Amazing Freehand – Eldar’s Dragon In the Sky Showcase

By sorin tra | July 13th, 2016 | Categories: Eldar, Painted Figure Showcase, Warhammer 40k

Come see the freehand on these TWO fresh looking Eldar Hemlock Wraithfighter painted by newcomer Top Miniatures painting studio!

This week we’ll be showcasing the two Eldar Hemlock Wraithfighters we have been working on the last couple of weeks. They are painted in our quality Level 3 (out of the 4 quality levels we offer) so the results are as expected: Highly detailed miniatures with a couple of unique elements, which make them stand out from the rest and also from each other.

The starting points: Airbrushing, Shading and Highlighting

The main colors of the rest of the Eldar army are bright blue and yellow, so we’ve used Caledor Sky and Flash Gitz Yellow as a starting point to match them with the army. Both of them were airbrushed and mixed with white for the lighter airbrush tones on the edges. After that we have applied the shades in the recesses: Nuln Oil and Drakenhof Nightshade. Without shading, the highlights near the recesses wouldn’t have had such an imposing effect as they have now by using the shades. After shading, the models were highlighted with very white tones of yellow and blue, which gave the model a very clean and elegant look, which works amazing with any Eldar model.

The Cockpit:

Our client bought both models second-hand off Ebay, and unfortunately the pilot was missing, so we had to paint the windows of the cockpit to cover that up. On a black basecoat we airbrushed Genestealer purple and blended it to white for a reflecting light effect. The end result looks very nice and works really well with the rest of the model.

The Engines:

The engines and exhausts are a very important detail of the hemlock, so we gave it a unique glow using airbrushed Evil Suns Scarlet as a base and a Trollslayer Orange with a little bit of white in it in the center of the glow, as a source of the heat.

The Jungle-themed bases:

Previously we have painted a couple more models for this Eldar army, so we needed to respect the jungle-themed bases we’ve done before. The main idea of the bases is that of ancient ruined temples in deep jungle. By using plastic aquarium plants with a couple of green shades and glazes applied on the leafs, they got a natural texture and color, unlike that of plastic plants. The ruined stone tiles are cut out of plasticard. The columns were hand-made very easily from cylindrical wooden pieces on which we glued spaghetti. Haha! Soon we’ll do a DIY tutorial on those columns. You can follow us on Facebook if you want to check our tutorials!

The Freehand dragons:

The client wanted a couple of freehands on the Wraithfighters and trusted us to decide what those should be. Since these are commissioned on our quality Level 3, which is a high standard for us, we wanted to make them look really good, so our team agreed we should paint one orange dragon on each fighter. So, we gave them to our girl painter which specializes in freehands, and she managed to turn them into really cool artworks. She painted the 2 dragons in a orange to yellow palette: a dragon’s head spitting flames on the first one and a baby dragon on the second Hemlock.

The Symbols and alphabet we’ve used:

We decided to give a name to each Hemlock, and also write on them our client’s craftworld name, “Geminthal”. For the names we’ve decided to “Blue swallow” which we researched its translation in the Eldar alphabet the client provided us with, which is “Luune Tuilindo” for the first Wraithfighter and “Swift blade” who translates to “Arauka Hyanda” for the second one. So we’ve written that using the font from the Galeic alphabet, as specified by him. The colors of the letters match the rest of the model, brightly coloured.