Painting time, Challenge 4

So it's not the 21 day challenge that has long bean and gone, but I've labelled this up as a series so I'll stick with that and go for a starter box army challenge. We're still getting downstairs gone 8 even 9 most nights after kid bedtime so I've not progressed much in the week I do however have a pair of finished Primaris to show off though after the break along with some waffle.

Now I really wanted to try something that I've not done before along with using a bit of colour theory, and largely I wanted to avoid a reverting to a fairly standard for me; Red, Blue or Green.

Having picked up Temple Guard blue a while ago for the AOS Stormcasts from the core box set. I never got round to doing anything with the and so decided to go with a turquoise/Teal scheme on these guys instead. To go along side this I had a play with colour wheels and suggested a brown shaded Orange would make an excellent contrast colour.

I wasn't 100% sure how this would work since slight tweaks to the shade in the colour wheel could throw the suggestions off. I also wanted to try out different undercoats to see how they went. Starting with some Storm paladin Aspirants (ie. bretonian- errant knights) I sprayed one white, one grey and the final one used a zenithal spray of Black-Grey-White.

Now the white didn't go on that great and coverage wasnt brilliant leading to me overdoing it a bit on the knight, the grey when on a bit thick too whereas the coverage of multiple stages was excellent.

After this the first colours went on and look something like this.

As you can see the grey is much duller than the other two, but the white one actually took more coats to stop it being streaky so I've settled on a grey base with a strong white zenithal to bring out the brightness of colour and as the black wasn't adding anything I skipped that stages.

When it came to painting the first Marine I wanted to try some new techniques, instead of highlighting up from the darkest colours I want to start bright and shade down (just to see how it goes more than anything else) before finishing off with edge highlights.

So after a few session this is what I ended up with .

Now after the tests models I was happy with the bright orange and had played around with some bone colours. It had been a while since I last tried marble effects so after a couple of Duncan videos from warhammer TV I decided it would make an interesting pauldron effect. Starting with a base of Screaming Skull I then washed with Snakebite leather and carefully built up the colour along the lines while still damp.

However I wasn't quite happy with the result since the edge highlights didn't quite give enough contrast so on the second model I decided to start with the mid tone of Sotek Green shaded with Dark Reaper then end Highlighted with Temple Guard Blue followed by Baharroth Blue.

Which gave a much more striking effect and after a couple more sessions meant I now have two finished models (if you ignore the one missed Highlight on the bolter decoration.)

With the second marin finished I revisited the first as well, tidying up and darkening down with a bit more Sotek green and an extra highlight on the Bolt Rifle with a base of Abaddon Black then a 50/50 mix Black and Mechanicus Standard Grey before Mechanicus Standard Grey and finished with elf grey.

So far I'm actually very happy with the results the three stages on the orange

Jokaero Orange
Troll slayer Orange
Fire Dragon Bright

has provided a bright and great contrast to the blue/green along with the Black weapon, meanwhile there is a good texture mix thanks to edge highlights of the armour and gun, border less sharp highlights of the pouches and ribbing with the marble finishing of the look.

Now I still have to spray them with varnish and then select transfers for the chapter badges and markings.

Painting the rest is going slowly, along with not having the time to get the paint sets out most evenings, the base Sotek Green is taking a while. I'm still going to try and get the rest of this unit painted up in the coming week then I'm planning on setting my airbrush up for the remaining base colour as doing the rest of the models without sounds like hell.
I'm also feeling the build bug building up again after playing some 8th ed. I'll see where the mood takes me as I roll into next week.

So until next time TTFN