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 Pacific wrote:
I've definitely decided against black, as picking out some of the small detail on that scale mini in black is a recipe for eye strain! Younger eyes may be OK.

I don't know how to make black look good at this scale.

I kind of want to do dark angels, given the high pigment paints available these days I don't think it'd be too hard to paint bone or red over black at this scale, but the black itself I dunno how to do.

But yeah, I dunno, I already have an 8mm Ultramarines army, so maybe I should just expand that, though I kind of want to try something different. At this scale, punchy colours are a real boon, so as much as I like Dark Angels and Space Wolves, probably not them.

Maybe I was thinking of Alpha Legion, using a technique not dissimilar to this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rne2uWLBoMc

...so blue/teal drybrushed over a purple base, but I dunno if that will look good at Epic scale and it needs to scale well from basic infantry up to aircraft and superheavies like the Falchion.


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 tauist wrote:
IXth for me as always...

Am I the only person who has never been able to memorise the different legion numbers? Other than Dark Angels, Emperor's Children (because they're the first 2), and Alpha Legion (because it's last) I'm lost, even after having read 2 or 3 dozen of the HH novels (I hate it when the novels use legion numbers instead of the name and I have to pull out my phone to google it, lol).

Marxist artist wrote:
I am doing imperial fist, which is out of my comfort zone', I struggle with yellow.

At this scale, yellow is super easy (barely an inconvenience). Prime white or bone, yellow contrast paint, done. You can add more steps like a pre shade by spraying brown first and then zenithal white/bone, or do a brown wash first and then drybrush white, then contrast, and maybe finish off with a pale yellow drybrush for more texture, but really not that hard.

I considered doing imperial fists because I thought they might be one of the easiest ones to batch paint.


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 Manchu wrote:
In 30k, there are three black-armored Legions, right?
>DA
>IH
>RG
For Epic-scale, Black Templar contrast over Grey Seer is probably the way to go.

I feel like that's not going to look good at this scale? Like, not punchy enough.

I was thinking maybe go the other way, prime black and then wash with a light grey, so you end up with something like dust/grit in the crevices, and maybe a bit more contrast than a black "Contrast" paint would give.




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 Fugazi wrote:
Some of these posts got me thinking…

How will you be painting the marines?

For instance, I was thinking prime, base color, trim color (shoulder pads etc), weapon color

But I’m starting to second guess and think that contrast paints might be the way to go for the base color as a quick way to deliver some color depth I wouldn’t get out of a regular base/layer paint.

Thoughts?

chaos0xomega wrote:
Yeah, been wondering what the most efficient way of painting tiny marines might be. Im inclined to believe that contrast paint may not work well on the lil guys as they may be too small to get the desired results of that type of paint. I've been thinking prime, base color, trim colors (to include weapons), wash.

Contrast type paints work really well at this scale IMO. Albertorius has a lot of nice models painted with Contrast type paints over on his 3D printing thread.

There's a few techniques I've been using on models of this scale (not just LI, but also Warmaster stuff) and I think a good starting point is...

Prime black <optional depending on what the final colour will be, maybe not black for some legions, IF might be better off purple or brown>

Zenithal white from a few angles (or bone/grey if that better suits)

<optional> wash with either black or a colour that contrasts your primary colour

<optional> drybrush either white or a light colour that compliments your primary colour (e.g. bone for red or yellow)

Hit it with a heavy coat of contrast

<optional> Drybrush your mid tone

Drybrush a highlight

All of those steps are super fast, so an army will come together quickly.

Bonus points for armies that have a light base colour so that details can be picked out with a contrast also.

I like the way Dark Angels look in artwork and in my mind's eye.... but in physical miniature form I just can't make them look "right" to me.

Here's an attempt at painting the black with trough-highlighting rather than edge highlighting in an attempt to get them to "read" as black but still have contrast, I dunno if I will like how it would look on a full army. Basically use a grey contrast paint over pure black, drybrush the black back on, then touch up the grey contrast on rivets and whatnot to bring back a bit of the contrast. The Rhino on the right was my first attempt, I think the ones on the middle/left came out a bit better. Any thoughts on improvements?

It is a bit difficult to photograph, the photos make the tanks look very black, there's a bit more gradation in reality.

 Pacific wrote:
It's taken me over 2 months to reply but those look great Skink ! Enough additional contrast and colour to make them stand out.

A quick question - has anyone done any Death Guard they want to show? I'm painting some for a friend who wants a cleaner/whiter appearance, rather than the 'heavily stained y-fronts' look of the official mini style, so wondering what recipes people are using.

Thanks! I haven’t painted any more Dark Angels because I ended up going back to my Tiny Tyranids.

As for the Death Guard, I haven’t tried them, but one idea I had was to prime white, wash with Seraphim Sepia (pretty lightly) drybrush white, then wash with Mortarion Grime. That might end up darker than you want though.

Haven’t tested it though, maybe it’d be horrible. I figure Mortarion Grime by itself wouldn’t have enough contrast at this scale though, hence the pre-wash and white drybrush. Maybe not seraphim sepia though.

 Pacific wrote:
Thanks a lot guys - those look great Leopard.

I'm trying to go for the cover of flight of the Eisenstein colours - more of a white and darker green (which I guess is more crusade-era) and before they started turning to chaos and stopped washing their undies. Might try a white base and very slight hint of a brown wash, then that darker almost bottle green and see how it turns out.

That's a pretty white-ish white. I'd just paint it how I paint other whites, which is to use apothecary white or soulblight grey mixed with "something else" over a white basecoat. The "something else" will be a wash or contrast that pushes it in the direction I want (e.g. seraphim sepia for a warm yellowish white, mortarion green for a more cool greenish tone, skeleton horde for something more creamy-bone coloured, agrax for a more neutral dirty tone). For my white scars I used 1:1:1 of Soulblight Grey : Mortarion Grime : Seraphim Sepia.

Instead of a pure white you could use something like Vallejo's white grey for a more subdued tone.