Flesh Tearer Reiver - Part I

 

Seen my knife? Let me give you a closer look.

Playing around with a freebie model makes for good experimentation, so I decided to see how well airbrushing in different stages would be on a Reiver. Normally I'll base, shade, and highlight with an airbrush before then going in with a normal brush. This time, I wondered how well pre-edge highlights would show through.

The basic idea is to base the model with an airbrush first, then edge highlight with a normal brush, then perform a normal highlight with the airbrush. I find the edge highlights can be a bit strong sometimes, and wanted to soften them slightly. I don't have to worry as much about transitions, and cleaning up a base coat is easier when there aren't carefully blended gradients to be concerned with.

First step was Khorne Red. Flesh Tearers colours are more towards the blue end of a red spectrum, which this base colour provides.

Cadian Fleshtone provides edge highlights next. The stronger the highlight, the more will show through after the next step. This is rather similar to how the Contrast range is used.

Wazdakka Red was then mixed with some Aircaste Thinner to highlight with. I thinned it a little too much however, and ultimately had to use a brush later to add more to a few areas. Something to keep in mind when mixing layer paints for use in an airbrush.

Did it work? To a degree, yes. It's a little more muted in places than I would have liked, but shows through well enough in others for me to be convinced of the usefulness in further exploration. I may try this on my normal Blood Angels formula as well, but that will have to work differently. Wild Rider Red will almost certainly be as muted, if not more. I could use that to advantage: there's no reason I can't apply a second edge highlight later to bring out selected edges, leaving others to be defined without the Tron appearance.

-- silly painter.