Two blog posts in two days is a first for a while but it’s a public holiday here so I’ve had some extra time with my new P3 paints and my SCE Underworld’s Warband. Yesterday I had some great fun with the blue paints (you can find that here). Today I checked out the P3 reds I had:
Actually, spoiler alert, I didn’t use the orange. Also, spoiler alert, I didn’t have as good a time with the reds as I had with the blues.
Planning for failure
I don’t have my airbrush or very many paints any more because they were stolen by an abusive ex-partner. So I’ve been limited in what I can achieve here. One of the things I haven’t been able to do is Zenithal highlights. Actually that’s kind of bullshit. I could have done the rattle can or drybrush thing but actually I followed the Ben Komets technique for NMM on these guys and he starts from a flat black surface. Either way, there was no zenithal and I feel like that hurt the red surfaces more than the blue surfaces.
The blue basecoat I used was much closer to the black undercoat than the red was so the red didn’t cover as well as the blue. In terms of blending this was still really good, the blends were really easy and in very small areas (like the edges of the front of the tabard) they only needed one pass to get a smooth enough blend.
Actually, on the tabards, they were quite tricky to get to and very small in places. That put some pressure on brush accuracy (I did make some slips that I’ll need to go back over) but much less pressure on the smoothness. The front of the tabards came out ok:
Real cloak and dagger stuff
The biggest area of red on these minis is the cloak on leader of the warband. When I first finished it I wasn’t happy with it. Now I am happy but I’m not satisfied with it. I followed my standard process:
- Get a smooth basecoat of a low / dark tone (this took four coats as the coverage was poorer than with the blue)
- Wet blend the basecoat and midtone to bring the highlights out. Repeat this twice more
- Wet blend the midtone and the highlight to bring out the brightest points. Repeat this twice more.
As with the blues, it was the highest tone that gave me the biggest issue. Again, the highest tone was the only point at which I used a non P3 paint – I mixed my mid tone with Screaming Skull from Citadel. Mixing red with white for highlights is a no go because it comes out pink. I could have mixed the red with an orange or yellow to make an orange but that would have been too warm. The rest of the model is very cold so I only wanted a mid warmth red as it would look warmer than it was in context anyway.
Anyway, the key issue up to this point was that the highest highlights weren’t very bright. That’s ok, this is cloth not NMM but it put some pressure on the shading to push the maximum contrast.
Next steps
That’s all the highlights and tones laid down, next comes my process for shading:
- I used the blue ink from Vallejo Game Ink to lay down the first shadow. I used blue instead of a brown or a black red because I didn’t want the cloak to look dirty (and I don’t add black to colours to shade with them usually because it looks shit). I repeated this once more (usually it would be twice but I was happy after two coats) focussing on the bottom of the shadow
- I switched to Vallejo Game Ink Violet (btw these inks are diluted 3:2 water to ink). This is a dark ink and really added to the shadows. I did two layers of this, increasingly focusing towards the deepest part of the shadows.
I wasn’t super happy with the effect. I felt like it had gone a bit flat – the shadows looked really lifeless and, despite my best efforts, the highlights were kind of pink and chalky. So I diluted some Vallejo Game Ink Red 3:1 water to ink so it was heavier than a filter but thinner than a glaze and applied a layer of that. That really helped bring the colours together and add some richness back in. This was the final result:
The dagger bit
I still had the blues left over on my palette from yesterday so just banged out the dagger before I cleaned my brushes. All of the things I liked about the blues yesterday held true and really made how difficult the reds were to use stand out even more. Overall for these paints I’m going to grab a few more P3 blues, they’re excellent, but I think I’ll grab some reds from Citadel; those are still the best reds I’ve ever used.
Next steps?
The next step is a brown leather effect on the belt, the leather flaps above the tabard and the weapon handles. Once the’re all done the minis are very nearly finished to TTS. I’ll just need to do the bits of NMM that need to wait until the leather is done (buckles and pommels etc) and pick up any small details (I think sword guy is wearing some kind of necklace.
Then I have sword guy’s face to paint which will be a whole thing in and of itself. Once I’ve got them to that point I think I’ll look at some freehands on shoulder pads and on the cloak before I do the bases. Actually there are still quite a few sessions / weeks before these guys are anywhere near finished but with the world quarantining it’s not like I can grab my ogres or AT stuff any time soon.
Comments always welcome.