everything changed. 

I simply could not bear the idea of picking up a brush and painting a mini! I’ve had times when I’ve gone off painting before but never anything like this. It was a disturbing experience. In part I think it was a delayed reaction to my Nurgle tank and I was experiencing an extreme case of hobby burn out. But I felt there was also a more deep-rooted problem. Over the last five years there’s been a series of major crises in my immediate family. Just as one thing seemed to be over and life looked like getting back to normal we would be engulfed by some new nightmare. 

You can only soldier on for so long without something giving. I’d experienced a bad episode of anxiety and depression back in my mid-forties, so fortunately I recognised the early signs. My hobby seemed to be triggering my mood swings and I decided to take a break from it. So, long story short, I took time out, stepped away from social media and built a lot of Lego! 

It’s not the first time I’ve taken a break from painting, and I was confident it wouldn’t take 23 years this time! Sure enough the desire to paint gradually returned and my Corsairs were ready and waiting when it did. I’ve actually been quietly painting away for my own pleasure since August 2023. It’s been a return to hobby basics painting simply because I love to paint with no additional pressures from posting or competitions.

So it’s time to come back out from under my rock and share my hobby. I started in March this year when I was persuaded by my mate Lee Hebblethwaite to go to the Hammerhead painting competition in Newark. I nearly didn’t enter a model but was persuaded to put my Kastelan Robot in. This model crashed and burned badly at Golden Demon, so I had nothing to lose; it really couldn’t do any worse. It didn’t as it won Gold in its category and then took Best in Show! 

 

 

This was a lovely moment of redemption for my Kastelan and it gave a very welcome boost to my confidence. It was so good to meet up with my painting buddies at Hammerhead that it didn’t take too much to persuade me to come to FMS in July. I’ve been hearing nothing but good things about FMS for the last two years but the clincher was an invitation to put a selection of my work on display in the ‘out of contest’ section of the show.

So last weekend saw me heading off to Ely with nineteen models representing forty years of painting. I also had one other model that represented the most recent phase of my painting journey because I’d finished the first of my Corsairs, the Felarch. 

As promised FMS is a fantastic event with the nicest location I’ve ever been to for a painting competition. Best of all were the people and spending time with friends old and new!

The competition featured models that represent the whole spectrum of our hobby and the standard was impressively high throughout. My own experience was a little different from past competitions as no one had seen my Felarch and I felt this gave my mini a kind of anonymity which I rather liked. It’s something I shall have to think about for the future. 

The second day brought the revelation that I’d won a medal, which was a great relief! Having enjoyed so many past successes is a matter of pride but it does come with a certain (self-imposed) pressure to maintain that standard. I’d tried a few new things with my Felarch and, after a painting break, I wasn’t overly confident that I’d done as well with him as I could. I find it quite hard to assess my own work, especially when it’s newly finished.

So I was over the moon to be awarded a Gold medal. But that was then followed by Best in Show which I really didn’t see coming! As comebacks go this could not have been a better experience. 

 

 

So now that I am back online and painting: what next? The Voidscarred Corsairs Unit is my current project and at my present rate of painting its likely to take at least a couple more years! It’s my intention to paint each model to my best single figure standard, and that has certainly paid off so far. I will be posting on social media and updating this blog but only as and when I have suitable content. I intend to keep my unfinished work more under wraps than I’ve done in the past. Once a model is finished and has ‘gone public’ I will publish my WIP retrospectively.

The coming year is likely to be a sad one as my family continues to navigate it’s way through difficult times. But I have my passion and enjoyment of painting back and that’s something I’m very thankful for. As the great Winston Churchill said, “Painting is a companion with whom one may walk a great part of life's journey”.

Project P30 - Part 16b

The End is Nigh - Part 2.

With the exception of the base (and that’s a whole new chapter) the remaining work on my Tank is a matter of finishing things off. Some parts need to be painted from scratch but most of the work involved tying-up lose ends from earlier work.

Fix the hand holding the bell into place.

