Dark Elves

As you might notice, I paint my dark elves are somewhat differently than Games Workshop does. Mine are painted much more like Dungeons and Dragons Drow, with very dark, almost black skin. However, many of the techniques and war beasts are still the same. Anyway, without further ado, I present:

Dark Elves

  1. Prime white
  2. Paint exposed flesh medium brown (Polly S Field Drab)
  3. FOR WITCH ELVES ONLY, paint hair red.
  4. paint armor and exposed metal any metallic color. For this I really like Citadels metallic paints.
  5. As usual, paint weapons Flat Aluminum. Crossbows can be painted a base grey.
  6. Paint armor trim purple, blue, or green.
  7. Wash the entire figure in Liquitex Paynes Grey.
  8. Highlight each respective area with the base color. For my witch elves, I drybrush the hair up into a bright orange to give them a fiery wild look.
  9. For my dark elves, I particulary like the use of Burnished Gold to create the light areas that give color to the figure.

Let's talk about lizards like cold ones or war hydras. War hydras are painted the same way but without the harness detail. There are two ways to do this:

Method 2

  1. Prime Black.
  2. Start with a heavy drybrush of a medium green like a Polly S Slime Green. Because of the scale detail, the gaps between the scales will remain black.
  3. Blend your base color with some yellow-green or yellow and start to work up into the highlights. Eventually, you will be lighly drybrushing with pure yellow-green.
  4. Paint the tongue a deep crimson.
  5. Paint all the horns, teeth, and claws bone.
  6. Paint the eyes yellow and then paint a vertical black strip down the middle to create the iris.
  7. Paint the harness however you want. In this example, I painted it a bone color also because I wanted a light color to separate the dark colored rider and the cold one.

Method 1

  1. Prime white.
  2. Basecoat the figure with a medium green like a Polly S Slime Green.
  3. Paint any metals or dark colors on the harness.
  4. Wash the figure with Liquitex Paynes Grey.
  5. Drybrush with the base color. For the highlights, you may want to add just a hint of yellow-green or yellow.
  6. Paint the tongue a deep crimson.
  7. Paint all the horns, teeth, and claws bone.
  8. Paint the eyes yellow and then paint a vertical black strip down the middle to create the iris.
  9. Paint the harness however you want. In this example, I painted it a bone color also because I wanted a light color to separate the dark colored rider and the cold one.

Tips on painting harpies can be found on the Chaos Page.

Hopefully Dark Elf banners will come in Late May.

For more information on Dark Elves, check out Doug's Dark Elf Page