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I'm having trouble getting a decent shade of red for my Khorne troops. I'd ideally like to recreate something like this http://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Chaos-Space-Marines-Khorne-Lord-of-Skulls

The red on that is gorgeous. Can anyone tell me how to get that shade?

Painting red over black primer is an exorcise in frustration.

I use a grey primer (for just about everything) and its much easier to build up to. If you want the final product to be darker use washes to bring down the colors.

Good Luck and post some pics.

Use a 50:50 mix of Mechrite/Mephiston Red and Abaddon black, or equivilents from other ranges. I always use this (I play Blood Ravens, Khorne Chaos and Behemoth Nids, so 3 of my 4 are red). This gives a dark red tone and is easy to build up from and covers over black really well. For examples of how it looks visit my gallery or PM blog. I recommend the blog as it gives step by steps. Click banner in sig. If going to gallery I recommend the WIP or Showcase gallery, as opposed to the Blood Ravens one as that is full of stuff from before I learned to paint.

I play Blood Angels, and I also use black primer. the key is layering reds, its a style I like, and it works to give the model depth of color.
I am a bit frustrated with GW paints unless my local does'nt carry all the reds or something, but the reds I use are like Scab Red or Gore Red I thinks it's called as a base over the black primer, all the way up to blood red which is the lightest red I have. I have some examples of the look in my gallery pictures.
Once I need more reds I'm going to Wargames Foundry in englan for my paints, they even sell the colors in the layering style or three up set. Darker to lighter, base, then the next color only covering part of the base color, then the third color doesn't touch the base color at all. Not a difficult thing to do, if I didn't explain it very well I'm sure there are tutorials out there. I think you'll like it a lot. It's a technique GW artists have used for years, a friend of mine from GW showed it to me. I have his email copied and saved describing me the technique.

Good luck in your endevor!

Speaking of Khorne, I sure like them and Nurgle, but I'm telling you the Chaos Space Marines are lacking... I hope they redo the kits soon they are too old and goofy for me to get into them.

Seems like deadshots mix is a good place to start. Another thing you would try is underpainting with a warm brown and then build up to the right red with thinned layers. Brown covers a black primer better than reds and give a bit of depth.

For red, mephiston red in general is your friend as a basecoat...
But I found that... Uhm... "Underbasecoating" with a dark, red based brown (as vmc hull red / gw rhynox hid) helps in achieving a deep, dark crimson red. You may even go as simple as hull red base and than glaze-lighting with blood red: the more layers, the brighter the contrasts in the garadient.

I do red ontop of black basecoat quite often. I always start with a coat of brown (Mournfang brown) then red (Mephiston red) then scarlet (Evil Suns scarlet) then orange as a final highlight (Fire Dragon Bright). I might finish it with a red glaze if it looks a bit uneven.

Below is a freehand rose with extreme zoom, you can see all the various layers building up the red. For the full image of the model follow link.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/639168-.html?m=2

They used Khorne Red, under is grey primer, use the Nuln Oil wash, Highlight with Mephiston Red and Evil Sunz Scarlet, then glaze everything with Bloodletter for the nice rich color.

I think you'll get a good result with Mephiston Red base, a black wash, go back over with Mephiston red, a bit of highlighting with Evil Sunz Scarlet and then an edge highlight of some sort of orange (I don't own any of the current GW oranges, I'm guessing either Wild Rider Red or Troll Slayer Orange).

The Lord of Skulls there, though, I reckon they did a bit more complicated than that. It looks like the shading is really well blended, though I doubt they used an airbrush. If you look at how the darker areas in the crevices blend so smoothly in to the panels. I almost wonder if they did Mephiston Red base then washed the crevices with black and blended it in to the panels as they went. Usually you use oil washes to do that, but you can also do it with acrylics.

Painting a nice red onto black primer is actually super easy.

Start with a very thin coat of Averland Sunset (gw yellow base). When I say thin, I mean, as thin as possible without the paint running. The result will be quite transparent. Once it is dry, paint a second superthin coat.

Then, paint a layer of thinned Mephiston Red. Slightly thicker than the yellow, but still quite thin. You will be amazed at how bright and vibrant even one coat looks.

To finish, you can do one of three things: Another coat of thinned Mephiston, or, if you want, a thinned coat of Evil Sunz Scarlet (for it to be really bright). Or, if you want a wash in between, use Agrax Earthshade, and follow it with either Mephiston or Evil Sunz (thinned).

In case you didn't catch it, really thinned paint is critical to getting no brush strokes(water is fine, no need to get fancy) and the yellow basecoat gives the red a bright vibrant starting point.

By the way, I learned this nice tip from the GW how to paint Druthu YouTube

I can help here.

On the armour plates-
Basecoat of Warplock Bronze
Wash with Bloodletter (Glaze)
Wash with Carroburg Crimson
Wash with Nuln Oil

Boom! Nice barbaric looking red!