Eldar Autarch Silver French Golden Demon 2007

[oitoitoi]

http://www.coolminiornot.com/156016/8?browseid=14445913

Hey guys I came across this incredible model and it's inspired me to do an eldar army. I'm wondering if anyone can identify the paints used to do the metallics, I'm fairly confident I can achieve the turquoise with vallejo turquoise but the metals are a mystery to me. The brushed steel affect, would that have been achieved with just fine lines sort of like how you paint scratches? Also does anyone know where that shield and head have come from? Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[Dragonsreach]

Thomas David was (and still is) a renowned painter.
It's more than likely that he desaturated his initial colours to get the tonality. Now you can try that by adding VMC Neutral grey in tiny amounts to the initial base coats to desaturated enough to make the highlights stand out.
As for the brushed metal I'm pretty sure Thomas was a proponent of NMM so it will be a dark toned grey that he's worked Increadibly well to look like metal.

IIRC, he's one of these painters that happily takes upwards of 100 hours per figure.

 

[MAXXxxx]

the tones look very similar to the shield he painted in the miniature mentor video.

There he used a mix of chainmail silver, snakebite leather and ogryn flesh wash from gw as a basecoat.
Shaded with devlan-mud (I assume in 2007 it was more or less a thinned mix of charred brown and brown ink). Highlighted to chainmail / mithril. The metals on the GD mini are quite a bit darker though, so I think he used more shading and little highlight.


altough they look different, but another great looking metal mix he did for a dibbukim (helldorado mini) from figurines-tv DVD.
There the basecoat was a mix of : chainmail, codex grey, olivegreen.
shaded with the basecoat + dark green + black
highlighted with chainmail, then mithril silver.

(for gold parts he used the same base, but with snakebite leather and some bronze mixed in. So again the same colors used to change the tones a bit)

 

[oitoitoi]

Thank you very much for your prompt replies, they've been very helpful!

@Dragonsreach I was hoping to avoid NMM on this army, I use it on my high elf army and while I can now apply it pretty well I'd prefer to use metallics to mix things up a bit. Honestly it hadn't even occurred to me that it might be nmm, if it is it's a really incredible job. In terms of desaturating the turquoise I normally use Vallejo stonewall grey (would this do?) however had read that using vallejo ice yellow can work well too, what do you think?

@MAXX Thanks I'll test out those 2 techniques. I'm pretty sure I can see some green in the metal (still training my eyes to pick out colours in blends, it can be so difficult!), definitely there's brown.

Do you have any tips on the palette he used to do the loincloth? It looks like a white highlighted up from a desaturated blue/purple. Also the base has me stumped, I can see the highlights are a desaturatred red, but I have no idea regarding the shades. Sorry for so many questions, thanks again for your help.

 

[MAXXxxx]

not really.

for me the loincloth looks pretty much the same as the nmm armor, just more blue instead of green like the armor. Based on Thomas' other tutorials I'd say he took enchanted-blue, added some codex grey and highlighted that mix until pure white (colors are from old gw range as he most likely used them in 2006-7). Also the underside is as greenish as the armor, so the base mix is probably the same color.

base: looks like a red-brown highlighted with white. This pinkish color in the lightest part looks pretty similar I got when shading with thinned VAC-Mahagony (http://www.coolminiornot.com/329331) --> probably a similar brown was used and was highlighted toward white.

 

[oitoitoi]

Thanks man, that mini looks great btw. Ordered some eldar minis to have a crack at, I'll post the results.