So, I'll just try an answer your questions based on my own experience of painting up my Salamanders - I don't claim to be a 'great' painter, but I hope my thoughts can be of help.
Slipstream wrote: I've seen many great looking Salamanders and all have a lighter green highlight.My problem is that it's too obvious? Does it stand out and highlight enough?
When highlighting my Salamanders, I tend to go with a 1st highlight of 50:50 Warpstone Glow and Moot Green and then a 2nd highlight of pure Moot Green. You have to remember that paints tend to dry darker and less vibrant than they are in liquid form - mainly because they aren't as reflective. So, I wouldn't worry too much about how light your highlights will be, provided you pick a sensible colour to use. In other words, if you pick white, then of course it will be too bright, but if you pick a colour only one or two steps up from your base-coat, it'll blend in much better.
Slipstream wrote:Think about it,do you highlight black with black? Red with red? Of course you don't! You use a complimentary colour...
This got me thinking;
Should green be highlighted with....yellow?
The thing is, you
don't use a complimentary colour for highlighting. Complimentary colours are often (not always) the opposite colour in the light spectrum, or as most artists will have seen it - the colour wheel. (Same thing really). To pick the example that comes to mind the most for me is Orange and Blue. Take a trawl through loads of
film posters and you'll see they often use Orange and Blue as the main colours, because they contrast really well and 'compliment' each other. However, if you painted yourself up a Howling Griffons marine, with his bright orange power armour, the last thing you'd do is highlight him in blue - it would just be all wrong. In short, the theory of complimentary colours should be used when picking out details on your model. For my Salamanders, as the main colour is green, I tend to use Reds, oranges and yellows to compliment it in areas such as tassels, lenses or gems.
For highlights, the concept is different. A highlight represents where the light hits the edge of an object and reflects more directly back to the human eye than reflected light off another area. As more light is hitting the eye, the whiter the edge looks. As a result, the concept in highlighting a model, is to use progressively
lighter shades of the same colour to simulate the relection of light.
TL
R - use the same colour and add miniscule amounts of white to lighten the shade or use a slightly lighter shade of green. In your case, to save on work I'd highly recommend using the same highlights as I use, simply as they are easy to use and require minimal mixing to get right.
Of course, this is all just my thoughts, please don't feel you have to do what I say - it's just food for thought. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask as I never mind helping another Salamanders painter out.
