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I blame GW.
Start Collecting! Skitarii was too good to resist.
After a few days of assembling and decanting away those horrible GW pots (SO much better, Emperor be praised!) I primed 10 Vanguard, the Dominus and the Onager and, going with the iconic mars scheme, basecoated them with Mephiston Red.
Said and done, I went in with the standard technique of 45° with Evil Sunz vor some highlighting on the robes and red parts and finally a direct Wildrider Red from above.

While the result isn't bad per se, it just seems... lacking to me.
Transitions are smooth as expected, but the differences in colour are hard to notice even when looking for it, especially from Evil Sunz to Mephiston Red.

I intend to apply another, darker red compared to mephiston to give it more distinction - but I'm an idiot when it comes to colour theory.
Would darkening the red work best with browns? Or blacks?
Are there other combinations that give better contrast without going too far off?
Mind, I've pretty much only access to GW pots sadly as no store in town stocks vallejo or other useable paint ranges... Ordering colours is just a hazzle when in the middle of a project.

Khorne Red is darker than Mephiston Red.

Did you use any shading medium like Cariburg Crimson. That makes a huge difference!

Did you go with a black or white primer? I find black is best with Mephiston.

Now this is not airbrushing but something to consider. In the GW tutorial vid on how to paint a korogoth he does mephiston and then a double application of nuln oil (black wash) to the whole thing (letting it dry in between).

See the vid here, I really like the red he ends up getting on the model by the end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0cfXs_YVHE

I think really darkening the robes with nuln and then highlighting up would work great.

One trick I do when adding a wash to robes is....let the model dry on its side - this lets the wash pool evenenly up and down into the recesses instead of pooling at the bottom of the robe

You could mix in orange to the brightest red to get more transitions then glaze it all down to tint it red.

dont do white since its gona be pink. i dont think you want pink ad mech right?

 Desubot wrote:
You could mix in orange to the brightest red to get more transitions then glaze it all down to tint it red.

dont do white since its gona be pink. i dont think you want pink ad mech right?

You can highlight towards orange (which it seems GW really likes to do with their options and examples)

But you can also highlight towards purple (which I really want to try with my word bearers but none of GWs brighter reds seems to go in this direction on the color wheel)

Another thing i do when zenithal highlighting red is highlight with pure white, then run red over the top of that. Pops a lot more

Thanks for the tips!


After fuding about a bit they are currently all taking a bath in ISO.
Feth that.

I actually went with a grey primer - but using a black one? Yeah, why not?

The most trouble is the midtone. Mephiston to Evil Sunz just isn't pronounced enough for this technique.

However I'm still unsure on how to proceed. I still like airbrush highlighting... Shading a robe down in its entirety to darken the colour will make it look somewhat unclean. Rebuilding the base colour is not an option obviously...

I think using some old black plasticard I can test what the colours transition too with black and grey underneath. Should have done that before. I hate stripping. Ah well.. the things we learn when starting a new army.

I've been painting Red for the bulk of my hobby years, so I've got a lot of experience with it..

For the look you want especially with an airbrush and Citadel paints, this is what I'm going to suggest.

Black primer
Highlight your upper surfaces with Grey. This will give you a start to your highlights.
Further highlight very lightly with white (optional)
Bascoat with Khorne Red.
Highlight with Mephiston Red.
Add a highlight to edges and such with Evil Sunz Scarlet
And if you want it brighter start mixing in trollslayer orange for further highlights.

This will create a lot more contrast but still keep things distinctively red. And different from being Adeptus Mech-BloodAngle-cus at the same time.

Awesome!
I'm gonna give that a shot!

You can also use a brown as your shadow colour instead of simply mephiston

You could use bloodletter to glaze the robes if thay seem too light, it darkens the red quite a bit.