High Elves Reavers - Finally Finished!

So, it didn't really take me this long to finish them.  I just had tons of other stuff to do and I've been working every day now as a substitute English teacher.  Here are the finished products from roughly where I left of in the last post.

Here they are with the base Burnished Gold color added as well as the Regal Blue.

Now I've added the skin tone of Golden Shadow (Reaper M.S.), pseudo-Dallimore Golden Highlight (R.M.S.) and wash in Ogryn Flesh.  The Feathers are in Stained Ivory (R.M.S.), highlighted in Creamy Ivory and washed in Sepia wash.

Now, I've added Red (Cel-Vinyl Colors) to the feathers and they are to be washed in Leviathan Purple.  Red (Model Color) has been added to the gemstones and will be detailed in Red (CVC) and Yellow Orange (CVC) with a white accent dot.

You'll notice that the white has been added to the enamel inlays on the horses gear.  I used Gray 1 (CVC) and White (CVC).  The blue enamels are just Regal Blue and Deep Sky Blue.

This is a pretty good close-up.  You can really see how taking the time to do the gems is important.  They really seem to glow.  Eventually, after a clear matte spray, they will be glossed to make them extra shiny.  I also add that making sure you put a dot of white in the horse's eye is important.  The eye will also get a touch of gloss when it's all done.

The various stages of the blue are as they are in the White Dwarf for the High Elves: Regal Blue base, pseudo-Dallimore on Enchanted Blue, then p-D a mix of Enchanted Blue and Deep Sky Blue (they call it Ice Blue in Citadel Colors) and a final tiny highlight of Deep Sky Blue...just a sliver.

My number one suggestion is this.  Don't go overboard with colors.  Sometimes we think that colors will go well with each other and they don't.  Because I didn't feel like thinking about color choices I went with what the White Dwarf offered by way of pictures.  I changed things a little and since I don't know exactly what they used, I used comparable colors from my own paints.

Another nice color combo for these would have been purples instead of blues.  I've seen some people do High Elf armies in purples (royalty) instead of blues (nobility).  Perhaps you'd do it just to make these Reavers stand out.  Another thing to do would be to make the gems different colors.  That wouldn't be too much, it wouldn't distract from the model.  Technically there are two units of Reavers here, I was going to make the gems of one unit green and the others red.  In the end I just chose to make them all red.  I could have done the same with the feathers to differentiate the units.