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So some of you may have been familiar with my previous project of making a full royal court for only $66. Well I wanted a really unique necron army and decided that I've seen a lot of necron armies and built a list that was somewhat unique though rather gimicky and fun rather than competitive.
Anyway so here's a link to the royal court project if you missed it http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/416240.page but this thread is about my painting them and I could use some help!

Now I've seen a lot of green necrons, I've seen a lot of gold necrons and I've seen an assload of silver necrons. Actually I've even seen pink necrons too, so doing something unique might be a challenge. I went down to my local hobby shop and looked at what they had; originally I had wanted to go with a purple but thought that was too similar to my old hawk lords. And then I thought about pink necrons but couldn't bring myself to do it after the flowerpot and anime chic necrons... So I ended up grabbing a magenta and still wanting them to be metalic I grabbed a gold, mixed the two and sprayed them over my army.
Here's what I have so far.




sorry if they're a little blurry but I think they have a nice feel to them. But here's where I need help, I'm not sure what color to make the joints, weapons and eyes; and whether or not I should accent the main color with like... gold shoulder pads or something. Any suggestions?

You definitely need more colours on there to break up the metalic one. atm they are just metal statues from what I can see.

Try looking at ancient egypt, I KNOW, it's a bit obvious, but you can get many ideas from that era.

It's a good start... interesting color. Where do you think you're going from this base?

Well, its a start. It is an interesting color, but very flat right now. It doesn't seem like you have finished deciding what this material is and how it acts.

So what is this material to you? Metal, ceramic, something alien? Does it rust or patina? How are you going to weather them, and why? Oil, dust, rust? How are you going to highlight them?

What is their base color? How are you going to highlight?

tautemplar wrote:But here's where I need help, I'm not sure what color to make the joints, weapons and eyes; and whether or not I should accent the main color with like... gold shoulder pads or something. Any suggestions?

Joints / In General: I'd add a wash, maybe Leviathan Purple, then another coat of your base color as a highlight to add some depth and let the joints alone, personally. You have a very busy base color, adding too much might take it over the top. If you're spraying with an airbrush, try zenithal airbrushing - spray your wash from the bottom of the mini to shade (spraying a wash takes a few coats - let them dry too! Hair Dryer's are great at expediting this!) then just spray your base color from the top, letting the spray do your highlighting... There's a great article in the Dakka tutorials explaining this technique in great detail. Wouldn't be too labor intensive and produce some great results.

Eyes & "weapons": I'll assume "weapons" means the rods / glowing effect of the guns. With that assumption made, I'd paint the eyes and "weapons" the same color, whatever you land on. A very unique option I haven't seen before would be white. Not gonna lie... white would be tough. You'd probably need to spray it starting with a grey base and taping off all your weapons (leave the rods out and glue one side to a sprue to paint them all at once without taping the barrel of your guns). I think it'd look pretty slick...

Image edited without your permission as an example:


Good luck, they look good so far... keep it up!

Edit: Removed ramblings about an accent color and philosophy...

hey guys thank you very much for your advice! I really like the white idea for the rods and eyes! Any suggestions on how to paint the rods to make them look spiffy? And for the eyes, I noticed in the codex example pictures they would kinda do a green glow effect around the eye sockets, any idea how they did that?

Uh lets see so one of you asked what I had in mind so far and its kind of hard to say because I havent tried anything out yet, but I'm definitely thinking the runes should be done in gold as well as any helmets. I'm also thinking that some boltgun metal (or mithril with a badab black wash) for the spines and "bone" areas. The capes I'm not quite sure about, though I'm thinking leaving them the same color as the base might not be such a good idea. I'm also debating what color to use for staves and warscythes, any ideas there?

the green glow is called object source lighting or OSL painting there are a plethora of guides on how to do this. most of them require a airbrush set up. but i.m sure its possible with a brush.

I'd definitely go for some turquoise in there as it would go well with the dark bronze colour, maybe to the runes in this colour or just do a slight glaze with it

I think these will look a lot better with some basing with grass and dirt. Adding the rods in will help too. I would have stuck with the green. Not sure how white is going to look next to such a dark metallic.

So just a quick update.
I decided to start with the warriors.

