Colours of the Craftworlds
The other day we showed off a few Necrons by Simon Elsen, which went down a real storm - apparently object source lighting is all the rage these days when it comes to futuristic robots. The thing is, Simon's not just into Necrons, he's also a big fan of their ancient enemy, the Eldar. Having seen Simon's superb paintjob on Imotekh and his glowing Monolith we were intrigued to see what he could do with the Eldar. We certainly weren't disappointed. Here's Simon to explain why he painted not one, not two, but seven Eldar Falcons (and why they are all different colours).
Simon: I painted the Eldar Falcons as a test for weathering tanks. I use a lot of weathering on my miniatures and I wanted to see how it would look on something large like a tank. The only thing was, I didn't know which colour to use as the base colour for my vehicle so I painted lots of them to help me decide. In the end it turned out that my style of weathering looked best when combined with brighter colours, giving me a better contrast between the battle damage and the original colour of the tank. This can most easily be seen on the yellow one, the white one and the green one. The green Falcon is also my personal favourite. For those of you wondering how I go about my weathering, here's how I did it:
1. I primed the tank with Chaos Black
2. I used a piece of sponge to apply a layer of Rhinox Hide over the whole model.
3. I then used a fresh piece of sponge to stipple a layer of Tau Light Ochre over the whole tank.
4. I then covered the areas of the tank that I wanted to remain weathered use masking tape - this would help keep those areas safe from paint.
5. The next stage was to choose a suitable colour for the tank and apply it using an airbrush. The green Falcon, for example, was sprayed entirely with Moot Green, which was then shaded with a mix of Moot Green and Caliban Green and highlighted with Moot Green mixed with White Scar. By spraying it on you get a very smooth transition of colour from light to dark.
6. Once the paint was fully dry I peeled off the masking tape.
7. Then all that was left was the detail work (gems and such) and I was done.
