I just started painting my Necrons from the Elite Edition intro box (Scarabs, warriors, destroyers, supreme overlord, plasmacyte). I'm pretty excited: after going through the Space Marines in the box, this feels exciting and new!
I have struggled for some time with coming up with a paint scheme for these guys. I wanted something orange, at least for the glowy bits -I am using the vallejo fluorescent orange- and I was partial to something bronze-y for the body parts. I was looking at Maynarkh mainly for inspiration: I was a bit put out by the fact that they seem to be non-canonical at this point, but I'm not going to be playing much -if at all- so gameplay implications are not that relevant for me. Therefore, I'd rather paint something that excites me than care about some crazy stratagem I'm not going to use anyway.
So, I finally landed on the following:
-Black prime.
-Deep bronze (Citadel's Warplock bronze) drybrush to the metal "fleshy" bits.
-Reikland Fleshshade Gloss wash on top of that
-Glowy "energy" elements (including eyes) get fluor orange glazes on top of a white base.
-For blades, I'm planning on a pseudo NMM of orange/yellow (fingers crossed there... never done that before)
-Black parts ("bone" parts and weapons) get a nuln oil wash.
-Aluminum edge highlights all around.
I'm going to base them with a grey/ashen dirt peppered with blue crystals I made out of carved sprues (I'm thinking that the touch of blue/green crystals would add a nice contrats to the orange of the accents... yeah, I'm going full color theory like all them cool kids!
I'm moderately happy with how my tests look (I'm loving playing with the fluor glazes), but I have some doubts:
-The bronze may look a bit too dark for contrast. This is mitigated to some extent by the edge highlight, but still... the face details, in particular, are hardly visible -I have not applied any highlights to the face, other than some edges to the lines in the forehead. What would you suggest here? Maybe a brighter drybrush for contrast? I had considered a lighter bronze base, using a steel basecoat and then applying Fleshshade washes... maybe that's the way to go?
-I'm not sure if the reikland fleshshade gloss wash is adding much (other than the gloss, which I'm not sure I even want to begin with) considering the overall darkness.
-The darkness is also a bit of a drag for me to add weathering. I guess you can still add weathering on darker surfaces -with maybe lighter tones, scratches and the like- but adding rusty/grimy effects- which is what I was thinking- is kinda difficult over the background of the dark bronze.
So, may I pick your brains on how to deal with the concerns above? Would you suggest any improvements, changes, embellishments to the paint scheme?
Adding some pictures for reference. PLEASE DISREGARD MY EMBARRASSING ATTEMPT WITH THE BLADE. That's what happens when you try to do NMM-like and wetblend when you have never previously done either.
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