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Made in us
Crazed Savage Orc



Duluth

So, i'm running a Carcharadon's 40k list and i painted up my first dude aaaaaaaaaaaaaand i mean it looks....good? But i think i need a darker more....stick outy gray? Like a dark smooth gray, I kind of just made my dude look like a slightly darker version of the sprue and it just looks BAD - like its a good paintjob, but it just looks like i painted the sprue-sprue colored. Anyone got tips or ideas on what to do here? I thought about maybe painting them like orange/black and sticking away from the gray, but i'm working off a picture i found online (hopefully i can post it or something) to give you an idea of what i'm kinda aiming for.

https://preview.redd.it/bpk05tfd1gn41.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=12327d8699b82e7b6e66c4cee87cf3d3ac91bbc6
 Filename marine.webp [Disk] Download
 Description
 File size 114 Kbytes

   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Yeah, you're going to run into that problem any time you do something overall grey; it looks like you just failed to paint the mini. I avoid overall greys like the plague.

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Huge Bone Giant






My solution to the grey plastic look is depth. Not exactly the same size as a Marine, but my AT-ST should illustrate the idea:



Whether you want to go with a stylized pattern, weathering or zenithal highlighting, I'd make sure to have a range of greys on the same areas. Not just darker recesses, but actual variation on your grey surfaces. Bare plastic is pretty uniform. In my opinion a grey paintjob needs to break up that uniformity.

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Made in gb
Thane of Dol Guldur





Bodt

You can achieve interesting Greys, but you're going to need to be willing to put a bit of work in and mix paints. I use the simple method of blacks and white for my Grey's, but mix in colours to suit. I like to use deck tan to create general Grey's with a little depth, but blues, yellows, reds and greens all alter the tones in different ways. A bit of experimentation would be required to figure out what worked best.

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Fully-charged Electropriest






Here are some videos that may help:








   
Made in ca
Regular Dakkanaut





Oh Canada!

Best way to make grey look interesting is to use warm or cool greys instead of neutral for the shadows and highlights. If your armor edging is gold, I'd go with cool greys (blue-ish or cold purple-ish tinted) for the best contrast. Adding texture or battle damage can also help.

The key is adding just a *little* colour to the greys, so they still read as grey to the eye, but are more than just flat neutral monochrome.
   
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Stealthy Space Wolves Scout





Folkvang

Fire_Forever wrote:
Best way to make grey look interesting is to use warm or cool greys instead of neutral for the shadows and highlights. If your armor edging is gold, I'd go with cool greys (blue-ish or cold purple-ish tinted) for the best contrast. Adding texture or battle damage can also help.

The key is adding just a *little* colour to the greys, so they still read as grey to the eye, but are more than just flat neutral monochrome.


This ^

If you don't understand what he means by warm and cold greys, check out Marco Frisonis color theory videos on YouTube. He says it way better than I ever could.

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start with a lighter grey and then a thinned black wash (nun-oil/strong tone) followed by a thinned blue or purple wash..Drybrush and highlight..depth galore

Another thought is do it up as a non-metallic metal style

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/20 17:56:05


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Ancient Venerable Dreadnought




San Jose, CA

Tamiya neutral gray(xf-53) is a really nice finish to it(like all tamiya xf paints) and takes shade, tone, filter etc's very well.
   
 
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