I highlighted the gun vents, eyes, and the "slightly open" part of the mouth with scorpion green.
For the shoulders, I've used a metalic dark blue to go with the dark magenta/gold mix, it looks pretty nice. I tried painting one of their guns the blue too (because a lot of necron players make the gun and shoulders the same color) but it didnt turn out too well so I've left them all the magenta for now. I kept the rods green too.
I also used the dark blue on the chest part between the ribcages and did the glyph in burnished gold.
After that I washed the whole figure in leviathan purple wash. It's looking pretty good so far! I'll post the pics tomorrow when I have some more daylight.

I left the gun rod in too so you could see what it looks like in there. I also did a temporary painting of the base calthan brown so it wasnt all shiny for you. But uh for the joint areas I just simply used boltgun metal, I think its a nice compliment and breaks up the magenta so it's not all magenta but still leaves a nice metallic feel. I think the blue goes nicely as well. Any suggestions for what else to do for the gun?

So it's been awhile since my last update, I'm really trying to get atleast 1250 pts painted by the 24th of this month and after getting the paint I needed in I couldn't wait to give my warriors who didnt get a second coat before a second coat.... only, when I got up and looked at my hobby table the next morning after spraying them I gave out a gasp of horror at what I found....



As you can see instead of being all dark and sexy like the old ones on the right I now have about 30 warrior that look like the one on the left... I honestly have no clue how this happened but I was pissed none-the-less. But I have to carry on atleast with the 1250 portion so I brainstormed about what to do... I mixed some pink in with tin bitz and although I didnt get the sexy rose color I atleast got something that somewhat matched as seen here.



I then remembered to my dismay that I had given my 3 monoliths a 2nd coat... and needless to say I wasnt pleased... sigh a setback on the road to glory. But I shant give up.

That happens with some spray-varnishes when the humidity is too high. Sorry mate.

I like the unusual look to your army. Pinkish tint to the metalics, very brave indeed.

I would agree with the need to add green energy glow too.

Ive subbed to your progress (im building a necron army too at the moment).

Keep up the great work.

Gitsplitta wrote:That happens with some spray-varnishes when the humidity is too high. Sorry mate.

You know that makes perfect friggin sense because we did have a freak snow storm this morning at around 2am, perhaps that's why, anyway that stuff is $12 a can but I guess I'm gonna have to get another.

brainscan wrote:I like the unusual look to your army. Pinkish tint to the metalics, very brave indeed.

I would agree with the need to add green energy glow too.

Ive subbed to your progress (im building a necron army too at the moment).

Keep up the great work.

I LUV the pink tint, I feel it gives my army some personality that is lacking in a lot of necron armies. Anyway I'll try to have a picture of one of the monoliths (miraculously 1 of the 3 didnt get faded so I'm painting it now) by tomorrow. I'm also going to the hobby store to pick up some basing materials to make the bases stand out.
Should I go with desert, city, snow or something else?

*spoiler*
Beware the Yngir Pi'nkrethalar the Pinkbringer, for of all the Yngir, he is the most deadly and cunning of all; and where he treads only pink follows.
-eldrad ulthran

So here's yet another update, I've almost finished a squad of 10 warriors and I really like the progress. Here's a closer up image of one of the models



Other than some shading and touch-up work (to make up for my unstable hand lol) they're somewhat done.
The only real conundrum I'm having is what to do with the gun. I'm not sure I really want to leave it that color, and I'm not sure what color to make the "bayonet" part of it. I think I'm gonna leave the rod as is though cause I like the green. So I'll ask you guys, what do you think I should do with the guns to match the green of the rod and eyes and the metallic rose of the armor? How do you like the boltgun metal that I've used to break up the armor sections?

Here's another picture of the whole squad with lightning that might be more similar to a game store's.



Let me know what you think, or if you have any critique/advice! Thanks guys!


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And here's one of the monoliths I've been working on...



And under natural light...




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So I just realized that I should have put this post in the p&m blog section. So sorry, any chance I can get it moved there?

Just push the little triangle button with the exclamation point on it. That will alert the mod. Then you can "report yourself" and ask for the blog to be moved.

Sweet colours! That was one of the problems I had in choosing a color scheme, it had to be one not many people had already done (went with black metal with other highlights). It certainly is a unique color, and you're doing pretty good with it so far.

Do you think the silver looks a little odd on the monolith though or does it look ok?