Painting High Elves – It’s only been twenty years

There are moments that will stay clear in ones memory forever. For my parents generation, one such moment was watching Neil Armstrong step out onto the lunar surface on a flickering TV-screen. I personally vividly recall watching the fall of the Berlin wall, kissing a girl for the first time, and sadly watching the events of 9/11 unfold. Then, there was the time when I opened my first box of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It was 1994 and I had rushed home from school on my bike to open the big box my dad helped me mail order using a stamped order form, no internet back then. The sound of the glittering plastic wrapping and smell of plastic and cardboard as I lifted the lid, is still as clear as daylight in my mind. The boxed set included High Elves and Goblins, as well as cardboard stand-ins for various monsters. It could just as well have been cocaine that came in the mail that day; I was hooked and highly addicted to Warhammer from that very moment.

I still have the box. I also still have the original set of plastic monopose High Elves with spear and bow, that came with the 4’th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. I never really got around to painting them back then, as I was more attracted to the greenskins. Now, some twenty years later I tend to make amends for that.

A small force to begin with

Thanks to the internet I no longer need my dads help to mail order and so, after a few clicks on various internet sales groups, I quickly amassed a High Elf collection worthy of any 90’s teenagers fantasy. The plan is to start out with a small force of two units of ten archers and spears, a repeater bolt thrower and five dragon knights.

Painting 1990’s High Elves

Since I want to paint a High Elf army that befits a younger me, I will be going for a retro look and have therefore drawn inspiration from the pictures in the fourth edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles rule book. This means using bright red, going towards orange and of course, a lot of white. I will go more into details on how I paint white in an upcoming post, but briefly said, I find white to be the most challenging color to do right. One of the trademarks of the golden 1990’s era is that wood and leather is often painted in bright colors, the red spear being a prime example in this case. On certain areas I will be a bit more progressive than a true retro look would demand and so I will not be doing goblin green flocked bases and the overall amount of colors used will be reduced.

There are numerous High Elf painting tutorials available online, so instead of going through my painting process in details I have picked out a few points that I find worthy of sharing.

Basic High Elf color scheme

1. Undercoat with white spray
2. Do all armour with Vallejo model air metallic (VMA) Steel, then wash in Nuln Oil, drybrush with VMA Steel and VMA Silver, final highlights with VMA Silver.
3. Flesh is done using Vallejo Flat Flesh, Reikland Fleshshade and Kislev Flesh.
4. Shoes are XV88, but leather such as quivers is based on Vallejo Japanese Uniform, both are shaded with Agrax Earthshade and highlighted with Deathclaw Brown
5. Bows are based on Vallejo Dark sand.
6. Blue parts are Macragge Blue, highlighted with Calgar blue/ Hoeth Blue mixed with white.
7. Gems are Waagh Flesh, then Biel-tan Green shade and highlighted with Skarsnik green mixed with white.
8. White areas are given a rough shading with Ulthuan Grey, then gradually highlighted using Vallejo Off White mixed with Ulthuan Grey.
9. Red parts with Evil Sunz Scarlet, highlighted with Wild Rider Red and Fire Dragon Bright. If necessary, re-base area with white first.

Do the red and white parts last

The bright red color is very transparent and therefore it may be necessary to re-base such areas with white, before applying red.

The red color, as well as white, is also particularly sensitive to dark shades such as Nuln Oil and I strongly advise against using dark shades and inks on top of white and red areas, as it leaves a very stained and muddy result. Instead, I do all the other parts of the model first, including shading with Nuln Oil on other parts such as amour. Then lastly, I do the white and red parts so any spillover of Nuln Oil can be fully covered.

Blending red towards orange

Blending red towards orange is achieved by applying a thinned (50:50 w. water) drop of orange (Fire Dragon Bright) on top of the red. Starting from the middle, the drop of orange is drawn out towards the end, leaving more orange at the end. Add white to the orange if a brighter orange is desired or use yellow. Thinned red wash such as Blodletter glaze can be used carefully to intensify the red color in case you go overboard with the orange.

Bows

Bows are based with Vallejo Dark Sand, then shaded with thinned down Vallejo Smoke and highlighted with mix of Vallejo Dark Sand and Offwhite.

I wasn’t quite happy with the smoothness of the color transitions from on the bows using regular brushes, so I decided to cheat and use my airbrush. So after heavy shading with Vallejo Smoke I airbrushed with Vallejo Dark Sand to get a smooth transition from dark to light brown. I may be old school, but I’m a cheating old school 😉

Shields

I painted the shields separately and glued them on as the last finishing touch. This also makes it easier to paint the model because you don’t have to paint any hard to get to areas behind the shield.

Of all the parts, the shields took the most time to do. At first they seemed straight forward with clearly raised motifs, however, it turned out that shading these motifs were a real pain. Regular shades and ink didn’t provide enough contrast and in the end I had to do thin lines of straight up black paint along some of the edges, which meant that I had to repaint a lot of the white to cover up any mistakes. I use Vallejo Air Black which is very thin, when I have to do really thin lines. The shields were mounted on a stick with double sided tape, which makes it much easier to get a stable grip while painting.

Finished – it only took twenty years, and some!

At this stage I now have ten elves with bows and ten with spear. I’ve learned a lot on how to paint elves, so hopefully the rest of my small army will be easier and faster painted. Nah! Who am I trying to fool, after all, this blogs name is Slowlypainted!