Dr Strangebeast: or how I learned to stop worrying and love the blend

[Dracomax]

Now that I have your attention by titling the thread in an affectionate parody of a beloved Kubrik film, I'm going to show you pictures and talk at you. If you have advice, please share, but the purpose here is to explain how I screwed up the Nothing beast, and in the process figured out how to paint Miss Step better.

Perhaps my mistakes can help others. I'll also show off the nifty proxy leg I made for Miss step, and the massively overcomplicated base in progress, because, hey, why start a second thread to show off how proud I am over things that aren't all that impressive, right? (note: if Moderators feel this should be in the showcase forum instead, that's fine with me; I wasn't sure where to put it myself, but as I don't feel my painting is good enough to really showcase, I decided here was a bit better.)

As such, there will be pictures. I will spoiler them for your convenience, but they will be there. they are also not very good pictures. The only camera I have that can pick up the details at all is the one on My Kindle Fire, which has 2 important problems: I can't see what I am taking the picture of until after it has been taken, and I can't adjust the settings on the camera at all. So be aware that it's pretty close to acurate, but the colors are likely to be off a little bit. not enough to be a completely different color, but enough to notice.

and, with that prelude out of the way, onto the show.

So, because I am crazy, my initial idea was to paint the nothing Beast as if he was invisible, with only his edges showing where light ws annihilated, producing heat, and thus a red glow at said edges. When I realized that no amount of paint was goping to make a grey piece of plastic transparent, and that trying to pint sce3nery through him was both a horrible idea and impractical unless I was just making a show piece, I decided to make him black, with red on the edges, blue for the mess of stuff at the bottom, and green eyes(Red, blue and green being the primary colors of light).

TFor this to work, I needed to do more and better blending than I have ever done before. It would be at the very edge of my skills, a nearly unattainable goal. But, hey, challenge, right?(keep in mind, I've only been painting miniatures for about 3 years, off and on—Ramos was the second miniature I ever touched with paint.) also, keep in mind that I use brushes, as I do not have an airbrush.

So, there I am, with brushes, the model primed, and a mmixture of citedel and Reaper paints. How did I do? well, here are the pics of where it stood this morning:

Open Spoiler

As you can see(I hope) it was a mixed bag. the blue I used blended into the Chaos Black very well. The green did okay, but the eyes are very small. which brings me to the major problem. Blood red does not seem to blend well with chaos black. It makes this bronze looking color in between, and I must have added dozens of coats of both black and red to hit that point. It looks nice, but utterly fails at what I was trying to do, with the red either being completely understated, or not blended at all. It looks metallic, as if the Beast is made of some sort of Copper or Bronze.For further evidence, see the Void Wretches. Blue works. Green works. Red fails.

Open Spoiler

Of course! I can use it on the various basing elements of Miss step! I thought.

So, here are the promised pics of miss step:

Open Spoiler

I've started painting the first layers of black and red:

Here's the leg, as promised:

. I can explain what materials I used/how I constructed the base if anyone wants to know. and MythicFox's basing post will help on painting it, at least. I will say that I tend to reallly like corrosion and oxidation on metals, and since this isn't exactly NMM anyway, I would bet it works well adding them together.(Reaper Jade+Reaper brilliant blue+copper oxidation that looks really nice.)

I eventually found a different red a black, and honestly think it works a lot better, but I don't have pics of that yet.

So, any advice? any tricks to make red blend better with black, for that matter?

[Ausplosions]

Use a red ageing or weathering pigment.

[Dracomax]

@ Ausplosions: Okay, I've looked, and I'm still unsure what you mean by aging or weathering pigment. DO you mean rust reds? or something else? is there a product I can look at? I appreciate the help, and while the model you posted isn't really doing what I want, I can see where the blend it shows would help with that, but I just don't really know how to implement your advice.

That being said, switching to another, less orange and darker red has made the blends look a lot better, with the worn metal/bronze fading quite a bit(at the expense of yet more coats of paint). However, it works at the cost of being less bright. Is this a case where I should be using one of the reds as a mid tone, and the other as a highlight/source?(I'll post pictures later, when I can get them to a computer)

[Ausplosions]

http://www.back2base-ix.com/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=73

That sort of thing.

I basically painted it blue

Then I put a very small amount on a dry brush and brushed it over the blue doing more and more layers were I wanted it brighter red, and less as I wanted to fade it into the blue.

I imaging it would work the same for a black base.

This stuff is VERY heavily pigmented. So a tiny bit leaves a very rich and bright colour.

[Dracomax]

http://www.back2base-ix.com/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=73

That sort of thing.

I basically painted it blue

Then I put a very small amount on a dry brush and brushed it over the blue doing more and more layers were I wanted it brighter red, and less as I wanted to fade it into the blue.

I imaging it would work the same for a black base.

This stuff is VERY heavily pigmented. So a tiny bit leaves a very rich and bright colour.

Okay, I think I'm on the same page as you now. I'll definitely look into it! Thanks!

[Wings]

One thing you can try with reds (that I'm only just starting to do or manage) is use the darker reds as the base and highlight up to a horrible over the top orange/pink colour. Then glaze the darker red over it - you end up with nice progression and it actually looks red.