The WHITE TOWER Centre of Knowledge - How to paint a High Elf

Many people end up playing High Elves by default. They're one of the armies in the 4th edition boxed set and as they have a high points cost you don't have to get many figures to field a decent army. The other big advantage of the High Elves is that they are one of the easiest armies to paint. Most of the troop types wear similar types of clothes so once you have mastered painting these different types you are all sorted to paint every type of High Elf figure.

Below I describe some simple techniques that should enable you to end up with a very nice looking High Elf Army ready to do battle with their multitude of foes.

Robes: High Elves tend to wear white clothing, the elven colour of death. To paint the robes on High Elves I use a base coat of Elf Grey and then wash it with a very watered down coat of black ink. I then highlight with Elf Grey mixed with Skull White and then finally paint a highlight of pure skull white. For character models you can used more shades of highlighting but for normal rank and file troops the above technique produces excellent results.

Armour: Nearly all of the High Elf troops wear some form of scale armour. Due to the fine sculpting on these miniatures (Jes Goodwin did a great job on these figures) this armour can be difficult to paint but try the following technique.

Paint the armour Mithril Silver and then wash the whole area of the armour with a very thin Blue Ink wash. This will define all of the scales and also give the armour a slight bluish sheen adding to its mystical qualities. To finish it off drybrush the armour with a very very light coat of Mithril Silver just to make it look metallic again.

Other equipment: Due to the fact that most of a High Elf miniature will be painted in the above two colours they can look a bit dull. To brighten them up it is best to paint the other equipment such as quivers, feathers and armour decoration in colours such as yellow, red and green.

Written by: Mike Marshall