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I painted for mebbe 5 years, and have some decent Eldar, Nids and Dark Eldar painted up and lying about. My girlfriend took an interest and got me the GW starter kit and abbadon to see what I did with it.




I reckon this could be a fun challenge
TO DO
1) Decide on paint scheme for Abbadon with my limited palette (starter paints only).


Chaos is really different (paints/looks) to my old favourites so I'm thinking this bugger could be tricky. Here's my plan:
- White undercoat to help detail/blending
- Paint the face in a cold grey and layer up to white (mebbe a purple wash or as an initial layer?)
- I want the sword and claw to be cohesive, not a fan of the typical paint scheme. I'm a real fan of LBursley's Hot Claw* so I think I'll blend the claw and sword from red to white. Not sure what to use to pick out the faces in the sword; Dark crimson with a hint of brown?
- Paint all the armour black. Trying to highlight black is beyond me though, it seems a nasty colour to work with. Hints would be gratefully received.



So, there's my current plan. I'd love to hear any ideas/criticism on the paint scheme!

Hoping to stretch myself with this project. Looking over my old models I can see that I reached a good level of brushwork really quickly, but never got the balls to try new techniques in case I wrecked my precious models (which were damn expensive to a younger me), so maybe I can learn now :-)

*http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/222318.page

This looks like it will be an interesting project! I cant wait to see some progress.

I like the enthusiaism good luck and have fun.

As for highlighting black, I've seen people use red, blue or green as the main color and then "reverse highlight" it by adding more black to it.

mmmm....Nutella.

This project (and the Nutella, even though it looks empty) have definitely piqued my interest! Looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

sounds interesting, I'll be Watching this thread.

Haha, the Nutella is my water pot - very empty.

I'll have progress photos this evening. I have thus far discovered that basecoating white over bare metal by hand is REALLY HARD, no amount of wishing gets around the fact that some models need a fine detail brush and that mold lines are hard to remove with a penknife...



Automatically Appended Next Post:
**PROGRESS**

Here's the basecoated Abaddon with the first few steps on claw&sword


A series of blending shots on sword, they were made by progressively adding (sunburst) yellow to a pool of (blood) red. Obviously it takes a hell of a lot of a paler colour to cause an appreciable change to a darker mix - so I got fairly subtle colour changes for free. The extra layers reach down to either a notch on the sword or halfway between notches.






I'm pleased with the sword, it's my first blending (well, I added layers of paint to completely dry underlayers but I'll still call it blending!).

***
I started on the black but discovered I have a bit of a problem. It looks pig ugly, smears through to the white underneath. If I put on a few layers of the black to prevent this then I just get a really solid black with no texture.


I could put hard highlights on the black (ie grey on the sharp edges) but I'm not 100% sure on how to make that look good.

Any advice please?


Also - metallics, better over white or black? how much difference would it make?

Blacked up the body (2 layers of v. watered black) and then put a bronze mix of Mithril + snakebite + blood red over the metal.


With all the bits glued on we get:


I made a bit of a mistake by doing a white undercoat then detailing my lightning claw and then trying to cover it in black, the join between the colours is damn messy .

it's looking good. big up.

Really loving the brass trim mix! Care to give the recipe?

@Scrazza: Thanks!

SlaveToDorkness wrote:Really loving the brass trim mix! Care to give the recipe?

Absolutely
Paints:Mithril Silver, Snakebite leather, Blood Red.
Ratio: 5:2:1 ish I'd guess. Also about 1.5 parts water. The effective water level when applied was probably higher because I kept my brush pretty wet.

This was painted over black to get the brass seen in the pics. It is important to keep the brass thin, if you put the paint on too thickly it is closer to copper in colour.

Enjoy & let me know if you have any success using it !

EDIT: I had to remix the brass again to do some touch ups, I think you NEED a dot or two of black in the mix to darken it. I guess I probably did that originally as well.

Will do. I may try it on an upcoming Night Lords project. Looking for a dark muted trim color that still fits their color scheme.

