Shannow's WIPs

[Shannow]

I know what you mean about the white, I have been mulling over many ideas of how to go over the white and tone it down, will have a fiddle when I am at home tomorrow. The 'black' half is actually a washed grey, which I think I will highlight with a lighter grey.

I do like the scheme idea, though I may abandon if I can't sort it properly. Ho Hum!

Rob

Ps just as I am writing I'm thinking I may swap the red and the white, be easier to pull off I think...

EDIT: Forgot to say thank you for the suggestions! So...thank you!...

[Myriad]

I suspect the grey is being lost in the photo, as dark colours tend to be.  I like the idea, but as brimstone says the white isn't looking great, I think it needs to be a bit more striking.  I would start with a base of 50/50 bleached bone and white and highlight towards white, maybe use a weak wash and drybrush white.  Might give quite a clean look though.  Is that really a tail or am I finally going nuts?

[Shannow]

Haha no that is a tail in his past exploits he mad a bet about a daredevil stunt with a fellow glavian and failing to pull off the trick and crashing his speeder, his forfeit was to get a mechandrite tail attached..... Well thats the stry I'm sticking too for the moment!

Thanks for the painting tips, I'm going to town to extend my repetoire of paints tomorrow hopefully. Though as I said above, if as I suspect, my painting skills are definitely not up to scratch I think I may just swap the white for red and highlight appropriately.

Thanks for comments

Rob

[Shannow]

MOAR content! After my poor painting on last model which is currently sitting with a new black basecoat, I have excitedly put together my new model that came through the post this morning and is also my first female character, and she certainly won't be my last!





Very grey in lancaster as it has been bucketing it down the past hour or so, and therefore the light isn't great and she is in black.

She is the Aleph Marut from infinity miniatures but is sans her second pair of arm(!) and various other pointy bits and bobs that make her less pretty IMO.

Needs another dash of black which I will do after this post, but the slight levels plummeted suddenly and I was desperate to get some pic of her lovelyness!

Hope you like, she will most likely be an assassin, though I am considering writing her an alternative eldar background as well.

Rob

[Shannow]

I am aware that this is a triple post, and if there are no replies after this one I promise to give up and stop posting.

Anyway, painted the above female, and I am still torn between making her an assassin for my bounty hunter team or whether she would be better suited to an Eldar inclination, ideas welcome:









I also bought some 28mm figures when I bought the above lady, as they were very cheap (about 2.50-3 quid each) and I do plan to make an Inquisitor based 40K army if they ever update the codices. These are the 3 figures and one is nearly done painted:












Any comments (and at this point I seriously mean any! Feel free to cough for example) would be greatly appreciated, and if there is still interest I will perhaps endeavour to finish my repaint of the poorly painted man with a tail!


Rob

[Zakkeg]

*Cough*  .

The assassin is an interesting mini, but I must say she looks rather incomplete. I can sort of see where the black's been highlighted, but it should be a lot more extreme if you want it to show up at tabletop distances. Similarly, it seems to me that a lot more could be done with the red; I'm not quite sure what you're trying to do with it at the moment. The brightest bits are where the darkest ones should be. It looks like you've either gone for an "internal glow" sort of look (an advanced technique, and not one to be taken lightly), or you've just put on a couple of very thin coats and called it a day - I suspect the latter, as the red on Nos'tko seems to suffer the same problem.

Still, if there's one upshot it's that there's plenty of room for improvement. You just need a couple of nitpicking bastards like me to push you along, is all .

[Rayner]

Really like the female model, the dark colour scheme suits the sleek assassin look.

As Zakkeg has said, if you were going for the red being the inner workings of the suit showing between the outer plates then you might what to highlight with a lighter shade of red or a deep orange.

How big is the model? If thats a 40mm base then it looks to be a bit taller than a human, so with the suit's styling the Eldar background might be quite interesting. Perhaps covert ops?

[Shannow]

Thank you for the comments both of you

The body work is actually a lot better than the picture shows, its varying layers of a blue/purple/almost black tone; hopefully if the sun comes out one day soon I will get better pictures!

