This past week I've shifted gears a little bit and gotten on to building a lot rather than painting. I've started work on my wife's wood elf army. She's a big fan of elves. Whenever she starts a new character in Skyrim it's always as an elf Mage. I ask her if she wants to try one of the other races for a change, but she always wants to be an elf. So when I showed her the warhammer models the elves were the ones she liked the most. Particularly the wood elves.
I asked if I painted them up for her, would she like to try playing Age of Sigmar with me. Seraphon vs Wood Elves, but she's quite insistent that the elves and seraphon would be friends.
So, this past week I've glued and primed 16 glade guard and 10 eternal guard. I'll be honest, it was a nice change of pace from the Saurus Knights.
I think I burnt myself out on them a bit. I haven't really looked at them since I finished them, though I am proud of them and learnt a lot painting them. I felt like I needed a break from painting scales. Do any of you ever feel like this?
I also felt like I needed a break from the seraphon, because my next project on the go is my ripperdactyls which I'm really not happy with at the moment. I don't really like the colours I've chosen for them, so I've lost a lot of motivation there too. How do you all deal with that lack of motivation?
Anyway, with these elves I've decided to try a few very different things. My goals were to get better at my basing and my shading/blending.
I've tried to employ a lot of the techniques I learnt in painting the Arena Rex gladiator, plus a few things I've heard about on some podcasts. Namely the "Painting With Menoth John" podcast episode on zenithal highlighting with Seth Watkins, and an episode of the "Facehammer" podcast concerning Byron's painting journey.
In the Facehammer episode, they discuss Byron's monochrome grayscale and tourquoise high elf army. They way Byron described them was that they were quick to paint and visually striking. Both of which appealed to me. I want to impress my wife and give her something awesome, and give it to her quickly while she's still interested. It also sounded like an excuse to try to give non metallic metals a try.
In the Painting with Menoth John podcast, Seth Watkins, who is apparently a commission painter. Discussed a bit about colour theory and painting with washes. It sounded quick and really cool. He talked about using green to shade red and vice versa. This sounded really interesting to me. It sounded like magic.
The shadows on the cloak are Mephiston red! It's crazy. This blew my mind I only used a wash in one tiny section of the model. It was a totally different way of painting.
I like the colour of the autumn leaves. I think it's really striking against the subdued tones of the model, but I'd like it to look a bit more realistic. Any tips or thoughts on products to get a autumnal leaf drift look?