New scheme tester model

[sHOE_bOX]

So painted my first model for a very long time for my new hive fleet I'm starting from scratch. That do you guys think?







Imgur album: imgur.com/a/zJIGl

[Davor]

Really good. Only complain I may have is the skin colour. For the gaunt, I think it's great, but on a bigger mini, Carnifex Hive Tyrant etc, might look a little drab. But for Gaunts, it's a great job.

[sHOE_bOX]

Yeah I felt the same about the green on the larger nids. However, the larger nids will receive a lot more attention when it comes to highlighting, like I have done with the devourer. If the whole model was like that, I would doubt you would have raised concerns. It's just too time consuming to do on all the little models. Using a lighter tone of purple to make the details stand out and I'm going to experiment with spots and strips around the exoskeleton, especially the base of the tail and shoulder area, should also help.

Something like this:



I've also just found a HT with a similar green exoskeleton, looks alright to me:

[Yautja]

I think it's too good. No sane person would want to commit to that level of carapace detail on Guants surely? You know you'll have to do that x50 right?

[jaysic]

50? More.like 120!

[novo]

The carapace looks great! But I can't imagine doing that for all the Guants.

[vectron]

Aug 21, 2014 19:12:32 GMT Yautja said:

I think it's too good. No sane person would want to commit to that level of carapace detail on Guants surely? You know you'll have to do that x50 right?

*Raises hand sheepishly.
It's like this, you get your first few models and want them to be as nice as possible, because, after all, you only have a few and you need the practice. Then you get a lot more but can't stop because you've already painted half your gants to one level of detail already, and it would simply not do to have any gants in a different scheme or detail level.

[Squire]

Forgot to post last time I viewed the thread but I really like your scheme.

It's a good point suggesting a very detailed scheme will be hard to keep up across your whole army. How do you do your skin? The carapace clearly takes some time to do, but if your skin is reasonably fast I think you'll be okay. With mine I blend the carapaces with successive mixes which takes some time but there's no feathering involved and that's probably my favourite part of the painting process. It's the skin I hate doing, since I basecoat and then drybrush the two layers above it. My god that process is a nuisance- constantly wiping the brush off and cleaning it when too much dry paint clogs it up. If I could start all over again I'd do a basecoast, an ink wash and then touch up by either drybrushing one final layer or just painting highlights. It would save so much time and settling down to paint wouldn't seem like more arduous work than my actual job I get paid for!

edit: Obviously army composition is a big deal. Mine is very gaunt heavy but without so many of them it wouldn't matter as much

[vectron]

Aug 23, 2014 1:14:47 GMT Squire said:

 If I could start all over again I'd do a basecoast, an ink wash and then touch up by either drybrushing one final layer or just painting highlights. It would save so much time and settling down to paint wouldn't seem like more arduous work than my actual job I get paid for!

This so very much.

While "primer is not a paint" - if you have a decent white primer, then priming white and washing with brown wash gives a nice base for drybrushing highlights. I'd further recommend doing a gray carapace that you dry or wetblend white edge highlights unto, which you in turn wash with your desired colour. Let's you crank out critters pretty rapidly if you leave details like teeth and eyes for later.

There's an old tutorial for a very similar style on Miniwargaming, I think.

[jawsgid]

Looks awesome! Love the carapace

[Squire]

OP: How about a black line around the edge of the carapace plates? Either paint all of them black before you put the brown on (leaving a bit of black where the plates overlap and touch the skin) or maybe paint in a black line with ink.

Aug 23, 2014 15:40:00 GMT vectron said:

This so very much.

While "primer is not a paint" - if you have a decent white primer, then priming white and washing with brown wash gives a nice base for drybrushing highlights. I'd further recommend doing a gray carapace that you dry or wetblend white edge highlights unto, which you in turn wash with your desired colour. Let's you crank out critters pretty rapidly if you leave details like teeth and eyes for later.

There's an old tutorial for a very similar style on Miniwargaming, I think.

Wet blending? That strikes me as one of the most time consuming methods, and god forbid you later get a bit of paint on your blend and have to start all over again! Admittedly I've never tried it before, but from YT tutorials I've seen it looks tricky. But when people get it right the results are fantastic

[vectron]

Oh, I didn't mean the full out wet blending, just quickly brightning the edges of the gray, so they get preshaded a little before washing them.

That being said, wet blending isn't that hard if you got the technique down. However, for gauntii you will have a hard time doing the smaller parts of the carapace. The back plates can be done pretty easily though.

[sHOE_bOX]

Thanks for all the feed back guys! I am kinda surprised by people saying that the scheme is too complex...

I prime the model white, base the whole thing dark green and then I dry brush it with a lighter green and then immediately after an even lighter one. I then wash it with a 50/50 mix of the watered down base coat and dark green wash and when done highlight. I paint the carapace etc. dark brown and do bleach bone lines on it then just mix a light purple for the other bits.

The stage that takes the longest is basing because there are just so many fiddly bits to get your brush into to make sure no white is showing. Once you have that done the rest of the process is pretty quick. I used to have a swarm which had a plain black exoskeleton (literally primed black nothing else) and a blended yellow carapace. This is quicker.

[blucord]

Great color choices, and great detail...however I do feel sorry for the pain your about to indulge in with all those "swarm" models, will be a stunning army though