The client asked for a varient on the Void Dragons from the Doom of Mymeara book. Charcoal grey and a warm metallic red. Now, a true metallic red is one of the holy grails of paint manufacture. It is almost impossible. They wind up pink and metallic or red and matt. After a day or so of experimenting and fiddling I came up with a workable option a roughly 3:2 mix of Mephiston Red and Hashut Copper creates a nice strong red with a metallic sheen. It doesn't look metallic until it is in the light but when it does it reflects nicely.
The client wanted a hex-pattern similar to scales on the red panels, I figured I needed to use metallics to shade and highlight the hexes as it would increase the sheen. First, the outlines of the hexes. I used the current basecoat mix and darkened it with Warplock Bronze. Then, again starting from the main base colour I added more Hashut Copper until I had reversed the original mix (2:3 Mephiston red and Hashut Copper). This I painted around the entire edge of each hex. Finally, I mixed yet more Hashut Copper in to form a 2:1 Hashut Copper:Mephiston Red highlight. This I painted on the 3 edges in the top left corner to help the 3-dimensional appearance and accordingly even more metallic gleam.
I love the shape of the Warp Hunters, they're just a delivery system for a whacking great cannon. I debated a few different colour schemes for a while before realising that wraithbone would be the best option and would contrast beautifully with the black and red. The effect is a lot easier to achieve than I had feared. Just get a nice solid white basecoat - 2 coats of Ceramite White does it, what a lovely paint that is - to work from. Next I used a new paint for me, Secret Weapon Parchment wash. I'd picked this up along with a couple of different blacks in my ongoing search for Badab Black. I'm afraid the blacks are just not good enough as they glaze something fierce. But, this property made the Parchment wash perfect for tinting the white to create a very, very pale, bright, clean bone. Two glazes of Parchment gave the base tone and then careful pin washes (where you run the wash into the details rather than sloshing it all over) of Seraphim Sepia sealed the deal. Very happy. A quick check of the colour wheel indicated that turquoise would be the gemstone colour of choice here. Glad to see colour theory was right again!
These are but the first of many, many more! Enjoy!
TTFN
That is a really cool paint scheme, I'm going to have to try that red/copper mix - excellent work!
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