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Isuue 005

Painting Red

By PsychosisPC

I did all of these steps in about a half hour, including the picture taking. I paint armies in an assembly line approach, unlike how I would paint a one off or competition piece or hq or a centerpiece vehicle. The reason for the assembly line approach is simple, I don't need to write down paint formulas, because I am using a progressive color range. Usually I will paint dark to light, unless I am doing NMM where I will start with the mid range color then work out dark and light, but that can be another walk through.

On to the painting, well kind of. Take your white paint and primer and throw it away, we are painting armies, and generally speaking that means we are painting quicker, thus using the black primer to help us shade the miniature. Some things you want to have: Black Primer, Black Paint (Here I have Reaper's Master Series), a Flow Aid is also helpful (such as the Liquitex pictured), a bottle of mixed flow aid and water (1 part flowaid to 20 parts water) for thinning purposes.

The flowaid helps the paint flow better from the bristles of the brush. When I paint an army I will usually paint and entire squad in this approach each step by step. The other thing I will do is also use a retarder to slow the drying time of the paints, not really on the model, but actually in the reservoir of the pallette.

Now the reds:

Base Coat: GW Scorched Brown
Highlights: VMC Mahogany Brown, VMC Hull Red, GW Scab Red, VMC Red or GW Red Gore, VMC Carmine Red, and VMC Orange Red

We also need a test subject, which this old marine not part of the Hell Diver's just volunteered..
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Step 1: Base coating. I use a pallette with a semi deep reservoir in order to keep the paints from drying out as fast, a real must for painting armies. Here you see that I am using scorched brown at 2 parts paint to 1 part water/flowaid mix. The deal here is coverage, get nice coverage leave a touch of black visible in the deepest recesses. Note you don't need a Kolinsky Sable Winsor & Newton Series 7 Expensive brush to do this. I usually use an older brush or a round No. 2, like this No.1 that is all splayed out at the end.

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Step 2: This where the highlighting gets started. I am using Mahogany Brown in a 1 to 1 mix of paint to water/flowaid. I do this in a approximately 3 coats, working my way up in a contour map like method of layering the highest elements or most accessible by an overhead light source is what is getting hit here with MB. And yes I am still using that old worn out crappy brush.

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Step 3: Highlight some more, I changed up here and used Hull Red which is like a 50:50 mix of GW Scorched Brown and Scab Red. You could probably skip step two as I am going through this a test peice for the reds of my new army see what is working. Same thing happens here thin paint in about 2-3 coats.

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Step 4: Highlight some more, I move on progressively getting lighter, note no formulas of 2 parts this to 3 parts that. This is army painting, the most I will go is a 50:50 mix, especially with dark colors its much easier that way. Anyways Scab Red is next. Here is the downfall to GW paints, mine are drying up as usual with GW paint containers, I use a stirring stick to glob onto my pallette some paint and then dump a bit of my flowaid/water on it to get to what I think is a 1 to 1 mix. I check it on the pallette, I am looking for a translucent paint typically. Looks a bit thinner, ah well we go ahead. This is where I switched to a better brush, I am now using a No. 1 Synthetic. Again think about a hill or mountain on a contour map when laying down the paint.

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Step 5: This step is actually 5 and 6, I forgot to snap a photo of the real five. Here I first use 1 coat of red at a thinned 1:1 mix and then two coats of Carmine Red at a 1:1 mix.

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In the last step for edges or a sparkle I will use a 50:50 mix of Carmine Red to Orange Red.

There you have it the reds that I will use, with a bit of tweak for the Hell Divers, feel free to ask me questions. There are no secrets here.

Some examples of what you can do with this if you spend more time blending:
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