My first fire dragon

Although I’ve decided to stick to non-vivid colours when painting my eldars, sometimes I simply can’t help making changes on the way (and that’s something applicable to every aspect of my life). Thus, I’ve devised a good painting scheme of blues & bones for the core of the army (that means guardians and vehicles), but now I can’t think of applying the same concept for the specialist warriors, who are different and peculiar troops (“special(ist)” troops we could say). It also must be said that sometimes I suffer from a weird disease called “painters' fever”, whose effects are hallucinations with different sizes of brushes and pots of paints mixed, coupled with the imperious urge to capture all these ideas on a mini.

The combination of all those ideas was the decision of painting my specialist warriors breaking the main colour scheme of the army, and also trying something different with them, something even daring, both in their colour scheme and in the technique used.

First specialist warriors I decided to paint were the fire dragons (because the minis are just so cool). Well, I haven’t painted all of them, just one; but that’s because that’s the way I usually do things when experimenting with colour schemes, and only once I’m pleased with the results obtained (usually after a lot of that on-the-way changes) I start with my standard “painting line”.

So the first consideration was: how was I going to paint them? Let’s take a look to some fire dragons painted in a standard colour scheme (GW’s one):

They look very nice, don’t they? Bright and hot colours, fitting very well to their “flame-ish” background and their “melta” role and weapons. But… there is something missing here… there is no contrast between the undersuit and the reinforcement plates, and although that’s not a problem with darker colour schemes (such as dark reaper’s ones), I don’t like it for brighter colours, so… what to do?

Well, first, choice of colours. After some minutes of thinking, I decided to stick to a limited palette of two main colours, a contrast colour and an extra neutral colour for some parts. Thus, I decided for dark red and blue-ish white for the main colours (undersuit and reinforcement plates, respectively), with dark grey (almost black) as the neutral colour, and some dots of blue for the contrast on details. While black and blue are easy colours to paint, and I’ve recently mastered (more or less) a red-painting technique of my own recipe, white is a colour that demands a lot of work and is very difficult to paint properly, but if painted carefully can lead to excellent results. I also went for a grey basecoat, the one I favour lately above the rest just because I’ve achieving very good results with it. And after a few hours of trying different combinations, the mini was finished.

I’m really pleased on how it turned out. The picture is not good at all, I’m sorry; I’ll try to shoot better ones once I finish making my light box – based on this excellent article – but shows quite well the idea I’ve trying to carry out: a contrast nice to the eye, and a different scheme for a miniature. This result reminds me somehow of the Star Wars stormtroopers hehe; with the undersuit black instead of red he could be one of Lord Vader’s personal guards.

I attempted some OSL in the mouth of the weapon, but didn’t turn out well, so I dropped it for a simple glowing effect like the one you can see on Warmachine miniatures (this is difficult to see in the picture due to light reflection, hope to solve it someday). I also like the eye very much (I admit that I’ve been veeery lucky with its result), and also the blue ribbon hanging from his waist; the two stripes it shows are being used as a technique of “troop integration” and are being painted on very infantry miniature of the army, in different places and colours (see eldar guardians soon).

So I’ve finished my first specialist warrior! Only seven more to go, hehehe. I’m planning to paint them on two groups of three, and finally paint the exarch; but due to my painting schedule – really too many projects currently – that won’t happen until March next year. Meanwhile he will be a nice addition to my bedroom cabinet :)