Tutorial

How to paint the Darkelf Rider of Freebooter Miniatures
by Holger Schmidt

Part 1

The Darkelf hero which was released in march 2004 by Freebooter Miniatures is a great model which stands out among similar figures by other companies. A finished painted version of it will be a gem in everyone's showcase.

The Assembly

Before painting the miniature you usually have to assemble it and before that you must clean it. You will need a knife and a file. You have to examine each single part of the miniature for casting edges and faults. This work is not beloved but very important because every casting fault can be seen after painting the miniature and can ruin even the best paintwork! If you want to paint a miniature for a competition and there is still a casting fault visible just forget about it!
After the cleaning you hold all the single parts of the miniature together to see how they fit. This helps do define how you will attach them and in which position. In case of this Darkelf I just used supeglue to build the complete miniature, pinning wasn't necessary. The lizard had some gaps between the different parts which I filled with greenstuff.
I painted the lizard and the rider seperately because especially the rider was much better to handle this way. The miniature was primed white.

 

The single parts of the miniature before the assemlby:

The assembled miniature. Taking a look at the lizard you can see the gaps between the parts:

The gaps were filled with greenstuff:

The primed rider and lizard:

Next part

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11