Hobby: Painting Dark Elves

Since I've been injured and not able to do anything physical, I took the opportunity to get my Dark Elves finished up.  All I have had left to do for about two months was two Reaper Bolt Throwers so it wasn't a huge deal, but it was one of those never-ending projects that I wanted to push out so I could move on to other stuff.

Even though I am a rubbish painter, I thought I'd do a step by step pictorial so you can see how my table top army is done.  This whole job took about 2 hours, so what I lose in skill and technical ability, I make up for with speed.  Here we go...

This is the primed Reaper and crew.  I always prime black, since it's good for speed which I value above anything else.  Plus, I usually paint dark colors and black basecoat suits that the best.

I do a quicky boltgun metal dry brush on the Reapers.  These aren't going to get a lot of detail, and this is a quick way to get that simple, dirty mechanical look.

Here I block out all the boltgun metal areas on the crew.  I also dry brush the boltgun metal on the chainmail sections.

Finishing the Reapers, I paint the bolts brown with red feathers.  Simple, no high lights.  I could put another 15 minutes into high lighting these to make them really look good, but I'd rather not.

Back to the crew, I block out all the purple sections, and unseen, all the flesh, bone, and paper.

In this step, I do a badab black wash on all the armor and weapons.  I also do a thick wash of Leviathan Purple on the purple parts of the crew.  I add a Sepia Greyphone wash to the bone and parchment areas.  Let sit for about 2 hours and...

...add Shining Gold details to the models.  This completes the painting.  If these were more important models and not wound counters for a warmachine, I'd do highlights, but these don't merit that.  So last step next.

Basing the models.  I use the basic Games Workshop Snow and some white glue.  The only thing left to do is give them a quick spray with some sealant and they are ready to play.