Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I decided to rebuild my Death Guard army, and Dark Imperium comes with all those blasted Primaris Marines. What's a guy to do? Sell them? Heck no! Start another project, of course!

Way back when I did some very, very orange space marines. They were orange, let me tell you. All over orange, prison jumpsuit orange, box of clementines orange. People used to call them pumpkin marines.

I didn't have a chapter for them, but there are actually a few canonical orange marines. The Knights of Gryphonne are one of them, so why not resurrect my orange marines? But instead of just plain old orange, we'll go with metallic orange, which by definition is cooler than just orange. Harder to source as well, apparently, as most companies just make plenty of coppery and brassy colors, but not orange metallics (though Vajello has an awesome one , but it's more or a candy automotive color). Reaper makes a color called Coppery Orange, though.



I also figured the black of the Knights of Gryphonne would look good as a metallic as well, so one large order to Reaper for paints later and I had a bunch of gunmetal colors and shades of orange, including the necessary Coppery Orange. One small order to Shapeways got me some of Pop Goes the Monkey's Griffon shoulder emblems (along with squad emblems), because painting griffons on shoulder pads is easier when they're basically embossed. By the way, those things are fantastic, huge props to Pop Goes the Monkey. They go on with plastic glue just fine!

Some trial and error fiddling with disposable old plastics followed before I busted out the giveaway Primaris Marine it got in a GW store when Dark Imperium first came out. I decided to paint him in pieces (not enough pieces, actually, as I should have kept him off his base, but whatever) via airbrush. A grey primer coat was followed by Reaper's Orange Brown, a zenithal Marigold Yellow and an underspray of Carrot Top Red.



Now, right there I probably could have skipped the metallics and gone straight to washes. Orange and yellows really work well with airbrushing. But I've never done underpainting before, so onwards with the Reaper Coppery Orange.



Really, I should have used more red from below and a bit more yellow from above, as the undercoat didn't show through tremendously well. It worked a bit better on the arms holding the gun, which had more red. It seems that underpainting shouldn't be attempted in a subtle manner. Anyways, the backpack was sprayed in Gunmetal Blue followed by a zenithal of Blackened Steel.



What followed was fairly experimental. I gave it a wash with Army Painter Flesh Wash, which darkened the orange color a bit, but didn't settle in the crevices very well. I used Agrax Earthshade to define the crevices, painting them directly rather than washing the whole mini. A limited edge highlight of the Coppery Orange made it pop a bit more. Joints and emblems were painted in the same Gunmetal Blue, followed by Blackened Steel highlights and a wash of Nuln Oil. I eventually went back with Blackened Steel for more edge highlighting.



Let me just say how hard it is to get metallics to look right in digital photography. I had to fiddle a lot with brightness settings, despite using a lightbox and true spectrum lighting. If anyone has any tips on photographing minis with lots of metallics, I'm all ears.

Also, those griffon emblems are really hard to get full coverage on. It's also really hard to correct the metallic coat, so I erred on the side of caution when putting down the Gunmetal Blue.



This image is probably about as close as possible to true color. Metallics also go down a bit differently with an airbrush, it makes me wonder if the particles lay a bit differently after being shot at the mini rather than being brushed on. It looks more granular.



I gave him an HQ/Elite emblem just for fun, as I only have so many Tactical emblems to throw around. Maybe we'll get Primaris Sternguard someday, who knows?

I enjoy seeing a different take on already existing paint schemes. Good luck with this, mate.

 Marine_With_Heart wrote:
I enjoy seeing a different take on already existing paint schemes. Good luck with this, mate.

I know, right? Seeing some of the metallic space marines on dakka has inspired me. I really wish I had found those Reaper gunmetal colors years ago, though, they are super easy to work with.

Well unfortunately I'm more than useless in the helpful knowledge department, but orange is my favorite color, and I think your marine looks great so you at least have a fan.

Well, I'm of dutch extraction so I'm obliged to like orange.

Brilliant stuff for a metallic effect it might be easier to use a wash over silver it's how I got this effect

Nice simple and effective

 Llamahead wrote:
Brilliant stuff for a metallic effect it might be easier to use a wash over silver it's how I got this effect
]
Nice simple and effective

I don't think I could get the shading I wanted without just as much effort. Basically I'd have to use 3+ colors of silver in the same manner before using the orange wash - if I wanted to have underpainted shading. It might turn out more effective to do it that way, but correcting any mistakes after the fact would be a nightmare.

Right now, if the gunmetal goes awry (and it did), I can paint over it with Coppery Orange and wash it back to close to the original color. If you look close at the rear shot in the OP, I had to do just that at the belt on the right side. Unfortunately i don't have any of the GW orange wash (only the old ink, which isn't right for this). I asked in another thread if anyone had done this sort of washing over metallics for orange but apparently no one had, and google searches were similarly low on results. Not many people try metallic oranges, and like I mentioned, the Vajello paint is more of a candy car color.

