Necron Royal Warden - Part I

 

When Skynet develops a sense of bling.

Another quick post, courtesy of a weekend spent getting a few things done before headed off for another trip. In general it seems one week out of each month will be going that way.

I had a sudden bit of inspiration to start on a colour scheme for Necrons. I have some awaiting assembly, and have been thinking how to make them both interesting, and fast to paint. These models should be fast to paint - they're basically metal skeletons in 40k, and spending weeks on a single one doesn't feel right. I have half a notion to sell them off as well, so I don't want to invest too much time in painting them up. Really hoping that the airbrush, some Contrast paints and a few washes will do 90% of the work for me.

One thing I don't want to do, is paint them silver. That's just boring and the same as everyone else. I want something a little more unique - but also metallic. Think I've come up with an idea that's definitely Necron, but my own style:

• Castellax Bronze base coat (and I think this one of the Air range that's going soon, so I'll need to look into picking up some while I can).
• Valdor Gold highlight (by accident I did this after the next colour, but it should go first).
• Relictor Gold as colour shifted highlight. This isn't really brighter than the previous, but is more of a yellow than a brown and so gives that highlight impression. I'm very used to simply going up through tones of what is essentially the same colour, but using a slightly different hue is a technique I very much want to practice more of.
• Mortarion Green Clear in shaded areas, or more lightly applied where I just want some more interest. I might be a little heavier on it with future models, but again the use of a filter colour really adds so much extra and I want to explore this more going forward.

Gloss varnish layer (from Vallejo's Premium airbrush range) just because I've experienced the metallic paints wearing off too easily. This does lose a little bit of that metallic look and messes with the filter colours through all the secondary reflections, but I need to seal the paint and basically just have to deal with it.

Not a technicolour dreamcoat.

There are of course edge highlights yet to do, and that will most likely be Cryptek Alloy. I'm still deciding on which shades, Contrast, or oils to use on various details and exposed "bones" (e.g the forearms) but again don't want anything too fancy. The whole aim is for a low effort approach to clear more models from the backlog.

-- silly painter.