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Hi all what do you think of my colours scheme. This is the first one I’ve done pretty happy with it, needs a bit more work in a few places and some touch ups but wondering if you’ve got any good ideas to make some things pop. The base is a bit basic, I’m going for a frosty land scape but not sure what to add

Hi @mrFickle

Looks good, one of the rare paintjobs that looks better close up than further away!

But with some minor work I think it would look a lot better, here's a few things that I noticed:

1) The base rim should be black. Muted brown rims work in some cases, but I can't see beyond black with this paint scheme. I've never seen a brightly coloured base rim look good.

2) There should be definition between the blades of the chainsaw and the casing/blade. This could be acheived with a basic black wash. Personally I think that the red should stop on the "blade", not be on some sections of the teeth. The way that you've painted it looks a bit messy, rather than intentional.

3) The OSL on the eyes is a good start (if it's intentional ), but it would look much better if you dotted the centre of the eye with a very light blue, or even white if you prefer. Most painters start off thinking that they will never have a steady enough hand to paint eyes, but it's not true, it's all about practice, practice, practice, and using the part of your painting hand or fingers to steady the hand against the painting handle to remove any shakiness. after you've done it a few times it becomes second nature.

When I started off in the hobby over 30 years ago I wish that somebody had told me this!

4) Not sure about the yellow indentations on the boltgun? I think that just shading the red would have looked better, which brings me to...

5) The red would look much better if it had more shading. Is this a contrast paint? Contrast excels when you add extra highlights and shades.

6) You missed the mold line on the head :(

7) Once you master drilling your gun barrels you will feel much satisfaction

8) I love the purple glow effect

I'm hoping that this comes across as constructive criticism, feel free to ignore

Thanks for the feedback, the chainsword definitely needs finishing, I feel like some yellow cross hatching might be the thing which is why I put the yellow in the bolster recesses to maybe go matchy matchy but I think your right, I might go for a ready brown.

I wasn’t going for a full on OSL on the lenses just a sort of illuminated lenses look. But I’ll take your advice under consideration.

Drill the barrels, I don’t know why I haven’t started doing this

It’s not a contrast red, it’s hellfire red by green stuff world. Where would you put the shading? I was thinking of adding some orange near the edges

Personally I start red with a basecoat of P3 Sanguine base. It's a dark, browny, red that is a perfect basecoat or shade for red. The closest Citadel color is maybe Gal Vorbak red, it's hard to say because I'm away from my paints at the moment.

Then I just build up the red with thin coats of lighter reds, the areas where I want more shade I just apply less thin layers to. I use mediums to thin the paint layers as I find that I can control the thin paint much better than if I had just used water to thin.

You can do it in a zenithal fashion if you like, with an imaginary light illuminating the model from above. Don't stress about the science of it, just do less shading wherever it seems appropriate to you.

It's the same method that I use to paint cloaks, if you make the layers thin enough the transition from dark red to light red is super smooth.

Everybody is different, but there were two instances in the past where my painting went to another level: firstly when younger me learnt about washes, and secondly when I started thinning with mediums instead of water.