Asrai.org

So with the new release of our army earlier this year, I got my beloved, if somewhat neglected, Asrai back out of the various cases and corners they've been lurking in. Looking over my collection, I noticed something.

My army looks like $#!?

I'm not a very good painter, but even I could do better than this. The problem is that I've never enjoyed painting, so I tend to take every shortcut I can think of.

Most of the stuff I painted after the last release was batch painted in record time. I basically airbrushed everything a medium brown colour, then roughly basecoated visible cloth (ie whatever couldn't pass for leather) in a light beige, wood in grey, and skin in elf flesh. After this was done, I airbrushed a brown wash over the whole model, liberally slathered green ink over the cloaks for a mottled brown-green camouflage effect, and picked out any metal. Horses just got the beige all over, brown on their saddles, masks etc, and then the brown wash all over.

Fortunately, this time around, I've learned to enjoy painting and modelling, although I'm still not very good, so I am repainting the salvageable parts of my existing collection, and adding some new stuff.

This will be a log of my efforts to produce a reasonable looking army. I'll keep links to any logs for specific projects here, and I'll also keep this first post updated with a pic of each completed unit or character.

Project logs
Scratch built Waystalkers

Completed Units

Sorry, none yet.

Ok, so after a few months messing around with modelling projects I can't complete right now and painting Tau, I have started properly on my Asrai.

Mostly so far, I've been doing test models for different units, to figure out my colour scheme. The colours I used last time weren't that bad (apart from the cloaks) so I've kept to a similar colour scheme, but with more contrasting colour so it doesn't look like a sea of mud from a distance. Despite rumours to the contrary, I haven't just used the exact same colours from my Tau. Honest.:-?

Anyway, last night I sat down and finished off some of my test models, a pair of repainting gladeguard, a new eternal guard (currently without his shield) and the eternal guard champion.

Here are some pics. Remember, I said in that first post that I am not a very good painter, however I reckon that if I keep up this standard on the rank & file, put in a bit more work on the characters, and chuck in a couple of funky conversions, the army will look pretty reasonable.

I love the colour scheme, a great combination that I haven't really seen before.

Elfboy wrote:I love the colour scheme, a great combination that I haven't really seen before.

Thanks, I basically just used colours I liked and picked 3 (the beige, orange and the darker grey-brown in the folds of the cloaks) for my Tau, then added highlighting and shading tones, a couple of contrast colours (like blue lenses/gems) and then I adapted the colour scheme to my wood elves, because I liked it.

Not the best picture (and some painted before I changed the shade of orange) I know but....
[img]http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l55/a ... 95e534.jpg[/img]

Clean painting trumps detailed messiness every single time.

Great job.

Ok, making progress on the first of my "warhawk" riders. This is the "proof of concept" if you like. Once this one is mostly complete, I'll do the other two.

Now, a few comments before the pics. The limbs and wings aren't glued in yet, as I like to paint partially assembled, so I've used blutack to hold them roughly in place for some pics. I did the same with the rider, but I don't like it, so I'm probably going to change the upper body for one of the ones using a bow, with the spear next to the quiver on the cloak.

[img]http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l55/a ... a911c5.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l55/a ... a7005a.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l55/a ... 9d95a9.jpg[/img]

I've filled the big holes in the body, scraped and filed of all the wartey bumps off the body and limbs, cut off the ugly "trunk" and remodeled the face, and filled the bit where the spike goes just above the head. I abandoned the idea of antennae, as I just can't get them to look right.

I'm taking a break, then I'll probably fix the new rider and undercoat it all, to start painting tomorrow.

GL Coyle!

It'z coming along nicely!