I could simply skip the underpainting as it had little effect, then it's 3 airbrush coats (grey primer, Reaper Orange Brown, Reaper Coppery Orange) and some washes, which I don't consider onerous. I'm hoping to make the underpainting more effective, probably by painting off the base do I can spray directly from beneath and maaaaaybe use purple instead of red from below.

Advice from experienced underpainters would be greatly appreciated.

Orange is just a great color altogether, i like a lot of the brighter and vibrant colors that don't always see much use.

He looks good, and i'm sorry i can't offer any advice, as i'm not a super experienced painter in any way.

Some Feugan Orange arrived in the mail, so I decided to fiddle with it. First, a good strong undershade and zenithal. I was going to try the wash with normal colors, not metallics, to see how things looked.



Quite happy with how the zenithal looked

Followed by a wash of Feugan Orange:



Apologies for the badly out of focus image. Feugan Orange is serious business, apparently. It did too much of a number on the zenithal for my tastes, so the volunteer is taking a bath in Super Clean to atone for his crimes. I think I'll stick to the metallic orange idea, and maybe try some undershade/zenithal with metallics rather than the undercoat. Gold from above, brass from below, something like that, then hit it with some watered down Feugan orange and see how it turns out.

if you left it without the wash of fuegan and just lined in dark brn to seperate armor plates etc etc, they would look AWESOME. i think youre on the right path. The first pic is 60% finished mini and you didnt need the wash. IMO.

Wicked colors by Createx does a metallic orange. They are an airbrush paint but I have been using their metallic/Pearl blue for my night lords and it works great with hairy brushes. I got mine at hobby lobby in the US so they shouldn't be hard to come by. You picked a tough color with orang, but they are looking really nice so far. You have a good eye.

 bebopdrums2424 wrote:
if you left it without the wash of fuegan and just lined in dark brn to seperate armor plates etc etc, they would look AWESOME. i think youre on the right path. The first pic is 60% finished mini and you didnt need the wash. IMO.

You're probably right, but I've never tried the orange wash before, and I wanted to see what it would do. However, I really like the idea of doing a metallic orange rather than 'regular' paints, and I think it'll be worth the effort of getting it right. We'll see once I get an orange wash over metallics if that pans out. I can always default to the first paint scheme, which I like a lot as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
Wicked colors by Createx does a metallic orange. They are an airbrush paint but I have been using their metallic/Pearl blue for my night lords and it works great with hairy brushes. I got mine at hobby lobby in the US so they shouldn't be hard to come by. You picked a tough color with orang, but they are looking really nice so far. You have a good eye.

Thank you, the pearl orange looks interesting, though it's a very candy color. I think Vajello has a similar paint. Hard to tell how it's going to look on the mini until I try it, though.

Edit: Neither Curry's, Sculpture Supply Canada or DeSerres are carrying it in Canada, and everybody that ships international wants an arm and a leg ($7 bottle of paint, $45 shipping, screw that). Michaels doesn't carry it either.

A bit more experimenting, and I think I've cracked it. I was having trouble choosing between zenithal color or metallics, so I decided to try both, by going lightly with the metallic paint from a good distance with the airbrush. This let me preserve some of the zenithal shading color while still getting some metallic effect.



Afterwards, a thinned down Feugan Orange wash (about 2:5 wash to water) to give it a bit more orange cast without overwhelming the highlights.



It's a bit tough to catch without the right photography, but I think this will end up being the best of both worlds.

again, i think the wash is unnecessary. It obscures all the nice gradients that the airbrush is giving you. Hand painting some lines in there will give you the depth you want and it will preserve the great colors you are getting with the airbrush. Its just looks orange with that wash on there. The metallic essence of ithe thing isnt being conveyed that well either, i think you should just go straight orange, or find a way to make orange metallic in another way. I dont mean to come off negative, more so, it just seems that youre searching for something and whats right in front of you looks fantastic!!!! Shoot i might even do an orange marine like this just to see where id take it...I love the orange and grey.

Well, the title does say "Fiddling with Metallic Orange and Underpainting" - yes, I'm experimenting. I'm trying to get a metallic orange effect that doesn't look like a copper - my first attempt was close, and the photography really isn't catching the gradient well. The gradient is actually the least important part IMO, but it's easy to add in while I'm in the process of airbrushing. I guess i'm kind of failing on the underpainting front, but I think I'm getting a killer orange.

