WIP: High Elves Sea Guard part 7

Previously on... WIP: High Elves Sea Guard

I decided that all the elves would have red hair, that would give them a uniform look which will provide coherence to all the army. This feature, added to the turquoise blue which will be present in all the elves will help to get an impressive overall look.

So now I paint the hair. Hair can be tricky if you don't know how to do it. The most important thing to take into consideration is the shiny spots. Take a look at comic book or concept art drawings, hair is often painted plain but has very strong light points in white, because hair usually shines because of the natural grease. It's important to do that on miniature painting, or else you don't get the hair effect you desire. This hair on these elves is not a good example, specially for the back part, because its very badly sculpted and no matter how you paint it it will always look like red spaguetti.



But notice how the braid in the front was painted. Look at the shiny spots.



Leather is also a very entertaining thing to paint. Working with textures lets you be less worried about smoothness because you paint dotting all over the surface with different colours until you are satisfied with the results. Look at this process on a glove.

First, basecoat of plain Chocolate Brown (Vallejo).



First lights with English Uniform (Vallejo).



Second lights adding a bit of Ice Yellow (Vallejo) to the English Uniform.



More Ice Yellow to the mix:



Final light points adding white to the mix.



First shadows with some brown with more red, like Number 6 from Andrea's Flesh Paint Set.



Deeper shadow adding a but of blue.



This seems enough for these leathers. Standard bearer, bases and final touches remaining.