On The Desk - Twenty Year Project Part 1

First new project of 2017! Well in fact it's actually an old one....an incredibly old one. The Eavier Metal Facebook group is currently running a competition for models that were sculpted over 20 years ago. I have a few in my collection, but one in particular immediately jumped out. I've had an old metal Eldar Asurmen model (No finecast for me thank you!) since my first days collecting miniatures. I did some hideous paintjob on it (sadly no photos around!) and it survived in a drawer until I picked the hobby up again. It was one of the first models I tried to paint in my second stint of the hobby after I'd stripped off the far too thick old paint. I never did finish it though. This competition (which thankfully allows started models) seems like the perfect opportunity to see how far I've come in the last 4 years and see if I can rescue this model and finally finish him.

So let's start with where I left him, warning this may not be pretty...

Yikes. I think the overall scheme is mostly good (the white to blue armour and the bright helmet crest) Back then I used to use far too many paints on a model. The cloak is just terrible, I think that will have to be re-done completely. Same for the sword and the loin cloth. I think the armour is mostly alright, will just neaten up the blending. For those wondering where his back banner is, I lost that years ago and did a very amateur attempt to cover the whole with a giant gem type thing. Might need to neaten that up. I removed him from the rather crap attempt at a base I made and took another photo.

So first up I started trying to neaten the blending on the white/whiteblue armour plates. Increasing the contrast on the upper body areas that were lacking it and neatening the lower plates. I also started fixing the helmet plume, using VMC Dark Prussian Blue towards the recesses to improve the contrast.

Not a bad start but plenty to do!