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I have been slowly but surely gathering a massive stockpile of CSM materials to build my dream Emperor's Children/Slaanesh army. While I love the classic pro-black/pink theme I have always felt it was somewhat short of the insanity of color I imagine in an army of the God of Excess. Noise Marines are described as not even registering any but the most over-stimulating hues. The descriptions of the Temple invaded by Fulgrim and the Emperor's Children in the Fulgrim novel totally captured my imagination...a riot in the mind just looking at it. Every model in the army will have a different combo of only the brightest most vibrant colors (blue, pink, orange, purple, yellow, turquoise, emerald...so on and so on). I dream of painting the most retina scorching combination of colors into my army highlighted in iridescent so that the colors actually shift slightly as you look over it.

To that end I found a powdery medium called Pearl-Ex. It is a super fine powdered pigment that is supposed to give a deep lustrous sheen of pearl like light reflection. They have a serious variety of colors hues and interrupts which shift light into a particular hue. You just mix in the correct amount into your paint/medium and it does just that.

The problem so far... I just get kinda lightened sparkly paint. Not enough of the pigment shows through to actually catch the light, and if I use more powder it just becomes too clumpy to go on smoothly and control. I have seen all sorts of applications of the stuff successfully pulling off what I want, but never applied to model paints.

Anyone out there have any experience with Pearl-Ex, tips suggestions? Or have an idea how to achieve an actual Iridescent?

Sounds very interesting, cant wait to see how you do them!

Ive wondered about pearl essence paints and that Pearl-Ex came up as a viable solution but i was told on minis it miiiiight not be very beneficial due to its small size, something like vehicles and terrain might showcase it better, just spreading some information i heard. Hope you get your idea going good though as it sounds hella killer!

You need to think like a car painter on this one, I would not mix it with the paint, rather I would apply it on the paint. Try mixing some the flakes with some clear acrylic medium, like Future Floor Polish, then apply the mixture with an airbrush, work slowly and build the layers up.

Then once that is dry you can apply a last gloss coat as well. That is how most "candy" and "pearl" coats are applied on a car, base color, wetsand, pearl, wetsand, clear, wetsand, polish.

Ashton

Or you could mix it into some ard coat that would let the flakes be uninhibited and give a lil gloss to the highlights.

And to ashton that would be how you do it in enamel, acrillic is much simpeler then that, no wet rubbing between coats lol. Oh and the pearl coat is just the flakes in clear then clear over the top.

dreadanant wrote:Or you could mix it into some ard coat that would let the flakes be uninhibited and give a lil gloss to the highlights.

This is exactly what I recommended, though I am not sure if the "ard coat" is water soluble, where as the Future is.

dreadanant wrote:And to ashton that would be how you do it in enamel, acrillic is much simpeler then that, no wet rubbing between coats lol. Oh and the pearl coat is just the flakes in clear then clear over the top.

Actually, you should re-read my post and know what your talking about before opening your mouth, the process I described is what you would use on a car, not a model, I was merely indicating the order of operations. Secondly, car paint is a variation of acrylic paint, enamels have not been used in the automotive industry for about 15 years, there are very few places that you can get it anymore. Additionally if you were to paint a model with enamels, much like what you would find in a bottle of Testor's, you would use the same process I outlined, paint, pearl, clear....otherwise if you mix the pearl directly with the paint, the depth of color that pearl offers is no longer visible, the pearl is mixed in, making it a metallic paint, and not a pearl paint.

Ashton

How about something like this, it's not pink but the theory stands http://www.thecustompaintshop.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=42_2063_2174&product_id=139 . I've used similar paints on my Eldar. One thing, you will never get a good effect due to the small size of the marines but vehicles work nicely.

Some other possible colours:
http://www.thecustompaintshop.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=42_2064_2177&product_id=196
http://www.thecustompaintshop.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=42_2061_2164&product_id=158

Maybe a pearly white paint with an overcoat of transparent red (or blue, or whatever) ?

Lol ashton calm down, I am an auto painter. The only reason you would rub between coats is if you let the first coat set fairenough you got the order right though, and the process you described is for doing enamel, it doesnt matter when it was used it is the process you described, and ard coat is the gw clear in the pot. And in the last part of your post you repeated exactly what I said lol, sorry for high jacking you thread op and good luck with it.

I was at my local Hobby Lobby today perusing the paints and while in the airbrush section I found a fair number of metallic paints that could achieve the desired effect as well as candy sprays and tinted sprays (I think they were spray varnishes) that would give a candy quality to the minis. You would have to bury a fair amount of candy to get a good effect which my be difficult on such a small scale.

There was also in the craft painting area a pearlessence additive you can use with your paint that had a mother of pearl like quality. if you were to layer this over your base coat you could achieve an interesting effect.

I think the candies would be the better way to go for the depth of color and pop effect they would have, just my two cents!

