Ok, so this is my first ever tutorial and I would like to share with you all how I go about painting my traditional Iyanden colour scheme. I had this Farseer model laying around waiting for a paintjob so I thought that I would combine my painting of this figure with a step by step tutorial so that I can contribute something to the Iyanden PoC and community which I have taken so much from.
1. So take your model and undercoat it. For this I used citadel GW Skull White primer. To get a fine, smooth finish to this I spray at shoulder height about 8-12 inches away moving the can in small circular motions to make sure that the spray gets into all the crevasses and giving an even coat. I would also recommend that after the primer has dried, water down some skull white paint about 60:40 water to paint, and then apply this all over the model to strengthen the undercoat and get any bits that you might have missed with the spray. Also this brightens up the undercoat as the spray doesn’t come out pure white, you will notice the difference when you apply the watered down skull white.
2. Leave the primer to dry for a good couple of hours before you start work on the next stages. Generally I paint my models section by section and for this guy I started off painting his tunic. I used a basecoat of regal blue thinned down to a consistency just thinner than milk, this will probably need about 2-3 coats to achieve a solid colour.
3. Once the basecoat has fully dried its time to do a ‘shading pass.’ To do this get your regal blue and mix it with a little scorched brown to darken it down. Be very conservative with the scorched brown as a small drop will darken down a large amount of blue. Water this down to about 60:40 water to paint with a little releasing agent, for this I just used a drop of matte varnish. Hold the model upside down and in the recesses drag the paint from the bottom of the tunic up to his midriff. The paint should pool slightly at the top of the brush stroke and shade in the folds of the cloth. You can see the effect that this has in the picture below.
4. After I have done the shading pass I need to go back and re-apply the base coat on the raised folds. Using watered down regal blue drag the paint down from the top of the fold to the bottom of the tunic. This requires about 2 thin coats to get a smooth transition between the two colours. Repeat this process with your successive highlights. I went up to pure ultramarine blue from a regal blue and ultramarine blue mix. Using thin paint, again drag the paint down from the top of the raised areas to the bottom allowing it to pool slightly. After a few layers apply the lighter colour directly to the bottom part of the fold to make the highlight strong and solid. This should provide you with a very smooth transition between light and shade as shown in the picture below. The red sash was done in the same way, a base coat of red gore, a shading pass of red gore and scorched brown, I then re based it before the highlighting passes of 50:50 red gore and blood red and an extreme highlight of pure blood red. You can see here that I have blacked out the gems for the next stages and put down the first basecoat on the rocks using graveyard earth. At this point I noticed that both of the spirit seer’s feet were together which I hadn’t noticed previously…. It looks a little dainty but hey it’s an awesome model.
5. So after two days of solid rain I have been able to take some more photos and continue with this tutorial. So far I have painted the inner lining of the cloak, and the gems. All of this so far has been with the same techniques as described above. The inner lining of the cloak gets a hawk turquoise base coat (such a beautiful colour) then add scorched brown into the mix and do a shading pass. Once this is dry go back and re-apply the base colour where necessary. Once that’s dry we need to do some highlights on the raised areas, add skull white to hawk turquoise and keep highlighting until you reach 50:50 turquoise and white. You should end up with something like this, this is all about personal taste so if you want to use different colours to those I’ve used go ahead.
6. Painting the gems is very easy, if you have access to an Eldar codex which any self respecting players should do, you can follow the GW explanation on how to do these, I follow this method and it works very well. And you can see that I have blocked in the black on the cloak for the next few stages.
7. So I’ve almost finished the entire bottom half of the model and it’s looking good so far. I still have the yellow to go, the staff, the head and I don’t know what to do with his waist coat just yet but we shall see what happens when I get to that.
8. Ok so now I get onto the important bit for any Iyanden players. How do I paint yellow? Well personally I find this a very easy colour to do and GW have a great line of yellow paints. So simply, start off with a base coat of golden yellow, I used this straight out of the pot as it was a new paint and was the right consistency for the job, two coats did the job nicely. Once dry I follow with a highlight of sunburst yellow, again straight from the pot. Follow this with a further highlight of bad moon (thanks GW for discontinuing this paint that I use so much). Finally an extreme highlight of 50:50 bad moon yellow to skull white on the very edges of the armour plates. That’s all there is to it… no fancy tricks, its just building up a strong colour through thin layers and leaving the darker yellows visible as shading and making it ‘pop’ with the last extreme highlight.
(base coat of golden yellow)
(Awaiting image, the camera this pic was taken on is not in my possesion atm, and I don’t want to keeo you all waiting even longer)
(After the final highlights)
9. As you can see by now I’ve also painted the helmet and eyes. The helmet was done in the same manner as the blue tunic in stages 2-4 where I talk about base coats, shading passes, re-basing, and highlights… this is the method I use for most of my painting nowadays, its sooo effective at getting a smooth blend and graduated highlights. The eyes were done quite simply, base coat red gore, blood red, then the smallest amount of blazing orange in the corners just to add a bit of fire into his eyes.
10. To do the black cloak: first we must realise that nothing is pure black, painting anything pure black doesn’t look right so instead we use a basecoat of a very dark grey, about 60:40 chaos black to codex grey. Then instead of doing shading passes on this we only do highlighting passes. Keep adding grey into the mix and make sure the paint is very thin and drag each layer from the top of the cloak to the bottom of the cloak letting it pool slightly to build up a gradual highlight. Blow on each layer to make it dry quicker before the next layer. This requires lots of layers to create a smooth finish, the last highlight I used on this was 60:40 codex grey to chaos black. Unfortunately the highlights don’t show on the pics I have as the gloss varnish has washed them out in the photos. Dam gloss varnish. As you can also see I have started with the free hand on the cloak. Water down fortress grey so its very thin, then with as steady a hand as possible and as few strokes as possible paint on what ever pattern you want. Then go over this with white or the colour of your choice.
11. Lastly I haven’t told you how I do my wraithbone. I start with a base of snakebite leather. Then over this I do 2-3 layers of thin bleached bone until the colour is built up solidly but leaving the basecoat showing in the recesses. Then I add highlights of 50:50 bleached bone and skull white and then an extreme highlight of skull white. Which gets results like this.
Snakebite leather basecoat
Final result after progressive bleached bone and white highlights.
12. And there you go, all that’s left to do is give it a coat of gloss varnish and then a matte coat…. Easier said than done though, it has its gloss coat on and I was hoping to get some Testors Dullcote to finish it… but NO that’s now illegal to sell in the EU so thank you Mr. European Union for banning the best aerosol matte varnish in the world for miniature painting….*Sigh* And that’s it 12 steps to a completed model and here is the last pics.
Thank you all for taking the time to read this, I enjoyed it and this has been a great exercise in improving my painting. I hope you find this of use or interest. I will add more pics that I have stored on another camera soon within the next few days. So thanks everybody.