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| I'm about...this tall. |
Painting has been extremely slow going still, and that won't be letting up anytime soon unfortunately, but I have managed to finish all ten of the helmets (bar the sergeant insignia) and all the holsters (bar some finishing touches after the matt varnish stage).
The helmets were much easier to airbrush this time around, although I did mess up in a few places with too much pressure too close to the surface - this leads to the paint running in thin liquid veins and pooling in places. This was too unsightly for me and I went back in with Flash Gitz Yellow and Phalanx Yellow to rebuilt the highlights. Rebuilding them too quite a good deal of patience, a good brush, and some flow improver to make a glaze out of each colour, but it smoothed everything out in the end.
The gloss varnish as ever let the washes settle into recesses far easier without staining the rest of the area, with the slight exception of shallow depths. If the recess is too shallow and curves gently into the surrounding surfaces then I find that the gloss varnish impedes a smooth transition and it might need a few touch-ups later on. This is most noticeable up close on the stripe (for lack of a better term) on top of the helmets. Just something to keep in mind.
The eye lenses were relatively simple to do this time around, even with the reflection dot. A combination of a very pointy brush, paint which takes slightly longer to dry (flow improver, or use an ink), and a magnifying headset really helped in this regard. A few minor mistakes, but nothing that wasn't quickly fixable (or as quickly as poor coverage of yellow paint will allow for).
This leads me back around to the colour yellow. As a primary colour, it's actually difficult to get a very pure yellow - paints will naturally tend slightly towards the red or green side of things. Normally I would try to keep base, midtones, and highlights on one side, but here a mix is actually used. Averland Sunset is more of a red shifted base colour, but for example Flash Gitz Yellow (or at least my pot of it) is slightly green shifted. Does this really matter too much? Not entirely, thin enough coats will balance it out enough, but it's made me start to consider what is really going on, and if perhaps I could use something similar to my advantage in the future.
By highlighting with a very slight green shifted yellow over a red shifted yellow base, it pulls the result into a more balanced midpoint, giving a rather vibrant highlight. This won't work if the shift from either is too great - it will probably just end up looking more brown - and the highlight will need to be higher up in value as well (not a problem, that's partially what makes a colour a highlight). It also gives a little more contrast between final edge highlight and shadows. This would really only work with primary colours because of how difficult it is to mix up a "pure" primary colour, but it explains why the red paints I use work so well - there's a subtle blue hint in Carroburg Crimson, and the final highlight of Wild Rider Red is more of an orange (sometimes excessively so, and I need to knock it back with Evil Sunz). I've not tried it too much with blue. There's no reason secondary colours can't follow this as well of course, it's just going to rely much more heavily on glazes to shift colours where wanted - partially why Lamenters Yellow is very good at highlighting greens.
None of the above is really anything new, and seems almost obvious. The key difference for me was not really any hidden colours in a colour wheel, but instead a new way of thinking about my selection of paints for a particular scheme. Normally I might be thinking "that one looks brighter, I'll go with that", but now I'll think much more along the lines of "that one looks brighter and shifted away enough that a glaze will pull it towards the colour I really want".
I guess I'll see what difference it makes with future models, however long it takes me to start on something more experimental again.
-- silly painter
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