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This has been a bugbear since GW launched their new paints a couple of years ago however, I'm now needing to vent a bit...

My problem is basically this, I find myself using Dark Red paint schemes a lot. For example, my Blood Ravens used to be painted with Scab Red and Red Gore. However, what's frustrating me is this. When GW launched their new paint scheme, they somehow managed to double the number of paints yet half the number of dark reds - From 2 to 1! - Leaving only 'Khorne Red.'

I managed to work around it with my Blood Ravens, switching to a Khorne Red basecoat, followed by the Carroburg Crimson Shade and topped off with Vallejos Gory Red, It worked, I was happy.

18 months later, I foolishly decided, "you know what would be nice for my Deadzone Rebs, Green Jackets, then a two tone red scheme, one darker and one slightly lighter. My initial experiments with this can be found in my Deadzone Blog.

What it boiled down to was this. Khorne Red > Carroburg Crimson > Gorey Red for the body suit, like my Blood Ravens, which worked fine, then I tried a lighter set of red for the armour plates.

Specifically, Mephiston Red > Carroburg Crimson > Wazdakka Red.

In short, Mephiston Red basically looks halfway to orange to me and Wazdakka Red is almost pink.




Tonight, I've had another go at a couple of models. Both with the Khorne Red body suit basecoat. Then, one with the Mephiston Red base (to give it another chance) and another with my old Merchite Red Foundation Paint.

While the paints are still drying at the moment (I may get pictures up tomorrow for a comparison), so far Merchite seems to be exactly the tone I was going for. Which just builds back to my frustration again.


Has anyone had the same experiences? Got any recommendations? Or is my complete lack of knowledge of anything remotely artistic just showing I really have no idea what I'm talking about?

I do have the Vallejo Scarlett Red paint and I'm going to try that at some point, however, the problem is, generally speaking, I get on quite well with the Foundation / Base paint concept - going back to my aforementioned lack of talent. Do other companies have similar paint lines? Ones that are really good at going on undercoats etc.

I'd appreciate any comments, even if it is just, "nope, Compel, you're doing painting wrong."

Cheers.


Edit: Darn, it looks like Merchite is drying to almost as light as Mephiston. It looks like I really am needing that advice now.

Red and yellow can be your biggest banes.

The biggest question is what color are you priming with? Red over black requires quite a few light coats to build up the color. Grey primer is going to be your best bet.

I always hated red gore and scab red. They had terrible coverage despite being dark reds. Mechrite Red was nice, because it had good coverage, but was slightly purple in tone. The Mephiston red is a more pure red, which I prefer because if I want something darker or duller, I can mix it darker or duller, however if I start from something which is dark, you can't really make it more vibrant. I haven't actually tried Khorne Red, it looks like a more purplish red as well.

What exactly is your problem? What are you trying to achieve? I think if you're trying to get something like Scab Red or Red Gore out of the current paints, you could probably just mix a touch of blue and maybe black in to a brighter red. If you are using it for a whole army, then buy a few mixing pots and mix up a large batch so you don't have to remix it each time.

I love painting red and yellow, in fact I think they are some of the colors I paint the best. Here are a few things I have learned.

Red and yellow have such poor coverage because they are such saturated colors. Thinning these colors with a bit of acrylic matte medium really helps. Inks are also your friend. I would say if you put a red ink over that mini you have there you will get a solid red result that you really like. I prefer the p3 Red Ink my self.

Lastly, as mentioned, primer/base coat, dont work over black, white is a nice color for good reds.

A.

The old line of red paints was much better.

Scab red was amazing and Khorne red is good but not the same. does anyone have a stash of scab red and feel like selling me a few pots?

mephiston red looks very similar to evil sunz Scarlett to the point of why bother. I really hate it when two paints in a line are more or less the same color. just mix a bit of orange into mephiston and you will have evil sunz. wild rider should not be labeled as a red. it is clearly an orange. a mediocre orange, IMO, it's thick and chalky and i don't like it.

khorne red is the best out of all the reds they make OP. I like bloodletter too, it's pretty good.
also, you can try army painter reds OP. they are pretty good.

Just a suggestion, but after you wash Khorne with Carroburg, you can use Khorne again as a layer if you want, it's significantly lighter than a washed version of itself.

Maybe you've already tried this and don't like it, in which case disregard my post.

