Latest dark elf pictures

After painting a lot of dwarfs it was time to do something completely different. Of course the dark elf painting was present here and there, but recently I've been painting 2 dark elves in a row. Dwarfs are awaiting some paint on my paint station.
Painting the dark elves gets the creativity flowing because it requires different paint schemes and techniques. A "start" of a new war band/army lets me experiment more with painting techniques as well. Thinking about colors and what will work. Thinking about bases and settings and scenes really gives you the creative kick you nice in a while need for painting the army you are busy with.
Good news for the dwarfs that is! They will get all the new ideas and paint schemes and whatnot...when I start painting them again that is. 16 dwarf warriors are only base coated and awaiting the paint treatment, they will be picked up sooner or later :)

For now the dark elves. I already painted Malus Darkblade a while ago and now was busy with a dark elf sorceress on a cold one. My background for the dark elves will be cold ones. The more cold ones the better! I was a bit stuck with dark elf sorceress but got further with some tips and tricks here and there and here are the most recent pics!


Started with another sorceress but this time without cold one. Actually I bought the model under the impression it was a fine cast model (my first, a first test it had to be), but it wasn't. Just a detailed plastic model of a dark elf sorceress. Fun to paint. Started to evenings ago and this is the current work in progress. The occult markings on the cloth are there. They will get a bright green edge to them (this is only the outline layer).

The face needs the eye and mouth done and the brass only has its first 2 layers. They will be worked up to gold with mithril silver sparkle edges.Base is going to be stone with ice/snow just as with other dark elf sorceress on the cold one. Ice and snow will be the setting for all future dark elves.

I bought myself another cold one with a dark elf knight the other day. The local hobby shop had 3 blisters for the price of 2. Couldn't resist buying some old school dwarf rangers and tipped in the cold one knight as the "free" blister! Coolness!

inspiration needed: dark elf sorceress on cold one

This cold one project is one of those side projects running along other "main" projects. I always keep such a model on the side to spend some painting time on when waiting for other paint to dry.
This dark elf sorceress featured in some of my posts but now gets its own attention.

The reason for this being, I'm a bit stuck how to progress. Of course I can continue to fill in the remaining details: eyes, a book, some gems, the base of course. But still it seems to somewhat empty here and there. So I just throw it out here for all to see, and maybe get some great tips or inspiration on how to finish this model.

Progress on the werewolves warband

First of all: Happy new year! May it be a year full of original paintwork, artful scenery and many a slaughterfest!

In this post some small progress on the werewolves war band for Chaos in Carpathia. The base was already finished and here are some more members of the band. First up is the doctor! He is done! This is the human form of one my werewolves. A mean looking, mysterious character it has turned out to be. I'm quite happy with him. He posed many a trouble with painting all the different shades of black.


Two additional women for my wolves are up now. Two victorian ladies with the weaponry to boot! Evil in the making I'd say. They look so lovely and sweet but are really the wolves in sheeps clothing.


As a special treat some progress on the dark elf sorceress on the cold one. She appeared in one of the previous posts here and wanted you to give a peek how she is turning out.

Progress: Carpathia warband, werewolves

Christmas updates, this time of year is great for painting progress. I've actually planned days to do painting and in between the loose hours as well. This should be great for showing progress as well, expect some multiple posts between christmas and new year.
For now I was busy with the Chaos in Carpathia war band, my werewolves. The 2 ladies were already up here but now they have bases and the werewolves and henchie wolves are done.



2 victorian ladies are up next. One with a rapier and one with a hand gun. Should fit in nicely with the victorian scify setting!

WIP: dwarf gyrocopter

After going through hell to get all the parts glued, the dwarf gyrocopter was sprayed black. I let the gyro rest for a couple of days to see if nothing came off. Everything was glued with huge amounts of superglue, but still it could come off.
This did not seem the case and I've started to paint the gyro and the rotor separately. For the progress pics i put the two together, but they are not yet glued in place.



Color scheme wise, I went for the beige and red I also used on my dwarf warriors. Whit the base coat on the gyro, the color scheme is starting to work out very well. I randomly selected patches that became red, and the tips of the rotor were to be red. The metal is painted boltgun, washed badab black and then highlighted boltgun and chain mail. I also painted the exhausts brass and some tubing and runes as well. The steamgun is also a big brass pipe in my scheme.

Painting dwarfs WIP

Painting the dwarf warriors is taking me forever. I'm doing too much detail apparantly and too much side projects I think. Now I got distracted by painting a dwarf thunderer for my dwarf warband for Mordheim. I hired a new gunman and this has to be represented by a painted fellow of course. Well here is the marksman almost ready. When my dwarf warriors finish I'll do a good photo report with proper lighting and whatnot.




So painting dwarf warriors eh...yep...well...it's progressing...slowly. I took some pics on various stages during the process. Maybe it's taking a lot of time because I'm painting all 16 at once. Usually I paint up to 5 figures at the same time.

The advantage for painting the dwarf warriors is that they are very coherent. When I paint flesh, it's the same for all since I don't have to remember what color combo's I used for the previous 5 for example.

The entire colorscheme is done for all dwarf warriors and you get to see directly how colors work on the group. On the offside, painting 16 faces, 4 or five highlights after each other is getting a bit tedious after a while.

What is the plan for the dwarfs? I chose to paint 3 different beard styles: yellow, brown/orange and black grey. For the coats I took beige and red. 8 guys have the red coats and 8 the beige ones. Metal is metal and will be done with brass and gold accents and the leather pouches and boots will be done the same for all.
I'll leave you with the final pic of my WIP and hopefully can make you guys happy with a final photo session very soon.

