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So this mini here, the new apostle. Not a huge fan of the sculpt, but, like a few people over on the B&C, I'm awed by the crimson colour of the armour:



Naturally I really want to bash out a recipe for a colour like this, but it's hard as hell to do so far. Does anyone have any insight into this?

The closest I've gotten so far is a 3:2 mix of dryad bark and khorne red, but that still seems to be lacking something (possibly a shade of purple, or something like that at the glazing stage) and I honestly have no idea how to highlight it without it turning too pink (although the bark helps mute the pink somewhat)

I realise topics like this aren't all that fun or interesting, but I figured it was worth a shot in case anyone else has been trying for this effect and has had more success, or a passing colour wheel wizard has a theory answer. I'm slowly losing my sanity over it.

black, maroon and beige(flesh) for the armor. Then maybe some pale green/olive to balance out the maroon.

the handle looke like silver, then black wash, then some turquoise then white highlight

halo maybe dark brown, then gold,, wash black, build up edges with gold. Maybe throw some tan with the gold to dull the metallic sheen a bit.

Thats my guess.

This might be completely off- but it seems to me that they simply under coat black, use bleach bone lightly all over the armor (or what ever the new equivalent is), then use Carraborg Crimson wash all over it.. When it nearly dries apply black washes around the darker area. After the wash dries mix a bit of Carraborg Crimson with bleach bone to high light on the edges.


Whish i can help you more- Good luck experimenting buddy....

The colour looks rather desaturated and sort of red-purple-brown-ish. Here is what I would try. Get your purple paints (any thing from pink, to real purple to blue-ish reds) and your skin colour paints (all those desaturated orange red browns and even desaturated grey browns). And now try find one 1:1 mix of one colour of each side (one skin colour and one purple colour) that looks a bit lighter than what you need because it will darken a bit once painted over black primer (and get a bit more desaturated too).

As a starting point (I looked these up on the GW site (here) so no points for real colour accuracy for me): Either Daemonette Hide or Naggaroth Night and Mournfang Brown or Khorne Red. Of course if you have other paints just try some that you like and look for a combination that you like.

You could also go with a slightly reddish brown that you then glaze/wash (in this case meaning tinting the whole surface by painting a very diluted layer of paint) with a strong medium purple. That could work with the colours mentioned above. It just depends on how you want to paint and which gives you the better effect.

Just don't try to force an exact 100% match as you are comparing a photo of a painted/lighted and colour corrected image on a screen to a miniature that you are actually seeing directly in your hands. Also your colour perception depends on the other colours on your miniature, meaning that even if you had the exact colour and compensated for the photo/lighting then it would still look different if you used another colour scheme as colour perception is highly dependent on neighbouring colours (in this case some very dark and very light parts, thus pushing the purple somewhat in the middle). It would for example be perceived as looking a bit darker if the rest of the miniature were painted white (and no other parts with very dark shading).

Also if you want this colour for an army and not just one miniature then it pays off to keep the recipes very simple, as in: Try to stay with two paints and as few steps as possible for ease of reproduction.

Mario wrote:
ust don't try to force an exact 100% match as you are comparing a photo of a painted/lighted and colour corrected image on a screen to a miniature that you are actually seeing directly in your hands.

Hah, yeah, I have to keep reminding myself of this one whenever I follow tutorials too.

I haven't tried introducing any purples yet, but I have the full range of them so I'll give a few of them a whirl with a couple of flesh tones. Cheers for the in-depth reply!