One thing that has worked for me with red, was highlighting with an intense red-orange, then a deep red wash. It has worked well so far.

Not so much experienced with reds, I admit it. Or, rather, the red(s) I choose to paint for my "experiments" on tau were 'blended' towards orange/yellow.
But - there is always a 'but' at this point - I found, when painting an eversor assassin, a simple (simpler... simplest) scheme that left me quite pleased: I applied a bascoat of vmc hull red (I think it's equivalent to gw rhinox hide) and then glaze over with blood red (baal red? I think); the result is a rich, deep, 'bloody', almost-brownish red.
For yellow, again not much experience, I did a bit with a pre-base coat of orange or of bronzed flesh. (Starting with bronzed flesh helps also with reds, btw)

I have a bit of success hitting my red spots with a undercoat of yellow just prior, then red over top after it dries. Use a light coat of yellow and a heavier possibly double coat of red or you may turn orangish

Or you could use this chart and use the Vallejo colours which are an almost perfect match to the old citadel line.

Painting Red from the Man himself

 PrehistoricUFO wrote:
Just a suggestion, but after you wash Khorne with Carroburg, you can use Khorne again as a layer if you want, it's significantly lighter than a washed version of itself.

Maybe you've already tried this and don't like it, in which case disregard my post.

I've never actually tried that, thought about it once then dismissed it as, "nah, that'd never work." - But if it actually does, then yeah! That could solve my problems!

groggeron wrote:
One thing that has worked for me with red, was highlighting with an intense red-orange, then a deep red wash. It has worked well so far.

What sort of deep red washes do you use? I only have the GW Shades at the moment, which I'm not entirely sure would work as a 'normal' wash.

 Tarthenal wrote:
Or you could use this chart and use the Vallejo colours which are an almost perfect match to the old citadel line.

I do use the vallejo colours to replace my 'Crimson Gore,' however I've been unsure about using them as a 'base' paint due to the poor coverage problem people have mentioned. So, I've generally found the GW Base / Foundation range to be work well for me.

Thanks all.

I like to mix my GW evil sun scarlet with Vallejo Terracotta as a base for anything red I paint.

I always use a red glaze over my reds.

Here we go...

Here's some shots of my latest experiments with the reds, one using the Khorne Red and one using the Vallejo scarlet red on the armour. - Truth is, I think the Agrax Earthshade ended up pretty much hiding any differences between the two colours - it went on a bit thick than I meant. I also used the bloodletter glaze over the highlights.

In any case, I'm fairly happy with them now.




And here they are beside my commander.

You really need to give an example or description of what you are TRYING to achieve. There's a billion ways to paint red, across my models I have maybe half a dozen to a dozen different ways I've painted red to different effect.

vallejo game colour.

Wash the Khorne red with either Druchii Violet, or (believe it or not) Agrax Earthshade. I use the Khorne/Mephiston combo on my Dark Eldar (formerly Scab and a Scab Mechrite mix) and the Druchii violet makes them nice and dark. Takes the edge off.

The Earthshade is a tip that was given to me by a guy I met at a tounament up at GW HQ, and it works quite well. I prefer the purple though, personally. Carroburg Crimson really doesn't do anything to shade the red, unless you're using a bright red like the Evil Sunz Scarlet.

If everything is still too bright after the highlights, use the Carroburg to bring everything back down. That's how I paint black and darker metals. Highlight the hell out of it (My 'black' top highlight is Celestria Grey) then hit it with the wash to darken it all again.

Nice tip on the Druchii Violet, I think I've got some of that. - I'll need to try it on a guy some time.

But yeah, I'm quite happy now that I'm on the road to getting the 'right' looking colours.

Thanks again, everyone.

Any reason why you have to stick with Citadel? Both Vallejo and Reaper gives you much more choices and their paints work exceptional well for fine details and highlights.

Well, I do have some Vallejo paints (I mentioned using Scarlett Red and Gorey Red).

However, the general answers are:
1) GW are very local and stock paint. Which is good when usually I can't tell I need a colour until I actually... need it. At that point, I don't want to wait 3 weeks for it to be delivered.

2) The Royal Mail are jerks and have decided that acrylic paint is a Restricted Item, therefore you cannot have more than 4 pots of paint in an order at once. So, I'd need to have a courier, which means taking a day off work for paint, which seems inefficient.

For my blood angels, I primed the figures with brown, which makes for a good base on which to layer red.