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Since I have sold the majority of my sisters of battle painted in the bloody rose theme, I am lacking in a red army.

I am planning on painting my eldar in a Saim-Hann colour scheme but have decided to go with this bit instead of the bright red GW seems to have chosen for their Saim Hann. The only difference is that I am going for a black helmet with a bone face mask. White should be the tertiary colour as opposed to secondary in my opinion.

I havent painted reds this dark before, only in the brighter spectrum. So I need a bit of advice here.


Now my question is, what colors did GW use to achive this scheme for the armour? Scab red over black, highlighted with "whitened" red?

On that subject, how does one mix white with red so as not to get pink?

I used a triad of reds for my Cryx models. I think it was Blood Red, Deep red and Brick red
from the reaper master series.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&Mytoken=A542B75D-81DA-4000-B46CE159AC9930FE24238944

Scroll down and you'll see the effect.

Usually, when I'm painting dark reds, I paint a base coat of either a dark brown, or black with a bit of red in it, and highlight from there by adding more red into the mix. I guess you could do this easier by painting with scab red, and then applying a wash of either dark brown or red-black. Usually, i find adding white to the red to highlight will just make everything look pink, even more so than when painting lighter reds.

Would adding a small amount of yellow instead of white do the trick for you? I've done that with my Blood Angel army and had to a bit of experimenting to avoid getting orange, but after a while I got the mix right and I started getting brighter reds like that.

I am starting to paint my sisters of battle again, bloody rose. and what works for me is black undercoat, scab red, dry brush blood red, highlight with fiery orange. And then red wash. You keep a dark red colour, whit a armourlike shine.

Thats the problem though. I painted my sisters basically the same way and the red was BRIGHT. The only thing dark about it was the shading.

I guess I will have to try out everyones suggestions and do some more investigating on the net.

I agree with Malfred. Pick up the Reaper Master Series paints Blood triad (Red Brick, Deep Red and Blood Red).

Posted By Hellfury on 10/29/2006 11:03 AM

Now my question is, what colors did GW use to achive this scheme for the armour? Scab red over black, highlighted with "whitened" red?

On that subject, how does one mix white with red so as not to get pink?

I'll buck the trend here. From what it looks like, you'll want to base coat/prime the figure in black. With a 50/50 mix of scab red/black lay down the base color, then block coat (leaving everything but cracks & crevasses) in scab red. Blend or drybrush up to a 50/50 mix of scab red/red gore (whatever the next "lighter" red is).

For highlights, use tan/khaki mixed in with red instead of white, it will reduce the pinkness while providing a more neutral highlight. I'd use the same when highlilghting the helmet, as when combined with the bone face plate it will tie the entire figure together while still being three separate colors.

As far as what paints, I'm a Vallejo man myself and prefer both the Model and Game color lines. If you don't like mixing paint, the Model Color line definitely has enough different shades of color that you can get away with strictly using color from the bottle. If you go to Vallejo's webpage and click your way to the model color page they have an excellent color chart so you can figure out which colors are most likely to work.

I did a Tyranid warrior many moons ago with that kind of scheme, I basecoated with Chaos Black, and just kept drybrushing Scab Red over it. It ended up giving it a great patina, almost like hammered metal. I'm sure I couldn't reproduce it, but as long as you keep your paint thin, it should work.

The black helmet with white mask is a nice idea that I'm going to steal, thank you very much.