Saturday, 21 April 2007

Safety Armour Anyone?

Well in line with a previous post about the subtlety of Tyranids, the patrol has been given its yellow safety armour. No Tyranid will ever get lost on the battlefield ever again. :)

This was quite a process. The armour areas were first undercoated with a couple of washes of GW Bleached Bone. The armour base colour of GW Golden Yellow was then also painted on in thick-ish washes. At least two were required, as well as some touch ups.

The key effect is the red effect. A thin wash of GW Scab Red was carefully washed over the armour section at a time and then carefully wiped off (with a Mark I finger) going with the "grain". Some touch ups were required at the plate edges that had to be feathered into the next plate. Some wash was also required in a few places to repair overly enthusiastic wiping.

The area was carefully dry brushed with Golden Yellow to soften the effect and a really scruffy horsehair brush was used to but back some red streaks.

Included since the last stage is a black wash "knock-back" of the skin colour. Despite appearances it was a little lurid. The wash eased it back in intensity and as as result they look a lot less painted.

The claws, blades, hooves and guns were all recoated with black. I used a craft paint that has a satin finish, which enhanced the claws and blades. They were also highlighted with some light grey to fake up a glossy highlight.

Next is skin detail, head details and the guns.

Note with these photos (and the previous set) the colour reproduction isn't perfect. The colours are in real life a less saturated. I exposed these at -2/3 stop to compensate for the camera. I think I really need and incident light meter to do this well. Anyone? :) Still learning plenty about practical macro photography. Next time I'll include a photo of the "studio".