This was a far more straightforward process than the mecha arm. I simply glued the bell hand in place with plastic glue. Once that had set, I filled the seam with dilute PVA and then retouched the paintwork. This felt like an enormously significant step as I was finally adding the sub-assemblies to the model. At long last it was all coming together!

Fix the chimneys back into place.

Now things really started to near completion as the re-addition of the chimneys would complete the model’s silhouette. I’d removed the chimneys earlier to make them easier to paint and I’d expected their reattachment to be a tricky process. In the end it went very smoothly. The chimneys were pinned, then glued back into position, leaving relatively minor seams to cover. For the smaller chimney, there was a matter of adding some corrosion over the join. A little corrosion can hide a multitude of sins! 

For the larger chimney, I had to re-sculpt some of the bubbly flesh texture over the join and then fill some hairline cracks with dilute PVA. I also added a few bony spines to this. Overall I’m very happy with the result. In fact, I think this area works better than it did before I removed the chimneys! Painting this area was a matter of matching up the colours to my existing scheme.

I was now finally able to add a long planned feature to the model. Some time ago I decided that I wanted coarse bristles sprouting from the Daemon’s back and shoulders. I’ve used grass tufts and paintbrush bristles to create similar effects in the past. 

My first attempt, using grass tufts, was an instant fail! The ‘hair’ looked too fluffy. Fluffy is not what we want or expect from Nurgle! For ‘plan B’ I used false eyelashes for the hairs which have a curve to them and taper to a point. They proved to be perfect. I cut them into small clusters, or individual hairs, and glued them into place with PVA. Once again this was tricky work but the final effect is exactly what I wanted!

4. Painting the Tentacles

I’ve a notebook with seven years worth of ideas written down for this project. As my plans developed and changed I kept notes to make sure nothing was forgotten. But, by the time I started painting, there were far to many, sometimes conflicting, plans for one project. Much of my decision making has been around which ideas to implement and which to reject. As the scheme developed the process of editing my plans became easier.

The tentacles are an example of the ‘less is more’ approach I’ve taken in the later stages of this project. I’d initially envisioned them as a larger version of the tentacles on Gutrot Spume, complete with stripes and dripping slime. But I felt that the stripes would bring an unnecessary new element to the scheme which would make the tentacles stand out from the rest of the model in an unsatisfactory way. 

Rather than stripes, I’ve painted the same freehand texture as used on the sides and back of the model. This adds interest to the tentacles but ties them in to the overall scheme. I’ve used colour to make them pop against the rest of the model. Starting from green hues at the base they graduate through a pinkish flesh tone to blue tips. The blue is my old favorite Bering Blue, which I’ve used throughout the scheme. It’s at its most obvious on the tentacle tips.

5. Add drool.

I rejected the idea of slime dripping from the tentacles as being just too much! This also applied to most of my plans for adding extra slime and goo to the model. My tank from 1990 has a liberal application of slime made from PVE glue and then painted. I strongly felt that I already had enough slime and goo on my new model and any more would begin to dominate the painting.

But there was one area where I very much wanted to break out the microbeads and water effects. This was the mouth (the one in the Daemon’s head) where I felt the addition of drool would be beneficial. The mouth was one of the very first areas I painted and its been a long wait to be able to finish it! 

I decided to focus the effect to one side of the mouth rather than filling the jaws with stringy drool. This was done with that old favorite UHU glue. Once the glue had set (it goes rubbery rather than hard) I built up several layers of water effects and microbeads. Once dry I gave it three coats of gloss varnish.

In the final of these updates I’ll describe how I made and painted the base for my Daemon Engine.

Project P30 - Part 16a

The End is Nigh!

It will come as a great surprise to anyone if I state that a lot has happened since I last posted regularly on this blog! Not least the long anticipated return of Golden Demon UK at Warhammer World on October 1 & 2. I posted some finished pics here during the weekend of the competion but it’s time to indulge in a little time travel as I bring things up to date.

For some time my gut feeling was that I’d finish the Daemon Engine this year but there’s nothing like a deadline to boost momentum! I felt that, with some effort, the October deadline might be achievable so I decided to go for it. The last few months have seen some adrenaline fueled painting and I now feel more confident about that deadline. Things have been coming together well and the end is in sight!

