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Hi, I am trying to create a color scheme where my Necron Lords glow red from within getting white hot at the edges, but I'm basically creating a pink meaty flesh feel (it actually reads much worse in this picture than IRL but it helps explain the problem too). I've read through a few OSL tutorials, most of them really good, but none of them use red for their OSL unless it's an embedded object like slats or eyes. I'm really comfortable painting OSL effects in green and blue, but my reds just give off a really meaty fleshy vibe leaving my wanting a big old rare porterhouse after a few minutes of painting.

My techniques:
Prime in flat black
Base in Evil Sunz Scarlet & Catechan Green
Blend colors with combinations of the above and touches of Sunburst Yellow with white to keep highlights going.

Any advice that would help my reds look more like light and not ground beef coming out of the grinder would be really helpful.

have you tried putting a red wash over it after wards to bring all the tones back to red and help them blend together more

I'd say it is coming off wrong because you have too much red in there.By the sounds of things your main colours are red and green and then you are trying to do more red OSL, way too much red going on.

Do you have any photos of your painted necrons? Because I'm not quite sure what they look like and what you are trying to achieve.

Also don't mix red with white to highlight as it goes pink. Add yellows.

if you wanna make it look like hes hot you should use yellow and white and where its cooler orange and red...

there is a youtube vid where someone does red OSL:

Probably the most important thing to remember is that Light Is Additive.

This means any light source will NEVER make a surface darker. If it's hit by a more intense light source, it will 'wash out' the colour with the more intense one. Once you get your head round this it's more an exercise in judging light levels (take photos while working and greyscale them - you'll see what I mean) than colour progression. It's tempting to use a darker 'light colour' as distance from the light increases; this is incorrect, you should actually use a colour more towards the base colour (whatever that is).

Generally for wargaming models, the most intense light source is the 'ambient' / 'sunshine' light. This means that you'll only have OSL on very extreme surfaces facing the light, and they will generally be pink or orange-yellow.

Hey Winter, I'm trying to change my necron base look for the lords and certain heavy gunners, otherwise my look is bronze "skeleton" with dark green armor shells and faces. In this case I want it to look like the skeleton is glowing bright red with the Destroyer Lord face glowing white hot.

So I started blending my red with a bit of yellow with the base green, but it reached a point where it wasn't getting any brighter, so I started adding white, which gave me that sort of cakey beige look. I've seen a lot of brilliant models with OSL where the ambient light in question reflects off the near surface, but when I try to make it bright enough to look like cast light unless I use white to boost the color value it just hits a wall of brightness.

Winterdyne: I will definitely work to blend more of the base color into the mix as I recede away from the light. I'm also thinking I need to make things sharper where the light hits rather than trying to blend them away into the model.

variable wrote:Hey Winter, I'm trying to change my necron base look for the lords and certain heavy gunners, otherwise my look is bronze "skeleton" with dark green armor shells and faces. In this case I want it to look like the skeleton is glowing bright red with the Destroyer Lord face glowing white hot.

So I started blending my red with a bit of yellow with the base green, but it reached a point where it wasn't getting any brighter, so I started adding white, which gave me that sort of cakey beige look. I've seen a lot of brilliant models with OSL where the ambient light in question reflects off the near surface, but when I try to make it bright enough to look like cast light unless I use white to boost the color value it just hits a wall of brightness.

Ah cool, I can see what you are going for now, as it makes more sense as there isn't so much red.

If you are hitting a wall of brightness, try adding a neutral colour like kommando khaki to the mix, it should brighten then tone without too much change in colour.

I'd also suggest watching the video posted particularly the first part about having a platform or object and then the relationship to the glow. I'm not quite sure that OSL is the technique that you should be using to make it appear if you necrons are getting white hot. Unless you intend to paint them as white hot and then use that to provide the light.

DijnsK wrote:if you wanna make it look like hes hot you should use yellow and white and where its cooler orange and red...

there is a youtube vid where someone does red OSL:

That seemed like a good tutorial, but he definitely needs to work on his camera work. Too much of it was fuzzy at critical points.

Oh yeah: USE THIN PAINT! Add colour with many glazes; a hairdryer really helps to flash dry it.

winterdyne wrote:Oh yeah: USE THIN PAINT! Add colour with many glazes; a hairdryer really helps to flash dry it.

or a hot dry climate, which depending on your paint style can usually be a paint in the backside