Tutorial: How to paint Mirkwood Elf Rangers from the Hobbit

I love the fact that Tale of Painters has a strong Hobbit following. It’s spurring me on to keep bringing you guys tutorials. The Hobbit tutorials are my favourite to do because I always get an over whelming response. You guys asked for Mirkwood Rangers and I’m happy to oblige. Catch the whole tutorial after the jump.

This tutorial assumes you have a basic understanding of how to paint. For the beginners, I will explain the techniques as I go along. Each picture below shows four chronological steps. Underneath each picture are the corresponding instructions. Each step shows the paint I used during that step. It’s good to have reference material close to hand to check colours. I used google images for film stills and Games Workshop’s 360º pictures on their website were a great help.

Paints you will need for this tutorial:

Black Undercoat

Incubi Darkness (base)

Thunderhawk Blue (layer)

Castellan Green (base)

Caliban Green (base)

Loren Forest (layer)

Rhinox Hide (base)

Doombull Brown (layer)

XV88 (base)

Gorthor Brown (layer)

Steel Legion Drab (base)

Zamesi Desert (layer)

Seraphim Sepia (shade)

Ushabti Bone (layer)

Cadian Fleshtone (layer)

Bugman’s Glow (base)

Pallid Wych Flesh (layer)

Ironbreaker (layer)

Gehenna’s Gold (layer)

Mephiston Red (base)

Abaddon Black (base)

Straken Green (layer)

Stirland Mud (texture)

In case you need to expand your paint collection, head over to Wayland Games or Slave to Painting, which both stock a huge selection of paints at competitive prices.

1. Undercoat the model. Because the model is so small with really fine detail I undercoated by hand using Imperial Primer.

2. Paint the leggings with Incubi Darkness. This is a base paint so it goes on with one or two coats.

3. Highlight the length of the leggings with Thunderhawk Blue. 

4. The model’s cloth areas are predominately brown and green. You can decide for yourself where to paint which. I recommend changing the areas around so there is a bit of variety in the warband.  Once you’ve decided on what areas will be green paint them with Castellan Green.

5. Mix Lahmian Medium (50%) with Caliban Green (50%) and shade the green areas in the recesses. Once dry repeat this step to make the areas darker if required.

6. Highlight the edges of the green with Loren Forest. 

7. Paint all the areas you decided to be brown with Rhinox Hide.

8. Highlight the Rhinox Hide areas with Doombull Brown. 

9. Highlight the Doombull Brown layer with XV-88.

10. Paint the bow, quiver and arrow shafts with Gorthor Brown.

11. Highlight the bow, quiver and arrow shafts using Steel Legion Drab.

12. For blonde hair paint the hair with Zamesi Desert. Check out some of the Dwarf tutorials for other ways to paint different hair colours.

13. Wash your Elf’s hair with Seraphim Sepia (because their worth it).

14. Highlight the hair with Ushabti Bone.

15. Paint the face and hands with Cadian Fleshtone.

16. Create a wash by mixing Lahmian Medium (50%) with Bugman’s Glow (50%). Use this to shade the skin areas.

17. Highlight the face again using Cadian Fleshtone. Just paint the brow, nose, upper lip, cheekbones, chin and individual fingers. 

18. Water down some Pallid Wych Flesh so its nice and thin and sparingly highlight the previous step to get that pale elf skin tone. Click the picture above to get an idea of how sparingly.

19. Paint the dagger and the tips of the bow with Ironbreaker.

20. Paint the lip of the quiver, the handle and guard of the blade with Gehenna’s Gold. This should take three thin coats.  

21. Use Mephiston Red to paint the arrow fletchings.

22. At this point I wanted to add more definition to my Elf so I created a black glaze by mixing Lahmian Medium (75%) with Abaddon Black (25%). I then applied this to areas I wanted to darken such the overlapping fabrics, the wooden weapons and the silver blade. Once dry repeat this step to increase the darkness (shading). It’s best to do several thin translucent coats. I did not use this glaze on the skin, hair or gold. 

23. Now the greens have some extra shading definition, I now want them to “pop” by adding an extra edge highlight of Straken Green. 

Finally base the model in a way which fits in with your collection. I used Stirland Mud texture paint highlighted with Karak Stone and the base edge was painted with XV-88. Static grass and scrub were glued on in small clumps.

Tale of Painters has a whole host of Hobbit tutorials for you to check out.

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