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I have been given a pack of blood angel death company and would like to learn how to highlight them, i dont want to standard grey route, i would like to add a little colour to them. Any hints? Cheers all

Could try a dark blue.

Ive only been painting a few months so im a little unsure jow you woulf go about it.

Well it'd be just like the dark grey method but substituting it with a dark blue instead. Rather than GW's method of hitting every armour edge I'd say pick a spot above the model and try to picture that being the light source that's hitting it, then hit the edges raised to that point with the highlight colour instead of all the edges. It can be a bit tricky to get them with the tip of the brush at first, but you can use the side of the tip instead if you're careful.

If you want to tint the model with a colour, you can highlight black with any colour. I use grey highlights for some of my black bretonnian knights, but a red highlight for the champion so he stands out.

The main trick with black, IMO, is you need to focus on edge highlighting. just a couple of edge highlights is all you need.

If you look at this guide, the 6th page down, shows you how to do "hard edging" with black.

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m220355a_Painting_Space_Marines_part_1

That's basically what you want to do, but instead of using greys, you can use a dark blue, mid blue and a lighter blue, or a dark green, mid green and a lighter green. If that's too bright you can use a very dark blue, a dark blue and a mid blue.

If you want a "pure" black, people often use blue-greys. So colours like The Fang or Wolf Grey. This gives more of a cleaner black, where using pure greys tends to give you more of a faded black.

Check this out from GMM studios. More pics here

Do you think as blood angels are predominantly red red highlights would look any good?

Yeah I definitely think you could pull off red highlights. Try it out on a test mini to see if you like it, and for some practice.

cakington wrote:
Do you think as blood angels are predominantly red red highlights would look any good?

Totally. I'd do a 3 stage edge highlight, one very dark red, then something like a khorne red, then a final highlight just on the upper most edges of Evil Sunz Scarlet. The first, very dark highlight, I'd probably just mix it from black + red. You might need to finish the model off with a black wash just to tie the reds in to the black a bit better, you could do the wash before the Evil Sunz Scarlet just to make the model pop a bit more, or do the wash last for a more subdued look.

Very dark red highlights will 'read' as brown, so unless you're prepared to do some very fine brushwork for tiny sharp highlights, I'd stick with a more neutral colour.

If you want to steer clear of grey, you might try a colour that's complementary or contrasting to red. This will ensure the models fit in with the army scheme as a whole, even though you're not using the main colour (red). Strong green, blue or turquoise would work; as would more muted colours like Rotting Flesh.

The turquoise that GMM studios used in the examples Barksdale posted is an excellent example of how clean use of colour works to enhance the black and not overwhelm it.

Another arguably simpler approach is to shade down. Paint your models in a very dark tone of another colour (Necron Abyss, for example), and then add layers of black inks or washes to create strong deep shadows, leaving the base colour as the highlight.

 Apologist wrote:
Very dark red highlights will 'read' as brown, so unless you're prepared to do some very fine brushwork for tiny sharp highlights, I'd stick with a more neutral colour.

Red can work, but you have to highlight up to reasonably bright red on the edges so it doesn't look brown (hence why I suggested going up to Evil Sunz Scarlet, or at the very least Mephiston). Excuse the terrible painting and poor picture, I painted this horse about 8 years ago and photographed it quickly on my desk with poor lighting, but you get the idea!



EDIT: Actually, painted about 11 years ago when they were first released, holy crap the Bretonnian Army Book is ancient, LOL.

If I was painting it again now, knowing what I know now, I would have done the lines much thinner and would have applied the final highlight more sparingly to make it look neater and sharper.

I don't know what lvl you are at but you might find this helpful for technique https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN682vIdbX8


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I don't know what lvl you are at but you might find this helpful for technique https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN682vIdbX8

Awesome thanks all. Is there anyway i could make the red more like red then brown if i do go for the red highlights?

cakington wrote:
Awesome thanks all. Is there anyway i could make the red more like red then brown if i do go for the red highlights?

Go down the middle of the fine red line with an even finer orange line works...