Dark Eldar Army Showcase & a little "Color Theory"

Today I'm gonna be discussing about the problems with painting armies as a whole. Daunting no doubt, but very achievable if we prioritise the steps and compromise a little. This allows us to field largely "painted" armies. Providing us the visual treat we all yearn for when we play a game of 40K.

Above is my 1850pts Dark Eldar army, fully coloured, tabletop ready. Fully coloured? While this is nothing new and I'm sure many people have already used this approach I figured it'll be helpful to elaborate a little on my though processes. Yes, It's not fully painted by any means, but fully coloured. With the airbrush many people are now able to do up large number of models in a very short amount of time. This requires a little airbrushing skills, but with a little practice (getting someone who already knows helps a lot!) you find that it's not that bad after all. The tradeoff in time spent is so huge it feels like cheating.

What I aim for is to base coat and shade. That's it. Once that is done you work on the final step of the painting process, the base. I cannot stress how much a finished base helps in "tricking" the viewer into thinking the model is "completed". A quick glance across the board with base coated & based models most people would assume the model is finished. How many times have you come across a model beautifully painted only to have a blank black base? Which immediately screams "to be completed".

Here you see a squad of Trueborns with venom and converted blasters.  Base coat + pre shading. Bases flocked. 

Once everything is done this way you can enjoy the gaming and the unescapable slower process of highlighting and fine detailing. 

Top view of my army. The Razorwing and Voidraven Bomber is unpainted. Just coloured. 10 minutes of airbrushing and they are ready to take to the skies. 

In the meantime, I'll go do the details. 

For more on my Dark Eldar army, which admittedly I started a few years ago but left untouched save for this ONE fully painted test model. Click on the labels and you can find a step by step painting guide on how I painted my Warrior. 

Also to see more up to date painting and projects I'm working on get on my instagram @beef_nuggets

Happy colouring!