The red however is *ahem* pretty much as you describe it, though sadly considerably more effort went in than a few layers I'm just not very good! Though this only the 6th model I've painted so with this kind of help I hope to improve.

I will attempt better highlighting on the red and some better pictures when I can.

Thanks again and please continue to be nitpicking bastards

Rob

EDIT: She is wearing pretty massive high heels Rayner, but I think will go with an Eldar operative anyway, because she looks like she should be that badass

[Myriad]

Heh, your first few efforts ata highlighting do tend to come out messy.  I nearly always put a layers of white under a red even for dark models, since it tends to be translucent (having said that, I avoid using reds most of the time).  There is something slightly impossible about this models pose, which suggests either someone highly trained or not quite human. 
Like the look, but it's a shame about the second pair of arms (cult of the third hand, because two just isn't enough for killing heretics  )

[RobSkib]

Get yourself some Mechrite Red! Foundation paints followed by washes give you the best canvas for highlighting - most of the time you can even highlight with the same colour you basecoated with, giving you a lovely muted three-tone effect using only two paints.

[Shannow]

Replies!....blessed I am They do look messy yes, but my intention was never to highlight the red you see, it was more an appearance of being blacked up to be less visible (I am a big fan of models looking filthy)

However I am definitely not immune to criticism so I will change the look to have it highlighted properly

@ Robskib - That is mechrite red..... but it has been washed with baal red

Thanks for the help

Rob

[RobSkib]

That might be why I couldn't identify it! I don't usually wash a red basecoat with a red wash, it would be like washing chaos black with badab black :S You might find you get a better result using Devlan Mud (truly the one paint I could not live without) or Badab black, as it would create more natural lowlights rather than merely adding more red.

Also, if she's going to be Eldar, where are her spirit stones? There must be a couple of blobs or lumps on her amour that you could paint up like gems, and gems are really easy to paint - take your base colour, for example, Mechrite Red, add a half crescent on the lower half in Blood Red, give it a dab of Badab Black to pull the colours together, then add a tiny dot of skull white at the top. Job done!

I'm a fan of all-black models, but a surprising amount of work has to go into painting something 'black' to make it look like it's supposed to be black, rather than just unpainted. You should have a look at some Eldar iconography to get some inspiration, off the top of my head, how about something similar to the patterns that striking scorpions have on their chainswords? (guy in the bottom right) Maybe a few yellow diagonal lines across one of her thigh pads, perhaps paint her helmet a different colour to signify she is an aspect warrior of her particular aspect? Also, have a think about painting her sword as well - all black swords look awesome, but doubled with an all-black body suit, they kind of cancel each other out visually - maybe a fiery red, highlighted up through orange and yellow to white-hot at the tip?

[Shannow]

I honestly only used the baal red because I had just bought it....childish but fun! When I painted her I hadn't decided that she would be eldar so spirit stones are the next step, and though I like the idea of aspect markings, I prefer the idea that she is viewed as nonexisitent by the eldar as she is a covert operative style person (not something admittedly that I have fully thought through) and I would like to shy away from any eldar markings persay as much as possible.

Also as I said earlier, the model really really doesn't look black in person, she is definitely a dark bluety purple tone, but I don't have a camera with a flash, and I haven't seen actual sunlight for a while so its difficult to get some decent photos

I have had a play with the red earlier today, but not happy with that result so I will try your suggestion with a red wash red highlight idea and use devlan mud this time

Thanks for all the help - and if you have any ideas fluff wise as to the covert operative style eldar (only thing I could think of was ahrlequins but don't want to be colourful or model their kiss) then that would be awesome.

Rob

[kierkegaard]

Ogryn Flesh wash also works very well on Mechrite red.

The main reason that I haven't commented is that your photos are so dark that any comments would require me to speculate beyond the available data. 

[Shannow]

Hmm yeah, the lackof natural light is very annoying and does make the model look black when I pop to my stuent house in bristol I'm going to take my models with me, as odds on the sun will shine and give my some decent photos. Or alternatively I could do a sun dance......