GW Paints used Chaos Black Scorched Brown Bestial Brown Snakebite Leather Regal Blue Enchanted Blue Ice Blue Codex Grey Fortress Grey Bleached Bone Dark Flesh Dwarf Flesh Elf Flesh Boltgun Metal Chainmail Mithril Silver Dwarf Bronze Shining Gold Burnished Gold

GW Inks used Chestnut Ink Black Ink Other materials used GW Builder Sand PVAadhesive Static Grass

Introduction
It took me quite a long time until finally this model turned out to my satisfaction. My main problem with High Elves has always been the cloak! As far as I know GW used a mix of Chaos Black, Goblin Green and Chainmail to paint them, but that didn't really work for me. Still, I wanted to achieve a kind of metallic look on these coats. Then, inspired by Gandalf-Graham's excellent NMM guide ('non-metallic metals' = painting metallic items with non-metallic paints), I decided to use Greys to get a kind of 'silverish' look. So in a way, this is my first attempt at painting NMM. It's up to you to decide weather it really worked or not, but either way I think it looks quite nice.

Step 1 - Priming
Undercoat the model with Chaos Black spray paint.



Step 2 - Paint the Armour
I wanted the armour to look as smooth as possible, so I used a technique called 'wetbrushing'. This simply means that you thin down the paints with water before brushing them on the miniature. By doing this, the colours will blend together much smoother. Since you work with thinned paint, it'll take some additional layers to build up the desired colour, so I did 3 wetbrushings with each paint. (Of course, just like when you're drybrushing, make sure to wipe off most of the paint before you begin!)
So start by wetbrushing the entire armour and helmet with Chainmail followed by Mithril Silver.



Step 3
Now wetbrush with Dwarf Bronze, Shining Gold, followed by Burnished Gold and finally a 50:50 mix of Burnished Gold and Mithril Silver, until the whole armour has a very bright golden look.
à Wash the armour with thinned Chestnut Ink.



Step 4
Carefully outline every plate of the armour with thinned Chaos Black. This will add some additional depth.
Again lightly wetbrush with the 50:50 Mix of Burnished Gold and Mithril Silver.
In case the armour turns out too bright, again wash it with thinned Chestnut Ink until you have the desired end result.
Now start painting the Sword by drybrushing the blade with Boltgun Metal, followed by Chainmail and finally a light drybrush with Mithril Silver.
Wash with thinned Black Ink.
Repaint all the parts of the miniature which have been accidentally drybrushed (face, skirt etc.) with Chaos Black.



Step 5 - Painting the Skirt
Base the skirt with an 80:20 Mix of Chaos Black (80%) and Regal Blue (20%).
Leave very thin lines of Chaos Black between the skirt and the other part of the model like the armour, the belts etc.
Now highlight with Regal Blue, followed by a 50:50 Mix of Regal Blue and Enchanted Blue, pure Enchanted Blue and finally an 80:20 Mix of Enchanted Blue and Ice Blue. For each layer, water down the paints to slowly build up the highlights.



Step 6 - Painting the Face
Start by painting the eye balls with Skull White and then paint the pupils with two very thin black lines right in the middle of the eyes. Use a real good fine detail brush for this (size 0000)!
Now base the rest of the face around the eyes with Dark Flesh. Then highlight with Dwarf Flesh, a 50:50 Mix of Dwarf Flesh and Elf Flesh and finally highlight the nose, the cheeks and the chin with pure Elf Flesh.



Step 7 - Painting the sashes and the tunic
Base the sashes and the tunic with a 50:50 Mix of Chaos Black and Codex Grey.
Now highlight both, the sashes and the tunic with a 20:80 Mix of Chaos Black and Codex Grey, followed by pure Codex Grey. Finally wetbrush with Fortress Grey and then Skull White.



Step 8 - Painting the Gloves, Boots and Sword Hilt
Simply drybrush the gloves and the boots with Codex Grey followed by Fortress Grey.
Finally paint the sword hilt with Scorched Brown and highlight with Bestial Brown.



Step 9 - Painting the Base
Paint the entire base Dark Flesh, then brush thinned PVA adhesive onto it and dip the base into GW sand.



When dry, wash the sand with pure Brown Ink, then drybrush with Snakebite Leather, a 50:50 Mix of Snakebite Leather and Fortress Grey and finally pure Fortress Grey.
Now repaint the edge of the base with Dark Flesh again and add some different kinds of static grass to it.

That's it! Another noble Noldor warrior is ready to join the Last Alliance!



I hope you enjoyed reading this article. Feedback and questions are appreciated!