Alarielle the Everqueen
Entry posted by Stevewren
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Two weeks before the Facehammer GT I decided that I could probably add Alarielle to my army list. The model is very impressive, and I basically worked on her in three separate stages - The Base, the Wardroth Beetle and Alarielle herself.
Basing Alarielle
For the base I followed my standard Sylvaneth basing style. I've written about it so much on this blog I imagine anyone could follow it now with ease! The first step was to glue down a nutella lid onto the so I knew where my water effects were going to go and also so I knew that they had something to be contained in. Once that was done I built up the base using the lots of playback and polyfilla. Again I left space for a channel that I made from plasticard that came out from above the rocks - this would be the starting point of my small waterfall. I also superglued on all the branches and skulls at this point and sanded it. This was all left to dry before being undercoated black and then brown over the top.
Once the base was dry I could start painting it properly. Again I used a range of different browns and greys to try and vary the contrast as the base is so large. I used the traditional grey at the back and then brought more browns into it at the front. Colour was added through the very bright toadstools, and I also undercoated the pool and stream areas in a dark blue. You can see in the image above that I had done the first two resin pours as well. This took about 48 hours as the resin needs 24 hours to fully cure.
Unusually I decided to go back to static grass for this base as I had a large area to cover. I then added the tufts and bushes at the end. The Waterfall is done using a combination of water effects poured out onto a non stick baking tray and left to dry. You can then peel them off and cut them to shape. I use the Woodland Scenics water effects for this and you can also use that to glue the waterfall down. The pool still needs some ripples added which I'll go back and do, but at this stage I knew I needed to get cracking on the Beetle.
The Wardroth Beetle
I put the Beetle together pretty quickly - Its very big, easy to assemble pieces, although if you look closely you'll see I missed off part of the wood on the top! Once built I undercoated the beetle grey and white.
I used a base coat of Dark Reaper mixed with Palyd Whych Flesh to cover the model using the airbrush. I also used it to get the fade on the horns. I knew I was going to want to get green onto the model to tie in all the foliage and plants that cover the beetle sculpt so I tried to get that fade as bright as possible. I used quite a lot of dry brushing and washing on the model because of its size, and then went in and used a lot of edge highlighting to finish it off. The underside was also a very bright green so it had that kind of insectoid two tone look to it. Once this was finished it was just a fairly simple task of going round and picking out all the small details and finishing these off.
Alarielle the Everqueen
In contrast to the beetle Alarielle herself was an absolute pain to put together, particularly getting the wings in the correct position. I also undercoated the model White which was a really bad idea. I'd have been much better undercoating black and then using a white top coat as the model is difficult to paint in certain areas and there was a lot of white areas I struggled to get too. I started off again with the airbrush getting the wings done as I knew this would be the most annoying bit (not the most time consuming though) but it actually dry brushed up beautifully. I finished it off with glazes of yellow and way watcher green which really brightened the model up. Using lots of different green tones helps to break up such a large model nicely and I think its quite important.
I then pretty much followed the Duncan video on the rest of the model. I gave her some quite scary pupil-less eyes to carry over the sylvaneth theme. The skin technique that Duncan shows in the video was very simple but remarkably effective. I just followed that step by step! I changed some of the colours from the GW video as I needed the blue of her robes to tie in with the rest of the army. I managed to finish the model off with a couple of days to spare, was really happy with it, and she was great fun to play at the tournament. I also think she helped secure a best painted nomination, although I didn't manage any awards this time.
The Finished Model
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