As I move towards the closing stages of a project I usually create a checklist of things to do. This helps me to keep focused, stay on target and avoid missing anything out in a rush to get finished. It’s been especially useful this time around as there have been many steps to complete. In my next few posts I’ll describe that list of jobs in the order I did them.

Finish the mecha arm.

This arm has been the most physically difficult area of the model to paint so far! In retrospect, I wish I had found a way to paint the arm as a sub-assembly, which would have made things a lot easier. 

However, the more interesting problem was to address the transitions between areas of flesh and metal. The arm came from the Forge Fiend kit and as such already depicted a union of monster and machine. This was a good starting point. I especially liked the hand as it matched the size of the fleshy hand holding the bell. However, some of the fleshy parts of the arm lacked the definition and texture that I wanted. I built up these areas with a combination of greenstuff, texture paste and microbeads. This had the additional benefit of helping to integrate the arm with the overall scheme by the use of common textures. This applied most especially to the bubbly/blistered texture I’d added elsewhere.

The next task was to address the stump out of which the mechanical arm protruded. Microbeads (of course) provided much of the texture, but I wanted something more. I wanted to create a semi liquid, ragged texture, as if the flesh was in the process of flowing into a new form. My greatest inspiration for this was the writing of Michael Moorcock, and most especially ‘Stormbringer’, which has had a huge influence on how I see the forces of Chaos and their effects. To create the flowing flesh, I used a variation of the cotton wool and water effects splash effect (shown HERE). In this case, however, I used a PVA glue and paint mix instead of water effects. 

I was very pleased with the final effect but the overall look of the arm didn’t feel right to me. After some thought I decided that I needed more metal and machine parts in proportion to the fleshy parts. Taking my nerves in hand, I clipped off the large green tentacle (I was to later use it elsewhere) and added the spikey guard rail from the Plague Burst Crawler. It was a nasty job but I was much happier with the arm once it was done!

Paint the sides of the tank.

I regarded the sides of the tank as three distinct areas: the side panels, the tracks and the entropy cannon. The side panels are especially significant because it was here I wanted to create a major transition between flesh and metal.

I’d decided upon the colours for this transition as a part of my ongoing work. The fleshy parts of the side panels were to be a deep green, transitioning from the lighter green upper parts. I felt that a flashy NMM effect would be inappropriate for the metal parts. So I used a brown hue inspired by patinated bronze. This was the same treatment I’d used on the ‘boiler’ at the back of the tank. It is a colour that contrasts with the green but not in a way that draws the eye away from the focal points of the model.

The transition is created through the use of a freehand texture. This was based upon the painted texture of the upper flesh areas, so it felt like a part of the overall scheme. I’d not been looking forward to painting this transition but, by the time I came to do it, things had become fairly straightforward. All my choices had been made as an on-going part of the project’s evolution, so I was able to focus on executing them rather than worrying about what to do! All in all this was one of the faster parts of the paint scheme to complete. 

Now I could paint the tracks. Once again my choices were informed by my earlier decisions. I kept the scheme for this area fairly simple. I painted the tracks and all the associated wheels, gears and general gubbins in the same dull grey NMM I’d used elsewhere. This would contrast with the adjacent parts of the model but fit in with the overall scheme. I had some plans for adding lots of mud and dirt but decided against this. As things have progressed, I’ve been editing my plans as it is easy to go OTT with this project. There is already a lot going on with the overall scheme. 

Rather than adding heavy layers of dirt, I painted some fairly subtle rust effects and blended them into the brown shadows to give a grimy feel. My global shade colour is Black Leather from Scale Colour which helped with this a great deal. I am particularly fond of shading cool or neutral greys with brown hues. As always, the photographs I took for lighting reference were extremely useful when it came to placing my highlights and shadows!

The final job for this overall area was to paint the two entropy cannons. These were painted as sub-assemblies and provided a nice little sub-project. 

The sides of the tank were the last significant areas of the tank to be painted.

The remaining work consists mostly of finishing things off and bringing together previously painted sub-assemblies.