Sons of Horus MkVI Assault Squad - Part III

 

Crazy Eyes

This probably isn't really worthy of a post, but I've not had much time lately to write things down and so I'm going to try get through it quickly.

I filled in the eye lenses of the squad, deciding that the reflection point was nice but perhaps overkill if I was trying to be less exacting when painting these models. I also thought that something else could give a crazier look, showcasing the descent of the Sons of Horus into madness.

To that end I started with Jokaero Orange, using some off-white on the palette to brighten it because I couldn't be bothered reaching for a yellow, and then....stopped. Something wasn't right. I carried on with Blood Angels Red (happened to be on the palette) to make a darker orange towards the back of the lenses, and to give an outline in the recesses. Not a whole lot of colours, and it certainly would look nicer with the lens on a prior Luna Wolf, but that's when it occurred to me what was wrong: the lenses are far too bright compared to the rest of the model. It's the same base orange, but a Luna Wolf is much lighter (very much a light grey / light ash tone) so while the colour stands out, the value jump doesn't. This was too much and I ended up dialling it back with another glaze of red.

I think in future I'll just stick with what I did on the Luna Wolf. It takes eyes that aren't tired, but it's worth the end result.

Next up is more leather. Thondia Brown, Skrag Brown, Deathclaw Brown. This gives a nice, warm brown tone to work with, but leather gets quite dark when rubbed in a lot, so I then mixed Agrax Earthshade with Drakenhof Nightshade (about 1:1) and shaded the whole holster. I'm going to try reduce reliance on just reaching for a black and instead go with "very close to black" (dark blue, purple, green) instead, which should hold up better with saturation. I also played with an off-white and then glazing a mix of Corvus Black and Thondia Brown over the top to give that shiny impression worn leather can sometimes give off. This worked out very well on small details and I'll need to try my hand with it on something larger soon.

I have more to say on the subject of leather, hopefully soon.

-- silly painter