There are quite a few artist type acrylic iridescent paints:

http://www.dickblick.com/categories/acrylics/#iridescentpearlandinterferencecolors

These opalescents (flip flop pearls) will give another color over the top of the base color, especially dark colors





Old school Slanesshi Marines in iridescents and fluorescents:

Love those slaanesh CSM, timd! Like evil candy.

Golden Acrylics makes a cool product. These change color as you shift the light source on them. l

http://www.goldenpaints.com/products/color/fluid/fldinter1.php

Motortree wrote:Love those slaanesh CSM, timd! Like evil candy.

Thanks. They were painted a LONG time ago and never got finished...

Wife calls them the Easter egg Marines...

A light wash on those marines and bit of extreme highlighting and they would be absolutely amazing. Such an usual colour scheme will earn you accolades.

mwnciboo wrote:A light wash on those marines and bit of extreme highlighting and they would be absolutely amazing. Such an usual colour scheme will earn you accolades.

They are pretty low on the priority list... Got a photo example of an extreme highlight? Am unfamiliar with the term.

Thanks,

Tim

timd wrote:There are quite a few artist type acrylic iridescent paints:

http://www.dickblick.com/categories/acrylics/#iridescentpearlandinterferencecolors

Do you have a direct link for those on Blick? I can't seem to find them there....

scipio.au wrote:

timd wrote:There are quite a few artist type acrylic iridescent paints:

http://www.dickblick.com/categories/acrylics/#iridescentpearlandinterferencecolors

Do you have a direct link for those on Blick? I can't seem to find them there....

If you mean the Liquitex bottles in the photo I posted, it looks like they have changed the labels (losing the cool interference colors), but I'm pretty sure it is these: http://www.dickblick.com/products/liquitex-interference-colors/

Tim

Thanks mate! Yeah, I was looking for the same labels. I've added them to my list for my next Blick order.

Extreme highlighting.... here for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNfa44vIKYc

Its about over doing the highlights to such an extent that your eyes are convinced that light is being reflected.

Extreme Highlighting
1
Undercoat the model as listed above. If you are planning to apply your extreme highlights to another already existing paint job, follow the instructions listed for the other paint styles above and below before applying the extreme highlights.

2
Consider the theoretical position of the light source that will be providing the highlights, the "imaginary sun" so to speak. Many figures using extreme highlighting are painted assuming there is a halo of light positioned above the figure. However, you may choose to place your lighting elsewhere for dramatic effect.

3
Select a fine tip brush and a pale highlight color that complements the color you are painting on top of. For example, on a model using Chaos Black, a highlight of Space Wolves Grey may be the best choice.

4
Paint long, thin lines along hard-edged regular surfaces such as the edges of large armor plates, swords, guns, blades and vehicles. Allow your highlights to dry.

Extreme highlighting is a more time consuming method and sometimes yields better results than Drybrushing.

OK, got it. We are talking about specular highlights on highly reflective surfaces.

I have problems with specular highlights on stuff like armor at this scale (I'm more of a battered,dirty drybrushed armor guy). Polished steel blades, yeah possibly, but battered power armor?
I doubt that even perfectly polished colored armor or a highly polished car will throw much of a specular highlight at the scale we are working in.

With colors, scale effect requires lighter tints of the color as the apparent size of the object get smaller.
Here is some basic info on scale effect for folks that are not familiar with the termhttp://www.cybermodeler.com/color/scale_effect.shtml

As the color intensity fades with distance, the specular highlights are going to get much smaller as well. The scale effect theory states that viewing a 1/48 scale aircraft from 12 inches away is the same as looking at the full-scale aircraft from 48 feet away. In 40K terms, holding a 40K figure 12 inches from your eyes is the same as looking at a person from 55-60 feet away. Highly polished steel armor will still throw specular highlights, but I doubt that there will be much in the way of specular highlights from painted armor, no matter how polished it is.

I realize that we exaggerate our painting effects for artistic effect and I have no problem with that, which is why the bright Marines were painted the way they were, but I'm not sure that specular reflections would help on these guys - but I will try it anyway. Thanks for the suggestion!

Tim

You can I believe using metal polishes. Someone on the forum mentioned using a pearl essence type paint, with thinenr (possibly alcohol) then airbrush the mixture on and then use a metallic powder (I believe it is like weathering powder) to keep adding layers onto it until you get a gleaming finish. I haven't managed to find the discussion but I will keep looking because it was a very interesting technique.

EDIT FOUND A TUTORIAL.... Hawkeyes Metal polish, check out the eldar vehicle at the end of this vid by Lester Bursley it looks like it was cast in Silver!




@Timid, wow that website http://www.cybermodeler.com/color/scale_effect.shtml, the whole concept had passed me by and now I will be keeping it in mind although god knows I have enough problems with normal mini's working that in will be pretty hard.