Aeldari are the opposite of a wash-and-drybrush army. The armour is smooth, curved and almost entirely free of the rivets and cabling that hide mistakes on other factions, so every brush mark shows. That sounds punishing, but it cuts both ways: there is very little to paint. A Guardian is two large armour colours, a helmet, a gun and a gem. Get those four things clean and the model looks finished.
The signature look
A craftworld model is built on hard contrast between two flat colours - the body armour and the helmet or shoulder plates - with a bone or white secondary and one point of glowing gemstone. There is no grime and no chipping. Aeldari wargear is meant to look grown rather than manufactured, so keep the finish even and resist the urge to weather anything.
The armour
Thin your paint and build up. Over a Wraithbone or Grey Seer undercoat, two thin coats of the base colour will cover where one thick coat would pool in the panel lines and ruin them.
For a Biel-Tan green: base Caliban Green, shade only in the recesses with Biel-Tan Green, layer Warpstone Glow across the panel and edge-highlight Moot Green. For the fast version, a single coat of Aeldari Emerald over Wraithbone does the shading and basecoat in one pass, and you can still edge it with Moot Green afterwards.
Contrast panels in Ulthuan Grey over Celestra Grey, then White Scar on the highest edges, give you the crisp white the scheme needs. Weapons and undersuits stay dark - Incubi Darkness shaded with Nuln Oil and edged Kabalite Green reads as alien and keeps the bright armour dominant.
Spiritstones and gems
This is the detail that sells the model, and it takes about thirty seconds each. Paint the stone Abaddon Black, then a crescent of colour in the lower two-thirds - Khorne Red, Kantor Blue or Caliban Green - leaving black at the top. Add a smaller, brighter crescent inside it (Evil Sunz Scarlet, Teclis Blue, Warpstone Glow), then a single dot of White Scar at the upper edge. Gloss it and you are done.
Faster still: Spiritstone Red, Soulstone Blue or Waystone Green over a Runefang Steel base gives a glossy jewelled finish in one coat, which is exactly what the technical paints were made for.
Craftworld colour schemes
The recipe is the same each time; only the two armour colours change.
- Biel-Tan - green armour, white or bone secondary.
- Ulthwe - black armour with bone, the quickest of the lot.
- Saim-Hann - Mephiston Red into Evil Sunz Scarlet, black secondary.
- Iyanden - Averland Sunset into Yriel Yellow, deep blue helmets.
- Alaitoc - Kantor Blue into Alaitoc Blue, bone secondary.
Yellow Iyanden is the slowest by a distance; black Ulthwe is the fastest army on this list, since the armour is a single dark colour and all the work goes into the bone panels and gems.
Tips and common mistakes
- Undercoat light. Aeldari colours are saturated and thin. A black undercoat will fight you for three extra coats.
- Do not wash the whole model. An all-over shade muddies the smooth panels. Shade only the recess lines, with a brush, and wipe the excess.
- Edge highlights, not blends. A clean thin line along each panel edge does more for these curved shapes than any amount of blending.
- One bright accent per model. The gems and the weapon glow should be the only things shouting.