Speaking of that, the latest iteration is done. I had to add a flesh wash because I didn't like how the color turned out under photography - so yeah, now we're up to 2 washes, but washes are easy. I cut out the wash on the black parts because I was just painting them back up anyways, and left out the metallic highlight. I may add it back in, I'm undecided.



Original miniature on the left, new miniature on the right - on a Sector Mechanicus base, since I figured KoG were fleet based. The base was done in metallics as well.



Went with brown fanny packs rather than metallic.

YESSS!!! I love the Knights of Gryphonne, one of my favourite Spess Mehren Chapters! I think that you're doing a great job with photographing the metallic orange. Really beautiful painting, keep up the excellent work. Man, you could probably add a few tiger stripe patterns in places

The metallic effect might possibly come out better in video? Just a thought, perhaps a quick YouTubes video might be good.

 Cosmic wrote:
YESSS!!! I love the Knights of Gryphonne, one of my favourite Spess Mehren Chapters! I think that you're doing a great job with photographing the metallic orange. Really beautiful painting, keep up the excellent work. Man, you could probably add a few tiger stripe patterns in places

Thanks. It's really hard to get a true color photograph, even with my lightbox. They're actually slightly less orange than the pictures would suggest.

I think, though, I'll go back to my original scheme. The latest try just doesn't have enough lustre and looks a bit dull compared to the original. Especially given that I've lost almost all of the color gradient from the underpainting. Feugan Orange isn't what I'd hoped it would be and it drowns out the metallic way too much, something that the flesh wash isn't doing. I should try varnishing the new model, a gloss coat might bring it back up.

As for tiger stripes, I don't think I'd like that. Maybe on vehicles to break up the large panels, I'll have to think on it.

I finished the last 2 models from the Easy to Build Primaris Marines.



Left end: Original trial miniature.
Middle two: 2nd paint trial with added Coppery Orange highlights and black washes on metals
Right end: 2nd paint trial without added highlights and washes.

All models have received a varnish of Vajello Polyurethane Gloss Varnish.



Back side of the latest two. I went green with the purity seals because it works much better with the orange than red does. I'll probably put a matte varnish on the face, fanny packs and purity seal scrolls to cut the shine on those.

I'm not a huge fan of unhelmeted marines, but fixing this model would have been a serious pain. The metallic black helmet doesn't show well in these photos but I think it will look great on a Chaplain - I may convert one of the DI models into a low-key Chaplain with mostly metallic black armor.

They look good to me, but my personal preference would be to see a more striking contrast wash/edge lining on the large areas of orange.

They all look ace! Keep up the awesome work. Out of all of them, the one on the far-right looks the coolest, but they certainly all tie together nicely. In regards to recess shading/edge highlighting, go with whatever you think looks best. To be honest, it's refreshing to see Marines painted as you have, and looking at the Salamanders in your gallery, you know what that's all about! It's just really nice to see someone paint Knights of Gryphonne, keep it up

Edit: Got left and right mixed up, rookie error

 ph34r wrote:
They look good to me, but my personal preference would be to see a more striking contrast wash/edge lining on the large areas of orange.

I tend to agree, but I tried a number of washes on some sacrificial regular marines and Agrax Earthshade was the only one that didn't look off or have little to no effect. Given how difficult covering up mistakes is (matching the color on corrections) I want something fault tolerant like washes, which you can mop up easily with a wet brush if you're quick.

Metallic Orange is proving trickier than I originally thought, but at least I'm having fun.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Cosmic wrote:
They all look ace! Keep up the awesome work. Out of all of them, the one on the far-right looks the coolest, but they certainly all tie together nicely. In regards to recess shading/edge highlighting, go with whatever you think looks best. To be honest, it's refreshing to see Marines painted as you have, and looking at the Salamanders in your gallery, you know what that's all about! It's just really nice to see someone paint Knights of Gryphonne, keep it up

Edit: Got left and right mixed up, rookie error

Before I started I spent some time googling KoG. There's not a lot of painted forces out there, but there are a few people who really love their orange marines.

Forging ahead! Seven more marines done to add to the EtB group.



All models have received a gloss coat, which makes them a bit hard to photograph, but whatever. I went back to the original paint scheme, though the difference is so small you can barely tell even up close. The EtB marines blend right in. I'm keeping those 3 leftover marines for spare parts when I do my Librarian/Chaplain/Apothecary conversions, because $45 CAD is silly for single character models.



Second Sargent, this time with helmet on. The gunmetal helmet stands out more from above, what with the backpack behind his head sort of blending it in. From practical perspective, this is actually a good thing for a marine in combat - hard to isolate that head for the enemy, but an obvious sign of rank. This is actually a very true-color photograph



And a shot from the rear.

Next up, probably some character models.

