Another Reclamation Project

Recently a friend of ours, new to both 40k and Dark Eldar, acquired a huge set of old timey Dark Eldar minis.

Those of you familiar with my Dark Eldar army know that I enjoyed combining the old kits like these with the new ones.  Seeing the original ancient minis painted with loftier new techniques is always very fun!

I dug a few out of the box, and set down to do a quick sample mini.

First things first... away with the nasty gravel/grass base.  Replace it with a simple piece of cork, with a Secret Weapon skull!

Right away... significant difference, and not lots of work either.

Very basic colors applied to the base, trying to set up the figure...

On that topic, the new owner said that she wanted to keep the black/green theme, with the red accents.  I wanted to keep things as similar as possible, but also make it something she could replicate on her own if she wanted.

The major idea I wanted to show was the combination of metallic paints and regular paints.  That is, to make the green have a shimmering effect.

You can see the difference enhancing the reds made in this image.

Here you see a few greens out on the palette, with the metallic paints ready to mix in.

Here are a few initial layers of that combo, with the repainted red accents.

I continued to darken the shadow areas, as well as put a few quick freehand designs on the skin.

I also enhanced the red glow of the eyes, and painted the little spirit stone stuff on the splinter rifle.

Here we have a little side by side action to give you a comparison of what was, and what could be.  The metallics were also redone on the blades.

One final image.  My apologies for the paper towel backdrop... I was not in the studio, and thus had to come up with something on the fly. :-)