The Ancient Kin – An Elf Project

The hair!

Hair was done this way:

• Vallejo German Camo Brown Base
• GW Mechrite Red
• GW Brown Ink was
• GW Blood Red 1st layer

I had to carefully go back over a couple of shadows on the hair, the heat here at the moment… you can see the paint drying on a wet palette… which is also drying funnily enough.

I’ll take a short break from this project, getting a little fatigued! When I come back it’ll be (almost) all Wood/ Wild Elves all the time!

After a short break, I return to the Elves. Now I delve into the woods to paint up some tree-hugging wild kin to the previous groups. 

To get back in the swing I’ve gone for a quick batch of six Wood Elf Rangers. 

In WHFB they would have been Waywatchers. In any generic fantasy setting I’ll use them as Rangers, low level mooks to fight or hirelings for party members.

With this in mind, I’m going for a quick and simple paint job. Nothing fancy. I was contemplating woodland Camo cloaks, but decided it would take too much work. Ive limited my self to just a few colours. 

The colours to be used:

• Citadel Caliban Green Spray
• Citadel Dark Angel Green
• Citadel Devlan Mud Wash
• Citadel Codex Grey
• Citadel Snakebite Leather
• Citadel Golden Yellow
• Citadel Skull White
• Vallaejo Model Colour German Camo Brown
• Vallejo Model Colour Khaki
• Army Painter Black
• Army Paint Warpaints Flesh

I started by stripping the old paint from the models with Simple Green. They were then given a couple of thin coats of Dark Angel Green spray all over.

I blocked in all the base colours. Using the same colours on different parts of each miniature helps break up the unit, while retaining cohesion. 

The clothes and equipment were based with:

Codex Grey, Snakebite Leather, German Camo Brown, Khaki. A couple of small items (pouch and arrows) in AP Black.

The small amount of skin was based with AP Flesh. 

After the base coats, I gave them an all over wash with the Devlan Mud. 

The first stage highlighting was fairly basic. I went over each colour with the original paint, restricting to the open/ higher areas. 

For the green and the dark brown I mixed in a little of the Khaki. About 2:1 original colour to Khaki. The cloaks were drybrushed, everything else was painted on. 

At this point I kind of skipped ahead and based them thinking they were done.

Looking at these guys again the next day, I decided I hadn’t done enough yet. 

I started by giving the green a second, lighter dry brush.

This time about 1:1 green and khaki. 

The final thing I realised I hadn’t done was the large gem on the belt of each mini. As they are woodland characters, I though an Amber might be more appropriate than other precious gem stones. 

I started with Golden Yellow, followed by a Devlan Mud wash. When dry, I re-layered the Golden yellow over part of the gem, and finished with a spot of Skull White. Not my best attempt at gems, but quick. Which was the point of this exercise. ?

The basing was an experiment on cheap basing options for woodland look. I wanted leaf litter and forest-like debris. Without sourcing specific hobby materials, something I can find in any local shopping centre: Aldi Mixed Herbs. A little watered PVA glue and a couple of extra elements such as grass tufts, chips of Gum tree bark and small stones to give some variety. 

Done!

After quite a long break from this project, I have come back to it. Part of the reason was that I got “stuck” on the War Dancers (pictures below). I wasn’t happy with them and was tempted to strip them and restart them. I put them aside and didn’t look at them again until I resumed this project.

I came back to this project after a near-month break all together from hobby. I started in with the old GW Wood Elf Glade Riders.
Below are still WIP, but near complete.

After getting stuck into these four minis, I looked back at the War Dancers. I was still tempted to strip and start over. But there’s still so much in the paint queue that I decided to just press on and get them done.

Above is a group prepped and ready to start on… but somewhere between the guy second from the right on the bottom row lost one of his swords… ok I dropped him in the garage after the primer had dried and couldn’t find it.
He needed a replacement, so I equipped him with a Kingdom Death Bone Dagger.

Picture 1 above was taken back at 1 April 2019. The second and third taken yesterday, 25 October. Most of the work was done earlier this week on Monday.
I just need to finish the metal decorations, though I’m going to change the swords. Also the body paint stripes need something done with them.

More later

A quick update: after Monday I was finishing up the mounted riders, and working on the Wardancers. I wanted to do something different with the Wardancers. Inspired by a DnD campaign I was in, I wanted to try to make the swords look like they were crafted from wood rather than metal. Results below…

Unhappy with the swords as they were, unsure with how best to improve them and uninterested in spending too much more time on these minis, I decided I wanted a quick resolution to finish them.

I realised I should just paint them in the Elven Metal colours I’ve used on previous minis in this project, to get them done quick and help tie them back to those as well.

Almost finished on these: a couple of little tidy-ups here and there. I’ve added an extra layer of glue to the basing, a nice coat of watered-down PVA.

I’m not entirely happy with the shields there, but I’ve got a couple of ideas.