Another productive day

It's that time of year again, days off, holidays and whatnot. In no time these days fly by and what did you do? We decided to fill at least one of those days with again some scenery building. More Hirst Arts bricks were cast and the table was set for a day enjoying the hobby!

Arjan and Mr. Flibble turned up for this hobby day and we dove in. Lots of creativity was flying around and the concentration and dedication to work was of a high level straigh away!

Lot's of designs were tried and tested before glueing the stuff together. Here a wizards tower is taking shape bfore our eyes. I believe the current status is that it is painted and all ready to go on the battleground. Good stuff!

My own goal was getting the field plates for my arena painted and painting some roads for our city. Buildings we have but some more roads will add to the playability of the scenery.

I also started with building a sort of balcony tower like structure for the arena and built a small shrine. Also started on a long street as well in the days after this one. These are all the works in progress and will see their finished pictures here very soon!

A productive day

It was the day in december. The air was cold outside. A perfect day for...painting and scenery building! The last week I was casting a lot of bricks with our hirst arts molds. Starting the day it was sorting out the pile of bricks.

The table was set up for scenery building, bricks and everything were flying around and creative was flowing freely. The result is some 2 buildings and the arena tiles have now 4 more parts. Only an other half of the arena needs building and it is done. Even painting the stuff we were able to do before the end of the day. Here some snapshots on the setting of the day. The buildings and more details will follow when all painting has been done.

Pony wagon projects

It's been a while, posting on the blog but it has a reason! I just became a father of the coolest baby boy named Jonas! The painting projects are a bit on low priority the last couple of weeks. This week there was actually some time to paint some stuff!
I was already busy with a pony wagon for my dwarf treasure hunter warband and now finished it.

Yesterday I got a pair of ponywagons as a birthday present from one of our blog contributers Arjan. This got me a good idea on creating a pony wagon train with a pair of ponys. Since my dwarfs will be collecting gold and goodies to amounts they can't carry alone, wagons are in need! I assembled and converted the ponywagons to create the following:

Some conversions were needed. The two ponys need to be next to each other. Easy enough a dummy piece was placed where usually the single pony is.

From above the pony wagon set will look as follows:

The other conversion is the link from the second wagon to the first. The cutaway pieces of plastic frame provided nice pieces of plastic to to fit as a T-piece that will be the couple piece to the first wagon.

new slayer here

A small update on the painting front. I've been mostly busy with digging in the garden the last couple of weeks. I'm also growing a small beard and not that big so I get more and more comments of me becoming closer to dwarfmanship! In so far I'm not digging with a pick axe so I think I'm far from it, but denial is one of the first stages maybe?
Anyway, in the sparse time in between there have been moments I could pick up my paint brush and there was this slayer mini from avatars of war that screamed for being painted.
There is also a great tutorial on bugmans on how to paint a dwarf slayer with this model as an example. I studied the howto and got to work.

A good slayer with agressive looking eyes but he still ahd to maintain a sort of comic look about him what I like in mini's they shouldn/t become to serious in my opinion. I think that is why gobbo's as well as dwarfs appeal to me opposed to the empire or elves.

Aside I'm also working on a good looking thunderer for my dwarf treasurehunter warband. He's getting a leather armour apron garment thingie and coming along nicely:



And you always have to look out for loose laying TNT packages while painting:

Small overview of a part of the painting area with some other works in progress.

Dwarf Treasurehunters WIP

My Dwarven warband is already up and running in our Border Town Burning campaign. It is always nice though to have some backup mini's for new recruits, change of gear and the like. Besides I love painting, therefore new dwarfs are in progress. This is a small update of the projects going on now.
First up is a dwarf ironbreaker. I managed to get a good deal on an old box of ironbreakers. Ideal material for my Mordheim dwarf warband in my opinion. This is the one that is now under the brush. The metal was easy of course (and there is a lot of it). But this sturdy fellow is riveted all around and I came up with the great idea of making all the details bronze. Took me a while to paint all these rivets and details altogether. The finsished pics will show this in more detail. For now this is its status:

Click to enlarge of course!


Next up is the noble, there was of course a noble leading my warband, BUT... not a real goodlooking noble-y fellow representing this. This dwarf leader is the ideal mini for leading my warband here. Lot of gold thread to paint but it is getting there.


A new thunderer in progress. i only managed to paint the leather armour he is wearing though. Awesome model though. Again a good deal on an old box of thunderers and this one with the dragon barrel is really shaping up to take part in our Mordheim battles. I also want to start with a small conversion of one of the thunderers to put a big sight on one of the guns with an enlarged eye painted on. Ideas enough, now find some time to execute.

A beardling is also being painted (only undercoat and first layer of skin). Almost not worth mentioning, but since I was posting on what projects are going on her he is:

New slayer in town. no this is not a BA Baracus Slayer personification: it is a first layered skin dwarf slayer. Took a while to pin this fellow together and greenstuff all the gaps, but he will be cool and mean looking.


A Marker or signpost is a small side project to the mini's. No big buildings this time but small details to upgrade the existing buildings we have. Also an orb, some books and chests have been painted (no pics though).

Finally, I made a statue for our scenery. For comparison my noble is standing beside it. The statue is made with air curing clay (not my favorite stuff to work with, but still reasonably result). It will be incorporated in a small marker or building/ruins/rubble or some other.