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I've been out of the hobby for a few years and would love some painting advice.

I don't feel that the colors come across very well... but this is a fairly dark color scheme with a Vellejo GI Olive Green with a bold, but dark shade of red called unsurprisingly: Vellejo Red.

I've never had good luck highlighting red so in the past and would end up with a pink or orange highlight. To cheat I would darken the red's edges and then highlight back up to the base coat shade to essentially avoid a highlight.

In this case I think I need to actually highlight these edges. Should I use a dark yellow to mix with the red for the highlight? Perhaps use a different, but brighter shade of red for a edge line?

Any advise appreciated.

You could try bleached bone or even some of the lighter skin tones (elf flesh?). And the problem with pink highlights only appears when you highlight a big area. If you keep a lot of the base coat and fist highlight areas more reddish and less pinkish then even with pink highlights it will look red as the pink only takes up a little bit of space of the whole red area.

While you are painting it will look very pink (if you just add white for highlights) as you are looking at your working area constantly but when you see the whole miniature in context (with the other colors and not just focusing on the highlights) then the pink won't stand out and look more natural.

Of course if you highlight with pink and it looks too pink then you can always apply a few thin glazes of the base coat until the pink is weaker, although this will reduce the effect of your highlights too.

The problem is, you've chosen way to bright a shade of red as your main color (it's actually already pretty orange).

You don't really have anywhere to highlight up to at this point besides going to an orange or a pink shade.

So you could either start over again with a darker red, ink the current red to darken it up (I'd use a chestnut ink mixed with red ink for this) or I'd just suck it up and use an orangeish highlight (if you mix yellow with red you'll just get an orange shade, btw).

I know it looks bright in that over exposed image, but it's actually a pretty dark red. Similar to a Red Gore color.

Can you highlight Red Gore with a brighter red tone with good results with out going to pink or orange?

You should check out yakface's Winged Hive Tyrant thread. He's gone through a good amount of detail there on how to go about getting a very nice shade of red, similar to what it looks like you're going for. Just scroll and you shall be enlightened ^_^.

I would highlight that with a medium shade of orange. mix it 5 parts of the orange with 1 or 2 parts of your current color. that will keep it consistant with your color scheme and will also give a nice color contrast as well. I think yellow would be to drastic a change ...

Thanks for the link Gray Death.

At this point I could do a quick wash of a darkened red and highlight that up.

I'd really like this to be a simple fix that I can keep consistent in the army. I'll try some Blood red highlights with this Vallejo Red and see how it matches up.

I really appreciate the feedback.

These color schemes look very familiar....

It's a scheme based off of colors used by the British in the Africa towards the beginning of WW2.

Ok, honestly... I would use tentacle pink.

But there are lots of ways to go. Go ahead and highlight with either an orange or pink, then afterwards apply a Glaze over it.

To glaze, thin down an inkwash (use red, magenta or chestnut here) and apply it over the whole colored area.

So, if you are highlighting and your red has become too Orange or Pink, you can just add some thin inks to it and it should fix the problem.

brainwashed wrote:It's a scheme based off of colors used by the British in the Africa towards the beginning of WW2.

Actually I was thinking it looks like a scheme I've seen at the FLGS I go to and I'm trying to decide if it's the same one or not.

Your in Iowa?

Ask where he first saw the red and green Imperial Tau scheme.

I would use a mix of dark orange and the red you have for the first highlight, then a little more orange than red, then maybe some straight orange. Take a peak at my Sisters of Battle thread at a few cloaks, in particular the retributors at the end. I think they demonstrate the look nicely.

Wehrkind wrote:Take a peak at my Sisters of Battle thread at a few cloaks, in particular the retributors at the end. I think they demonstrate the look nicely.

How do I see your models? Is there a profile page?

EDIT:

Never mind I looked at your created thread and think I found them.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/207855.page

Nice looking army.

Do you have a 'how to' on the red cloaks? That is the tone I'm going for.