My friend came over yesterday, who also paints miniatures.
He showed me his Farseer he had painted along with the Wraithlord he was painting (which he did a little of here).
He also showed me the way he was painting it - with much thinned down paint, blending, and black undercoat with white then sprayed from the top.
So I have two objective counters which I made from random pieces from sprues and I'm going to be trying various things such as blending, experimenting with the undercoat, thinning paints and highlighting on those... Just as soon as I get some more white spray paint!