Urien Rakarth Painting Guide Part One

Have you ever wondered how good the painting tutorials are in White Dwarf and if they will be of any help in your attempts to get your own army up to a reasonable standard? Over the past few weeks I have followed a few of those very tutorials closely as I begin painting up the Dark Eldar I have piling up on my painting table.

Urien Rakarth is the test model and hopefully some of you may have seen the completed model already on the blog and what follows is a guide to every aspect of painting the model to a standard I am very happy with but also only using the tutorials that could be found in White Dwarf.

I have noticed that Games Workshop have removed all painting tutorials from their site and the rumours etc going round regarding a whole new load of paints coming out, the tutorials I have used may be out of date very soon.

Before we begin it must be noted that the only part of Urien that did not have a tutorial in White Dwarf were his tentacle arms, of which I will include my own thoughts for the painting of these.

Urien, after following WD 379 July 2011

The painting guide I followed was from White Dwarf 379. Although the main section followed the painting of Wracks, Urien is closely fitted with similar tools/equipment/armour so the tutorials were still applicable.

1. Basecoat the flesh and bone with Dheneb Stone, the weapons with Boltgun Metal and the leather with Chaos Black. Highlight the leather with Scorched Brown.
2. Apply a heavy wash of Ogryn Flesh to the skin. Edge highlight the leather Snakebite Leather. Wash the metal Badab Black.
3. Layer a 1:1 mix of Dheneb Stone and Skull White onto the skin. Edge highlight the leather Kommando Khaki and the metal Mithril Silver.
4. Apply a fine highlight of Skull White to the flesh and bone, and wash the leather with Devlan Mud.

While the parts of the tutorial shown are steps 1 - 4, there are another 2 steps which involve adding a Leviathan Purple and Thraka Green wash to the model, which I did not think would be necessary on the Haemonculus.

From this picture you can see more easily the highlighting carried out on his coat and see further detail of his skin and the metal of his weapons, gauntlet and further appendages. You can also see on the picture above the green vials and tubes that are present on Urien. The tutorial for these were from the same issue of White Dwarf, the steps being as follows:

1. First block out the glass vial/tubes with Chaos Black
2. Apply a basecoat of Orkhide Shade to the whole area
3. Highlight the upper area of the vial Snot Green
4. Apply a highlight of Scorpion Green. Finally highlight with Skull White and wash with Thraka Green.

The steps I followed for the tentacles that support the model were:

1. Basecoat the tentacles in Red Gore, with the ends of them (the pincer areas) painted Chaos Black.
2. Wash the tentacles with Badab Black followed by Devlan Mud.
3. Add Mithril Silver to the pincers on the end of the tentacles and highlight the tentacles with Blood Red

That completes the steps I will be running through in this part, leaving the flayed skin tabbard, Uriens armour and the flesh on his face to come in Part Two. I hope the guide has been helpful and, if you really want to, remember you can check this against the illustrations shown in White Dwarf 379. Personally, I am pretty happy with how he turned out and the tutorials were relatively easy to follow.