Monday, January 30, 2012

Painting Experiment: Ghost Knight Shoulder Pad

This is a test colour scheme for some Ghost Knights of Mordrak.  The shoulder pad is a standard grey knights terminator pad with no adornment or conversion work. 

To paint it, a base coat of skull white was used in order to give strength to the colours applied over it.  The edging was picked out in astronomican grey and a base coat of white applied to the other areas.  Three washes were applied: asurman blue, thraka green and then the blue once more.  Highlighting consisted of electric blue (inner edges of the pad and raised areas of the book), grey (outer edges of the pad) and white (lettering and skull / book detail). 

My initial evaluation is that I'm not sure its quite what I was after originally.  It feels a bit more statue-esque rather than ghostly.  But perhaps that is a result of just painting one part of the miniature rather than the entire miniature in one go?  Alternatively, it may be that the white undercoat simply got "lost" in one too many wash layers and the original "brightness" of the ghostly appearance got lost somewhat. But am I being too picky? 

4 comments:

Menzies Tank said...

Re: your last paragraph about painting only one part of the miniature, and 'losing' the undercoat, I would say all of the above!

I too had concerns when I painted my Ghost Knights, but from what I said in the tutorial I posted recently, while I went for the LoTr ghost colour scheme which was available on the GW website, I had concerns of ending up with monochrome, marble statues (which admittedly a lot of the 'examples' you can see when you seek out examples of Ghost Knights on google image).

Personally, I experimented with randomly highlighting in white some bits (e.g. runes and text on armour, fingers and hands to give a 'bony' halloween-style skeleton appearance, al the skull features, etc) and softly drybushing in white different portions of armour to get a 'spectral camouflage' effect, this is to capture a more otherworldly effect in the overall appearance.

Your gut feeling that you got after your initial evaluation is that 'it looks a little bit flat'. I think if you were to end up painting an entire model, with the same attention, care, and consistency in technique, your gut feeling will still be the same!

My advice: Do a few completed models in variour stages (one with just washes, one with blue highlights, one with blue and white, etc) and see what feels best.

Space Hulk Enthusiast said...

I think of it like this when I want something to "glow"... reverse your lights and darks.

Normally we highlight the upper edges and shade the recessed areas. When something glows, the opposite is true. The recessed areas are closer to the core of the item and they are brighter. The outer edges and bits are actually darker.

It can be very tough t pull off, but when you do, you know it instantly.

Ron, From the Warp

Elbrun said...

I have to agree with Ron, this is a perfect place to do reverse shading/highlighting. It can be tricky, but can end up looking very very good. I might suggest going less blue to white and maybe try a pale yellow to blue (or reverse of that), if for no other reason than it is something you don't see often and looks really nice on a 'ghostly' fig.

jabberjabber said...

Hi Guys,
Thanks for all the feedback! Much appreciated!

I'm going to give Ron's advice a go as soon as I get some time.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Facebook

Sequestered Industries