Thunderstomp Painting - Dark Eldar Succubus

Ok, that's not a Dark Eldar Succubus. It's a Chaos Warrior Exalted Champion, painted by me when I still played Chaos somewhere in 5th or 6th (I don't remember exactly). But the pic does have a point. Allow me to explain...

I am not very good at painting entire armies. I am the kind of gamer who loves playing with painted armies, but who never has completely painted armies unless it is for a tournaments (where I get soft score points for painting). And even then, the army will most likely have been "completed" (I use the term loosely) approximately 6 hrs before the start. If you've ever been to a tournament, you know the kind of gamer I am talking about.

I'll just flat out admit it.


I suck at painting armies. I get bored with having to paint 20+ of the same type of model, no matter how cool they look. I have read about all kinds of different tricks to help painters help deal with painting lots of rank and file troops. Do them in batches, get into a rhythm, reward yourself with a cool single model for every squad you finish, paint less details on the models further back, etc, etc. It just never seems to really works for me. Having to paint an entire unit, I fear, will always be a chore for me.

And I'm ok with that.

You know why? Because I can get my painting fix from painting single models.

You see, my adversity to painting whole units does not stem from not enjoying painting or thinking my painting skills are inadequate. I just can't motivate myself to paint a lot of the same models to the same high standards. I can, however, fully enjoy painting single models to the best of my ability. And that's where the Chaos Warrior comes in.

That model is probably one of the models I am most proud of, painting wise. It's far from perfect (the metal bits in particular could have done with a bit more attention), but overall I'm very satisfied with how it turned out.

The trouble is, though, I haven't painted a model that I am so proud of in years. It seems what painting I have done has only been of the 'getting models tournament ready' variety.

And here, finally, we get to the Dark Eldar Succubus.

My mate suggested I also write a bit about painting, so I thought that would be as good an excuse as any to see how well I can paint now. I have chosen to paint the Succubus, a model that I don't really see myself using anytime soon. I do have a few of the new Dark Eldar kits, but I don't have enough for a complete army. Even if I had, a Succubus would probably not make it into the list. I just bought it because I love the model and I wanted to see what Finecast was all about (so far, no negative comments from me; the model was perfect).

And so the Succubus is the perfect model for this exercise. I love how it looks, I can paint it however I feel like because it will probably never need to fit into any tabletop army, and there is no deadline for me to complete it. I could finish it by this weekend, or I could still be working on it come Christmas.

The point is this: once it is finished, I will have another model worthy of being photographed, at least in my opinion.