Currently starting a themed force of some allied rangers with rivendell elves.
The rangers are in mostly grey with muted greenish-grey cloaks. I can't decide how I should plaint the elves. I'd like them to contrast with the muted colours of the rangers, so I am thinking of their usual gold and blue scheme, however I also quite like the look of the rivendell knights silver and black scheme. I have seen silver and blue done before too and that was quite nice.
Any opinions would be much appreciated!

Nice idea, I have something similar planned (some rangers led by Aragorn, some Elves led by Elladan and Elrohir and Gildor with some Noldorin exiles. Might at some point throw Arwen and Glorfindel into the mix as well. Have the models, still need painting, some time.... )

I'm pretty much into fluff, so I would personally keep yellow and blue with the Last Allegiance forces. Another point is how I think it would become too bright with the rangers muted colors.

I really like the silver and black scheme of the Rivendell knights (that most likely will become the one I'll be using for mine) or a combined scheme of silver, black and blue.

If you want to see some blue / silver elves check :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L57UmKww4vE

_________________
"It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keeps the darkness at bay."

Visit my WIP!

Interesting enough, the Rivendell Knights in the movie, weren't actually silver and black. They have dark colours, red, green, purple and blue, but never more than one of those and mostly just the main cloak they wore, but as you can tell from the movie, very dark. Only when the light catches them right can you see it, but there's the scenes where the camera see's them riding level with wargs (and shooting the orcs in the face..) that the one in particular had red and grey.

Depending how much detail you want to put in, the silver armour also had copper/bronze trims along the armour pieces. The cloaks for the foot-soldiers, had intricate 'shimmering' patterns on their cloaks, which appeared to also be either dark blue or purple.

Bare in mind, very few of these Elves were from the Last Alliance as the vast majority of those went home, so the armour you see in the third age represents the Noldorin Exiles in their autumn cycle of their lives in middle-earth. The armour possibly changes again slightly around the time of the war of the ring.

Hope this gives some ideas to paint your High Elves with!

(If you do the shimmering cloaks from the movies, pause at the scene where Lindir comes out to meet the company. Great moment to see them in detail.)

Good luck!

I started painting some in the gold and blue scheme but didnt really like it, so now I'm going to have to strip them haha.
Will set up a WIP log in the next few days!

Even with the gold and blue, it's very hard to get 'just right'. Many people, myself included, would follow guides and end up with something far too bright. I eventually settled on a darkened gold with blues greys and browns.

I've changed recently to silver instead of gold, but again not 'too' bright. Just the edges of the plates/layers. Using the markings on the Knights helmets to apply similar highlight patterns to the foot soldiers.

Looking forward to seeing your WIP.

This is true. LOTR miniatures range is not exactly the ideal range to paint bright colors, that's more for fantasy range I would say.

I'm also starting to paint a Rivendell army I have been collecting for a very long time.

I had the same issue and I decided to go standard and use the classic blue / gold scheme.

There are some reasons I decied this, specially some consistency when including 2nd age elfs like Gil Galad, which is a beast in the battelfield. That being said, I will paint my Rivendell knights in the movie colour scheme, just to represent the more 'elite of elites' style. This is something I also noticed in 'Third age total war' which is a mod for a very well known PC strategy game.

Check some of my painting tests:





As you can see second one is looking better because it's a little bit darker ( well this is a personal opinion but I think it's true )

Blue is pretty simple to paint, caledor sky mixed with black then do the highlights mixing grey.

I would suggest to mix some green ( warboss green for example ) to the golds and some silver on the same mix.

_________________
"It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keeps the darkness at bay."

Visit my WIP!

That is a magnificent tone on the armour.