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Friday, December 04, 2015

Dark Eldar Grotesques Aberration Painted! (Flesh Friday)

Well, this feels pretty good.

Though I may not have succeeded with as much of my November Modeling Vow as I did with October, but I still feel like I accomplished some good things in November, chief among them, for me, is having finished painting AND BASING the unit of Dark Eldar Grotesques that I finished modeling in October.

That last basing bit is key. Anyone who has known me for a while can attest to the fact that I'm far more interested in modeling and sculpting than I am in painting and basing. Though I said I finished a lot of things in October, NONE of them were based. I fixed that his month, forcing myself to get over how boring I find basing, and have now nearly finished basing all the models I painted in October.

The full idea and process behind my bases is something I'll go into in a separate, fuller article. For now, the general concept was that I wanted them to represent the floor of a Haemonculus' workshop: a slick, bloody mess, some of which looked like it might actually be alive.

For painting the Grotesques and Aberration, I took the colour scheme for The Hexed from the Haemonculus Covens book...

... and combined that with a version of the purple flesh that Doctor Faust suggests in his Talos Painting Tutorial...

...to come up with this.
I wasn't 100% pleased with resorting to drybrushing on the Grotesques, particularly since they have such vast tracts of bare skin. I had an airbrush, so I figured I should give that a go. Having seen a lot of people doing preshading with an airbrush on Instagram (and if you're on instagram, please look me up on there as I'd be happy to follow you!), I gave it a go:

...but having little to know idea what I was doing, and not being sure that I was using the right airbrush paint for the effect to have any...effect, I feel like it mostly acted as a reminder to "keep these areas dark. Here are the Grotesques after the initial purple coat:
And, having been pleased with how well the airbrush handled fabrics/robes on my initial Wracks test model above, I did my first experiment with masking and airbrushed the non-purple parts:
THAT I as extremely happy with, particularly on the Aberration / Stormfiend's tabbard (though here some of that beautiful work has been obstructed by gore :P).
Here's some WiP on the Aberration where you can still see the tabbard:
In the end, the scheme I fully pioneered on the Wrack model translated pretty well to the Grotesques:
The Paulson Games Bioterrors that I used turned out pretty well:


However, I am most happy with the Aberration since I plowed so much greenstuff into him.
I quickly learned that stitches are WAAAAY more fun to sculpt than they are to paint. I did a first pass on them, was pretty impressed with myself, then showed them to the Norn Queen, and she told me they were basically crap and I could do better. So I had to.
All together, they make a pretty good crew!
How do you folks like 'em?

4 comments:

  1. Cracking job dude! LOVE the basing! Very gruesome

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    1. Thanks NafNaf! The bases I was pretty happy with, but what made them for me was working in the gore on the feet/legs of the models who have to walk through that slop!

      Also, I'm sorry I haven't commented on your blog of late. I switched phones, got out of my typical feed/comment regimen, but I'll get off my ass and get back to it now!

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  2. Great job. I love the bases too, and the colors really tie your army together. The alternate haemonculus is great as well. Can't wait to see more progress, and the army all together.

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  3. They look amazing! Can't wait to see the entire army!

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