Gone are the nightmares of painting Siam-Hann in their bright red armor. This tutorial strips away all the complexity of painting this iconic craftworld!
Painting Siam-Hann Craftworld Eldar
Where most people hate red, I just love it. It’s why I painted such a large army in a similar scheme. Instead of fighting with red’s tendency to be see-through, we are looking to embrace it and use it to our advantage.
Transparency makes it much easier to blend reds together and look silky smooth.
Red
We are using an airbrush for this method, because it will make quick work of this vibrant red. This technique is similar to the one we used in the Blood Angels one, but with steeper shading.
Instead of Rhinox Hide for the base coat, we are starting on black.
The main reason is that our eldar is much small than a marine. We want to get a good contrast on the armor while keeping the simplicity and speed. Afterall, this method is aimed at painting an entire Craftworld army.
We start with a strong highlight of Mephiston Red. You can build this over multiple coats, to make sure it blends in with the black.
Next we highlight with Evil Sunz Scarlet. The key with this color is to use it sparingly. More Evil Sunz does not equal more brightness, it’s mostly about placement next to the darker areas.
Feel free to add edge highlights with Evil Sunz Scarlet after your airbrushed highlight. This will add a more polished look to the armor.
Black
We are doing the black next, mostly because it is on the inside of the helmet. This area is slightly trickier to paint than the rest of the helmet, and we don’t run the risk of painting black by mistake on top of our white helmet.
To highlight our black, we are using a dark green color, like Stegadon Scale Green. This is be an interesting shade, and it will tie in with some of our accent colors later on.
If you go too heavy on the highlight, shade over your black with Nuln Oil.
White
Because red is not a challenge enough, this scheme also has white!
Arguably, the easiest way for this is using sub assembly and painting the helmets whit using either the contrast method, or like we did for out Biel Tan Craftworld.
But sometimes you can’t sub-assemble, so you have to do it the old fashioned way, which starts with a base coat of Celestra Grey.
The base coat is important here and you need it opaque. That’s why we use Celestra Grey: it covers really well for a light grey. If your base coat is not opaque, the red will show through and you white will look messy.
Next, we highlight with multiple coats of Ulthuan Grey. This is an off-white that will be the main color of our helmet. You can do anywhere between two and 10 coats here. The more coats, the smoother the transition will be, the less coats, the quicker it is.
Much like red, the bright white comes mainly from having shadows, so keep pure white highlights to a minimum for a greater effect.
Gems & Lenses
The official color is green for these details, but we went a little bit rogue and did turquoise. Turquoise fits really well with our black highlights, and still looks great.
Start with a base coat of Stegadon Scale Green, that we will highlight with Temple Guard Blue. Next you can add a dot of white to gems and lenses to make the pop and give them the classic shiny look.
Base
Because the Siam-Hann Craftworld scheme is packed in bright colors, a neutral colored base works best. In this example, we used a simple city-fight base that’s a staple for a lot of armies we paint for the studio. You can check out how to paint them in Kindle E-Book.
