Vanguard Veterans (WIP) Update 7

First set of blue highlights are complete across all areas!  It took 13 hours.  I'm convinced that my technique is the slowest.

I'm now starting in on a basic NMM technique that I've used before on the gold areas.  I think that they have a brushed metal, so I'm not going for full on mirror NMM reflections yet.  The shield on the right is the base brown (such as above as well), and the shield on the left has the first few layers of brown-orange and orange.  There will be a shade (to fix anything that fell into a recess) and then a few more layers of golden yellow and yellow in very limited amounts to complete the effect.  I'm adding glaze medium to help smooth the transitions.

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.

Chappy 'n Cappy (WIP) Update 5

Edge highlights!  Now starting in on highlight washes for the bone areas (still work to do).

I've found that taking pictures that I can study and zoom in helps me find areas where blending/highlights/shading isn't quite right and I can go back and fix. For example, the Chaplain's right cheek bone needs to be a bit brighter.

A few weeks back I got "Figopedia: Light & Colour - Theory & Practice" by Jeremie Bonamant Teboul (all the way from France!) It's a great resource and I've only scratched the surface.  I'm still trying to get the very basics down.  The bone, scrolls, and purity seals on the Chaplain are all warm tones and the armor will be cooler tones (in the highlight colors).  At first I thought this might be violating the theory, but it seems that he does have a technique where you can do that to create contrast, so lets say yes I did that intentionally!  Anyway, looking forward to learning and applying more as I go.

Assault Termies Complete!

Just completed my Assault Terminators and I'm very happy with the results.  Maybe in my next post I'll compare the progress I've made since the (standard) Terminator squad a year ago, but even I was amazed.

These represent some of the first models that I've painted that weren't originally bought years ago, but instead purchased much later on ebay to fill in my 'classic' Rogue Trader era collection.  They're all done (note the lead picture was taken just before the final step of adding silver highlights after the dullcoat - forgot to retake that picture, will fix later).

I do have a Terminator Chaplain (hint as to next project) which is a bit beyond the classics but fills in my all termie HQs, and so these models were picked up to go with him and also be a practice run.

Thus explains the color scheme.  However, just like my red Ultramarine Terminator squad, these black Assault Termies are veterans who get to adorn their armor with an alternate color (says me).  I was never a fan of the very rigid color schemes that they pushed people into.  Anyway, there's examples of this with Deathwing, and I came up with this plan way before there were such in-depth codices, its just taken this long to implement it.

So I wanted to get black power armor practice which means it was time to learn a new skill: edge painting.  I found the Giovanni Di Lena tutorial and went to work.  Also, I needed upgrades which I posted about earlier - the improved brushes, wet palette, and most importantly, the magnifying glasses.  It really helped to be able to see the details.  While the steady hand and figuring out how to work with the various colors is always a constant struggle that you can really only learn through experience, just seeing what your doing is surprisingly important!

Also, the excel spreadsheet really helped me to focus on getting work done every night rather than sitting around for half the time (no joke) trying to remember the plan.  I highly recommend these things.  It took almost exactly 75 hours to paint all 10 (doesn't include assembly or priming).  For comparison, the Librarian was 12.6 hours, so adding models as you might expect can increase efficiency a bit.

I didn't have a pot of Dark Reaper, so I used 50/50 VMC Basalt Gray and VMC Black, it worked fine I think, but we'll see next time (I got some of the Dark Reaper now).

Also, this was the first time I was successful at lettering and the text on the purity seals with paint on a brush rather than using the micropoint pen.  Again quite a step up.  I lucked out here and got all 3 letters on the first try.

In a continuation post I'll show some WIP pictures as they progressed through various stages.  To get the extra white backgrounds I bumped up the exposure on the pictures a bit, which looks more washed out on the PC as compared to the phone screen.  I'll have to play around with it more.