Eldar Aspect Warriors - Dark Reapers

As mentioned last week, a unit of Dark reapers were next on the painting agenda. I was pretty pleased with the final results.

Again I wanted to make use of a kind of inverted colour scheme for the Exach, to make sure that they stand out from their unit, and for some reason I really like the bone inspired theme for Eldar weapons in general, given their background fluff, and in particular for Dark Reapers given the skull motif in the casts.

Technique

A couple of people on Twitter asked about how I paint, and how I approach these models, so this time I took a couple of 'work in progress' shots. These were also an interesting choice, as units which predominately have a darker scheme often present a challenge to paint.

I like blending a primary colour into black for those units who are described as using dark palettes by their lore. Simply highlighting up from black doesn't quite satisfy me when painting. Yes, it is certainly easier, but I prefer to blend as I paint the undercoats. So in this case I mixed the darker red into the black as a gradient. That means that before inking the model looks a little like this

Then after it's dry I will apply an ink layer, a sepia or flesh tone for the bone, and Nuln oil for the red / black. This nicely fills in the recesses and gives the nice deep contrast on the miniatures, that can then be brought up even more with highlighting. 

So then I start highlighting up with the original red colour (in this case Khrone red) and then add another brighter red or orange.

Then I simply go around and fill in the details (gems, ties, holsters etc) before basing them.

I used the same technique on the Exarch, blending the black up to reds and oranges for his weapon, just brought up quite a bit brighter at the tips of the weapon. Then most of his body was a case of ink washes over bone. generally I go over a few stages highlighting with bone or white, and then inking again to build up darker areas.

Overall these ended up working out pretty well. I think I liked the Scorpions more overall, because the green worked so well, but these Reapers should still look pretty good on the battlefield!