Some character models! First up, Gravis Captain:



This was my first time trying the whole crystalline power sword thing. I think I need to get some thinning medium, as water does too much to the paint for my liking. Still, this one turned out okay enough.

I painted the backpack, cloak, head and torso separately. A cloak that big is too hard to paint decently while being blocked by all those other elements.



After the gloss varnish, I added some matte varnish on the cloak and purity seals to cut the shine. My original thought was to go with a black cloak, but I'm glad I went with green. The cloak is Warpstone Glow, shaded with a green wash in the recesses only, then a mix of Warpstone Glow and Moot Green (50/50) to highlight the raised spots, then pure Moot Green to egdelight the cloak. The same colors were used on the power sword after a basecoat of dark green (Vajello Game Color Dark Green to be exact).

Then a Lieutenant:



The power sword was a lot less successful on this model. I tired correcting it a couple times but it wasn't getting any better, and I decided to not get too frustrated over it.



Here's the really bad side of the sword, though it's less obvious at other angles.

The Captain's sword certainly looks fantastic, and the Lieutenant's sword is great, too! The difference between the Captain and Lieutenant's swords isn't so noticeable, so good job!

The Captain's cloak is ace, beautiful blending!

Things are really coming along nicely, keep up the awesome work!

Thanks! I should mention that these were the first KoG miniatures that I didn't bother with the undershading. I went a little stronger with the Agrax Earthshade in the crevices and got basically the same results, so it's one extra step removed for basically no noticeable effect.

It's been quite a bit of fun messing around with metallic paints. I haven't really touched them since back when I did some Grey Knights (which were sold to a friend), ever since I mostly used simple MNM effects or just used metallics as accents. Primaris Marines are nice for this because they're fairly simple and un-ornamented, so they end up nice and shiny!

I love the colour scheme in general on these models! Only thing I will say is the latest batch seem very flat, with no definition to the orange. I know you say it’s not noticeable to you but it sticks out to me pretty big. The earlier models looked amazing in comparison.

 Joyous_Oblivion wrote:
I love the colour scheme in general on these models! Only thing I will say is the latest batch seem very flat, with no definition to the orange. I know you say it’s not noticeable to you but it sticks out to me pretty big. The earlier models looked amazing in comparison.

I blame my photography, mostly. Taking pictures of a single model under a lot of light flattens it out, while the group shots have a lot more shadow. Side by side, they look practically identical. The green robe, for example, looks very flat in the picture, but is much more three dimensional under normal light. Another thing is the Gravis armor has large areas without the underpad, which breaks up the orange on most of the other models. In hindsight, I maybe should have done some of the belly plates and shoulder guards in the gunmetal colors to break it up a bit. I'm running into this problem on the Contemptor Dread, though I'm hoping some decals will break it up a bit more.

Time for a Contemptor Dread!

Ok, it's not a primaris unit, but I had this nearly built and wanted to see how the color scheme worked on a larger unit.



Originally the chestplate was orange, but I ripped it off and stripped it, because it was just too much orange. Switching it to gunmetal worked out better, though I couldn't find any decals that I really liked for slapping on the mini. I'm tempted to make the lower legs in gunmetal to give it more balance, but I don't want to go over it again and again. At least it's not a big orange blob!

Note that this was painted at the same time as the character models without undershade.



The arms are magnetized so I can switch the loadout. The Contemptor seems a bit weak on weaponry, at least the plastic one.



And the back.

Trying to think of ways to get AoS gryph hounds into my army. The simplest solution is probably a Space Wolves Detachment as Fenrisian Wolves, possibly with a conversion of a Wolf Guard Battle Leader on 'thunderwolf' (gryph) to make an outrider detachment. Now, Space Wolves seem to lack the 'Successor Chapter' rules they give Blood Angels and Dark Angels, though I'm not sure how that affects these sorts of shenanigans.

The other option is as Kroot Hounds, which is faster and cheaper, but can't benefit from 'Adeptus Astartes' abilities and I need a Tau commander (or stand-in) to make it an Outrider Detachment, though a 'counts-as' Ethereal would help with Kroot Hound morale, maybe a Astra Militarium officer (gryph-master) ordering them along.

Any other ideas?

Moving along, first mini painted in 2018! An Inceptor Sergeant:



I find these models really tricky to paint. I broke it into subassemblies (jetpack, body, head) and put a pin in the back, but painting areas of the model is really hard, as many parts are rather hard to reach. In the future I might consider doing the arms as sub-assemblies as well, we'll see.

The Pop Goes the Monkey 3D printed badges go on the shoulder pads, but they don't particularly like it (not full contact).



I decided against OSL rockets, just on a simplicity basis. As for the base, I was finding it hard to find a good contact point on the Sector Mechanicus bases, so I went with a plain base painted to match the SectorM base's overall color.