Loving the sword and claw, very much looking forward to the finished paint job.

Good eye for colour... that'd probably work out pretty well with them.

Having used the mix I reckon you could on sharp highlights of purple/Mithril mix with a final edging of mithril and it'd look really creepy

Very nice I can't wait to see it finished.

wow you did that using just the GW starter set :O

Flash and non-flash pics




Can't think where to go from here. The hairpiece/spike is bent and I don't have the kit with me to fix it (pliers). Frankly I was thinking of cutting the hairpiece off but again, bad knife and no files makes that a no go.

Let me know your suggestions for how to paint the storm bolter or hairpiece

PS. Hard to tell from the photos but the head is just propped on, the bent hair will stop me from ever gluing it in!!

Hmm.. well the topknot is supposed to be hair so it would bend around with gravity. Perhaps it will look better?

As for colors a deep purple using the blue/red/black maybe? Might look good with the black and brass, without overbrightening beside the red/oranges.

this is getting pretty cool. i will keep tabs on this

kravus master of Horus wrote:wow you did that using just the GW starter set :O

Must be some sort of wizard...

Looking sweeeeeet, keep it up!

S_P

I think the storm bolter shoul be red with metal detail. as for the hair I suck at choseing hair color so black.

For someone who's an experienced painter you really do leave the mould lines on quite significantly...

I'm pretty sure he has a less than great knife and no file since none came with the kit. The whole point was to use only the kit. Unless I am way off.

I love this idea man, it's great! (Kudos to your missus).

He looks good so far, I'm gonna cry myself to sleep that you can paint better than me and you're using the starter set!


Are you intending to carry on with other models after Abbadon? I think that could be cool...

This is pretty impresive, seeing as you are just using basic paints, looking forward to seeing more

Grimtuff wrote:For someone who's an experienced painter you really do leave the mould lines on quite significantly...

tony_nids_10 wrote:I'm pretty sure he has a less than great knife and no file since none came with the kit. The whole point was to use only the kit. Unless I am way off.

Yeah, both right

I was planning on leaving this until a summary post, but here's my kit:

All my tools
1x Starter set
1x Penknife
1x Straw (cut up so I could drop decent amounts of paint into a mixture)
1x remnants of superglue from my fix-it gear at Uni
Toothpicks for stirring paint when I don't want to mangle the brush or ram paint into the ferrule
Cut up sponge to make a wet pallete (leave damp sponge over the top of the tray)
Nutella jar
Free newspapers from college plodge, as produced by students in serious love with the inflated thunder of their own opinon.

@templeork,SlaveofDorkness
Cheers for the suggestions. I ran with very dark purple for fear of overloading with red... But the inside of the screamy faces might end up crimson, colour balance is really hard for that gauntlet - so much detail on it!

@JustDave
Mebbe - I have a fair bit of stuff at home. With my new-found love of blending I'm thinking of doing up those LARGE areas on falcon/jetbikes from an old eldar battleforce... Although I'll have to buy a basecoat spray for that - feth doing it by hand again.

Thanks for the encouragement and feedback everyone!

The mustard would not have been cut is i was to say my socks had not been blown off with the power of a Gw starter kit and an abbadon.
tell me how the nutella tasted...almost as tasty as that minature

ALL HAIL YOU SIR

Nutella jar ftw <3 oh and also, I love the colours youv'e come up with even with your limited equipment, keep it up

really interesting what can be done with just a few colors. good effort!

Extreme highlighting grey (or other colours!) on black is a really awesome technique that has been lovingly rendered on Black Templars and on the new Dark Eldar models (give a lot of different colour schemes there).





Obviously the second effect can be used with any colour scheme, but the first gives the impression of a flat black without any hidden colour and is quite simple to do.

Outline the panels of the armours with a mid grey, then highlight the outlines which are not in deep shadow with a mid/light grey, and finally highlight where light would hit the outlines with a light grey. You may want to practice on a bit of sprue or something first (did you get any sprue with Abaddon?)