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Hello,
New player (and painter) here. I've been interested in 40k for a while now but have fallen into the trap of not picking a single army and just buying what I like at the time, leaving me with a smattering of mismatched models, a fraction of which have seen a paintbrush. I decided it was about time I pick an army to put together and paint and have chosen Necrons for several reasons. I have the codex and really enjoy the fluff behind these futuristic undead servants of Lovecraftian horrors. I also understand they may be getting a new codex next month which should bring them up to the level of other fifth edition codices (and if not then at least in their current overcosted pointswise state it will be easy to put an army of them together). Lastly and just as importantly as my appreciation for their background is that they're fairly easy to paint to a tabletop standard while still allowing for more advanced techniques. I hope this will enable me to quickly get an army together that I can appreciate the look of while still being able to do more with them as my painting skills improve.

Also, I'm sure the Space Marine players I'll likely be going up against will appreciate having another xeno player to massacre.

I'll be using this blog to document my progress on the army and hopefully spur me on to a decent pace getting them painted. Advice and criticism are welcome, keeping in mind how new I am at this (thinning my paints, washes and dry brushing are just barely in my skill set).

The first issue putting together my Necrons is what kind of paint scheme to go with. I like metallic Necrons but didn't want to do a predominantly silver scheme. After experimenting a little I've found I like the look of a couple coats of blue wash over boltgun metal. One thing I have been stuck on is mixing it up a little by doing the accents and gun in different colors. Here are a few pics of what I've come up with so far. Sorry if some of them ended up a bit dark, I'm still working out how to get the lighting just right for pictures. My eventual plans for basing involve snow. I'm also thinking of getting my hands on red rods for the guns rather than green, although that will likely depend on what color I end up doing the guns in (if I do this I'll also likely do their eyes in blood red, which may show up better than the green paint I've been using).

Here was my test of the blue scheme algonside my "control" paint scheme for contrast (boltgun metal with brown wash).



Front and back views of a couple sample torsos I've been doing. One with bronze chest icon and shoulder plates, one with bronze icon, silver shoulder plates, and silver face.



A blue and bronze scheme for scarabs.



Finally, this is the kind of sad thing that happens when I think to myself "Hey, Ogryn Flesh wash looks like a rather dark red, I bet that would work".

They look pretty good, but you need better front lighting on your warriors. It's hard to see any detail or tell what colour you painted them.

I'll see what I can do. These were taken in a brightly lit room, with another bright light shining in their direction and I made sure to use a white background. They still ended up rather dark. I tried again tonight with a single light source and they look just as bad. I'm wondering if daylight might be the best option.

The two without the arms that I'm using to test for a final paint scheme are painted in thinned boltgun metal. The blue sections have two layers of Asurmen blue wash, dwarf bronze on the icons of both and shoulder plates of the one on the left. The face and shoulder plates of the one on the right were left with the boltgun basecoat. All areas left boltgun metal or dwarf bronze received a black wash. Eyes are snot green.

I'll try taking a couple more pictures outside during the day.

I really like this color scheme! Welcome to dakka!

The white background is part of the problem...it causes the background to reflect more light than your subject (the model).

You want your background to be darker than the model, thus the reflected light from the model will be picked up more.

Good luck and thanks for sharing!

Nice work! I like the blue and bronze look you've got going, but the eyes seem a little dark as they are. A touch of Scorpion Green would probably make them stand out more. Also, picking out the symbol on the chest with a gold would make it stand out more against the rest of the sternum piece.

If there's any truth to the rumors, different coloured rods may be on the way with the new release Necrons, so that should make things easy if you want to go with red rods.

Also, you're right, daylight is your friend when taking pictures. Using the same kind of setup you've got in front of a nice sunny window should help your pictures quite a bit.

Good luck with the army!

I like the color scheme as well. We need more 'Crons on Dakka. Welcome!

Yeah nice scheme! I've always thought the colours for necrons seemed to be a bit limited, a lot of people seem to paint them metallic. But of course you can also get metallic in different colours haha. Nice job!

Welcome to Dakka Dakka! You seem to have a natural talent for painting. Keep it up!

bebopdrums2424 wrote:I really like this color scheme! Welcome to dakka!

Thanks. Now that I have a few more done I'm liking the scheme more and more.

davethepak wrote:The white background is part of the problem...it causes the background to reflect more light than your subject (the model).

You want your background to be darker than the model, thus the reflected light from the model will be picked up more.

Good luck and thanks for sharing!

Good to know. I'd used a light background because when I looked up info on taking pictures of models it was advised often. I used a darker background for the next few and it turned out much better.

hungryp wrote:Nice work! I like the blue and bronze look you've got going, but the eyes seem a little dark as they are. A touch of Scorpion Green would probably make them stand out more. Also, picking out the symbol on the chest with a gold would make it stand out more against the rest of the sternum piece.

If there's any truth to the rumors, different coloured rods may be on the way with the new release Necrons, so that should make things easy if you want to go with red rods.

Also, you're right, daylight is your friend when taking pictures. Using the same kind of setup you've got in front of a nice sunny window should help your pictures quite a bit.

Good luck with the army!

Thanks for the tip. I tried some goblin green and it turned out better. I'll pick up some scorpion green soon. For the next batch of pictures I tried the chest piece on one of them in gold. It turned out pretty well. Also took them outside this time, during the day (none of our windows get a ton of sunlight, partially due to all the trees in the yard).

If they do get released with red rods would blood red be good for the eyes? I like having the eyes and tubes match (I guess in my mind it indicates the same kind of "energy" animating the necrons and powering their weapons).

Rabid Ferret wrote:I like the color scheme as well. We need more 'Crons on Dakka. Welcome!

Thanks. I especially liked how it turned out on the scarabs.

Amphsix wrote:Yeah nice scheme! I've always thought the colours for necrons seemed to be a bit limited, a lot of people seem to paint them metallic. But of course you can also get metallic in different colours haha. Nice job!

I really liked the metallics. Using washes seemed to work pretty well to add some color to them.

Avro wrote:Welcome to Dakka Dakka! You seem to have a natural talent for painting. Keep it up!

I'm just bumbling along. Hopefully by the time I finish the army I'll have developed a bit, though. Thanks for the welcome.

Next post with pics is coming along in the next few minutes.

Edit: Make that an addition to this post instead. Dakka appears to have appended the post to this one to avoid a double post.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Took a lot of new pictures today (first day without fog and/or rain finally came). An additional 4 guys have been completely painted and assembled.

Most pics are outside in light shade. I apologize for the bits of "snow" stuck to some of them. Didn't notice them until taking the pics. I'll clean them up.

These first two are two of the three I have done in my final planned paint scheme with blue and bronze.





Here's a silver and blue test scheme and my first blue necron.



Blue and silver back view plus my scarabs.



Finally one in the daylight just for comparison to the "shade" pics. Eyes show a bit better in direct light but I need to get some scorpion green.

Just wanted to let everyone know I'm still here. I've been working a lot of overtime this month so there hasn't been much time to work on models, but I'll be putting together and painting another batch of necrons this week.

Currently I have two warrior squads to do (counting the warriors already shown in this thread. Finances permitting I should be able to pick up the new codex in a couple weeks and at least a box of one of the new necron units. I'm thinking of the sniper guys...