For the flesh I used the Tanned Flesh and Barbarian Flesh combo as above, the woodwork like bows etc was painted in Fur Brown, some hair I did Uniform Grey but others Desert Yellow. NOT BLUE And that left the rest, obviously some things were never going to work with blue shading, as I have mentioned previously the flesh, I’m not going for Dark Elves here but Tolkien’s Elves of light.
In an attempt to save a bit of time I left the shield fronts in the Platemail as I had a plan to use up some spare Little Big Man decals and I wanted to see if they would look OK on the Platemail, which they did. And them put aside for a good while to dry thoroughly, it’s not like there’s not more to do! It is worthwhile just going and checking on them from time to time just to make show no unsightly blobs have accrued, a quick flick of the brush will sort them out. Making sure it didn’t pond or form unsightly blobs. Once dry then sloshed all over with Warpaint Washes Blue Tone Ink. NOT QUICKSHADE So I painted on all the colours that were destined to be shaded by the Blue Tone Ink.
As it happens Army Painter make a lot of blues, more than you would think, but I stuck to using a pallet of Deep Blue, Crystal Blue, Electric Blue and Ultramarine Blue, and used the odd non blue that would shade OK with the Army Painter Blue Tone Ink like Necrotic Flesh, Wolf Grey and Uniform Grey. Also I fancied I could do the armour as well with the Blue Tone Ink, and that would save more time. This did require a bit more planning as I would have to use colours that would be successfully shaded but the dark blue of the ink, but I reasoned that this would give then that distinctive I wanted a distinctly different look for them so instead of painting in all the details then reaching for the Army Painter Quickshade Strong Tone, I followed the route I had used on the dragon but utilising Warpaint Washes Blue Tone Ink and in the end, not using the Quickshade at all.
EXPERIMENTING The Armoured Elves were primed with Platemail Coloured Primer Spray, just like the Armoured Dwarves, as they have a lot of armour on them though it’s mostly chainmail on the elves. That however left me in somewhat in a quandary as I wanted all the Elf flesh to be the similar, so I repeated the “mistake” on the Armoured Elves too. Having painted the Wood Elves flesh in Tanned Flesh it seemed the best approach was to just slap on a bit of the lighter Barbarian Flesh as a quick fix and as a highlight in a very rough and quick way.
Not in a major way but as I painted the flesh on them, using Tanned Flesh, it only then occurred to me that on the Dwarves it came out darker than I wanted to have on the Armoured Elves. It did also involve some very minor transgressions, painting not legal, from the painting I had agreed to, but only very minor transgressions… I was just testing my eyes… BUSTED As it happens I had, as you might suspect, already busted the golden rules when I painted the Wood Elves. This part is a bonus and as lock-down continues, feels appropriate to add it in.