Necron Royal Warden - Part II (Showcase)

 

Meh.

So I managed to get this model rather quickly, fulfilling that particular goal. The basic concepts used should allow the rest of the Necrons in the box to be done quite speedily. But. The Royal Warden looks horrible. The short version is that the greens and reds clash too much, drawing the eye to weird locations. This is a general problem with Necrons actually: the gun has that glow effect which catches the eye too much, and normally must be offset by a rather intense glow on the model "eyes" and a light colour to help draw attention there. There's a reason the reference model has a white stripe on the head. Basically, my attempt has a lack of focus and so overall is "meh", however I think the basic idea is solid for others - the real problem here is the green necklace. Perhaps I should have tinted it red, or made the gun energy effect green. Probably the latter - I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Anyway.

Carrying on from last time, I did indeed end up with some edge highlights of Canoptek Alloy. I also put Cryptek Armourshade in a few areas, but it's a very strong shade so I used it sparingly. After that:

• Canoptek Alloy to highlight scratches and damage.
• Agrax Earthshade in the damaged areas. Between the metallic and gloss varnish, this did next to nothing and can be skipped in future.
• Warplock Bronze added directly into damaged areas, where shadows are expected.
• Warplock Bronze also painted over the "bones". No highlighting was applied to these areas - I wanted them dark and to act as an outline, and decided that less was more to achieve that.
• Liberator Gold more or less glazed onto the head, particularly in the middle. I wanted to make it brighter and help draw the eye to the head. Liberator Gold is also a green tinted gold, so it works well with the basic armour colour.
• Stormhost Silver for extreme edge highlights, mostly about the eyes, but also mixed with Liberator Gold to make the centre line of the forehead even brighter.

The eyes are extremely simple:

• White Scar dots on the eyes.
• Blood Angels Red (Contrast) over the eye sockets.

The necklace:

• Waywatcher Green (I still have that).
• Biel-Tan Green because the previous step wasn't enough.
• Liberator Gold to edge highlight and drawn across the top to bring out the symbols more.

Before I go further, in experimenting around the place I discovered that contrast paints over a gloss surface really just go directly into recesses. It can actually be brilliant if used as a shade in that case, especially if just a little bit of water is mixed in to really help it flow into recesses. I see myself using this technique to replace traditional washes - especially as I prefer to add a gloss varnish after airbrushing anyway.

The weapon I still wanted in metallics. This model is basically 90% metallics, because Necrons. I actually started with the energy effect:

• White Scar thinned with water and "shaded" into the recesses. A couple of coats was needed here. I also applied a thin layer on the centre nodes (or whatever they are).
• Casandora Yellow in between the centre nodes.
• Fuegan Orange around the nodes.
• Blood Angels Red on the nodes.

For the rest of the weapon:

• Warplock Bronze around the casing.
• Warplock Bronze mixed with Black Templar (Contrast) and applied over the barrels. I just wanted to see what mixing a contrast paint into the metallic would do, and I kind of like the result.
• Nuln Oil (Gloss) over the casing.
• Castellax Bronze for initial highlights.
• Sycorax Bronze for edge highlights.
• Skullcrusher Brass on the power transformer (for lack of a better term) just to break things up a bit.
• Stormhost Silver mixed with Sycorax Bronze in different ratios and built up on the blade.
• Incubi Darkness on cabling, followed by Black Templar to darken and then Incubi Darkness to highlight some areas.

Ribbed cabling was just made dark with two coats of Black Templar. Not a much visible detail, so go dark and keep them most unnoticed.

The base I did next to no effort with. I wanted to see what a slightly blue/purple tint would look like next to the green-gold of the armour, and it needed to be simple. Future models might follow this same pattern with a few rocks to add interest, and a skull or two here and there.

• The Fang on the tactical rock, with Eshin Grey to darken some areas.
• Astrogranite over the whole base, just to give an uneven surface.
• Basilicanum Grey, mixed with a bit of water to break the surface tension, over most of the base.
• Lucius Lilac drybrushed to pick out the texture.
• Paint the skull.

Now ten more Necron warriors to go, along with some Scarabs. I'm kind of motivated to see just how well this exploration translates into a fast method of getting them painted, so I might spend some of this next week assembling them.

-- silly painter.