Color Tone Study

 As I mentioned in the last Chappy 'n Cappy update, I realized that I had used cool tones Dark Reaper and Vallejo Gray Blue for the armor edge highlights.  The recipe I blindly followed was Giovanni Di Lena's presumably famous guide for black power armor.  It was funny because in the back of my mind I was thinking I was supposed to use a modified formula, but I thought I had already modified it in my plan.

Turned out I hadn't.  So when I got looking at my miniature, it looked off.  From Jeremie Teboul's book I knew exactly the problem - color tones.  At first I thought that maybe the cool tones of the armor and the warmer tones of everything else would be an ok effect to emphasize the difference between materials.

But, it kept bugging me.  It looked off and it kept me up at night.  So finally I decided I'd do something, but I didn't want to redo the most difficult edge highlighting stages, so I wanted to try contrast paint.  On a hidden area where the arms are to connect, I tried several colors to try and tint the existing highlights.  Boy did that not work!  I mean, if I wanted a sickly green effect, or muddy rust effect then it would have been great, but none of the tinting effects were anywhere near the look I was trying to achieve.

So rather than agonize further, I just re-did it all with warmer colors.  Specifically Vallejo Olive Brown instead of Dark Reaper, and a 50/50 mix of Vallejo Sky Gray and Vallejo Basalt Gray (because I should have a perfect medium gray in my palette but I don't) instead of Vallejo Gray Blue.  The Olive Brown is definitely warm, and the gray is neutral, but definitely warmer than Dark Reaper and Gray Blue which are both cool tones.

Even though I made some errors and had to fix a few spots, it was worth the extra 4 hours.  I have some before and after pictures that I've tried my best to match lighting and you can see the difference (I think), though in person it is very striking.

So it was inadvertent, but a really good lesson on color tone theory.  I kinda wish I didn't practice it on this miniature, but I'm glad it turned out well and it now looks great!

PS: I changed how I did the highlights on the 'toes' which aren't straightforward.  I saw how the reference GW model was done so changed it to try to match and they look better too.  I think overall I did about the same job, some areas ended up a bit better other areas ended up not as good.