Anyone knows about a good painting guide for armoured elves and palace guards?

Tale of painters has a tutorial on mirkwood Rangers under the hobbit section

Sorry, I could not get the URL to work

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In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.

I'm in the same boat friend.

I can only say what I've tried so far. I did a mix of three golds but to no avail, it came out really bright. Check out 'Erestar's WIP' in the work in progress subforum and you'll see.

I've recently attempted something different, mixing gehenna's gold and runefang at a 2:1 ratio, applying it to the armour, followed by a wash of agrax earthshade. So far, it looks pretty good, but I won't know for sure until it's complete.

My advice, try the colours out on a 'throwaway' model, as the resin armoured elves are £5 per model, so you want to know what you're doing when you start those.

Funnily enough this is exactly what I've been painting over the last few weeks and I have found a method I'm happy with - happy to share! I was really inspired by the movie so was keen to try and replicate the gold and red colour scheme from the elves that appear at the Battle of the Five Armies.

I've chatted about this with Erestar on Youtube and my method is pretty similar to the one he suggested above. Firstly, as he's suggested I experimented on a couple of old models, Bretonian archers in my case, until I found a gold finish I liked that complimented the red I wanted.



My method is:

For the gold:

Basecoat Balthasar Gold
Wash with Agrax Earthshade
Highlight with Gehanna's Gold
Highlight with Auric Armour Gold
Then, I very lightly washed the plate mail (greaves, gauntles, breastplate, helmet etc.) with Seraphim Sepia just to dull it down. I left the scale mail coat without the final wash as it makes a pleasant contrast IMO.

For the cloaks/underskirts/trousers etc:

Base coat Doombull Brown
Wash Agrax Earthshade
Highlight Doombull Brown
Highlight 50/500 mix of Doombull Brown and Mephiston Red
Highlight with Tuskgor Flesh
Finally, I mixed equal parts Doombull Brown, Mephiston Red and Tuskgor Flesh to make a mid-hihglight which I then used to blend the top highlight into the lower one.

I think they ended up coming out really well, the pics aren't the best but hopefully they give you some idea of how they look.

I hope that helps!

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