Monday 5 August 2013

Project Regalia: A Colour Scheme Blueprint Part 4

Only a minor update as drying time is holding me up a fair bit (as is splitting focus with Command Squad Ecanus).

I am changing my plans as I'm just not happy with how things are looking - both for bone-coloured cloaks and for the tanks so far. To that end, my plans are now as follows:

Bone-Coloured Cloaks:
As I reported in my most recent blog post, I don't feel there's enough warmth in the cloaks' colour scheme at present. BuyPainted used two methods, one started with Med. Camo Brown and worked up through Khaki and Light Browns ending with Sand (Ivory); the other started with a Sand coat, then simply sprayed Sandy Brown into the recesses. I'm thinking that now my airbrushing skills have (vastly) improved, I may try the second method again on a test miniature - watch this space for updates.

Dark Green Tanks:
The reality is the current progress would deliver perfectly acceptable tank colour schemes. I'm just not happy with "acceptable", and would prefer to push myself a bit further. There's a guy called Nuclearsaur (sp?) on the interwebs with some simply stunning DA vehicle work I'd really like to attempt to emulate.

So, from here on in my two test tanks will diverge in terms of plan, as follows:

Tank 1 (Rhino):
- sprayed symbol by way of masking and airbrushing
- varnish coat
- oil-wash
- varnish coat
- weathering (via sponging a dark colour, and highlighting underneath)
- weathering powders
- pigment fixer
- varnish coat

Tank 2 (Predator):
- heavy wash in black oil paint to bring the current green tone right down to a dark green
- airbrush back up through Olive Green to a warm yellowy green
- varnish coat
- oil-wash
- varnish coat
- weathering (via sponging a dark colour, and highlighting underneath)
- weathering powders
- pigment fixer
- varnish coat

Experiment C: Dark Green Tanks
Day 2:
With the above plan in mind, and being scared to oil wash over wet paint, all I did with Tank 2 is put on a second dust coat of Olive Green to even it out a bit.

For Tank 1, I sprayed a second Olive Green coat, and then masked off and sprayed a white Dark Angels logo. Now, for the record, I picked the easiest Dark Angels logo I could find, not one I'd actually ever use (I hate the Dark Angle promo logo, but its easy as hell to mark and cut).

I cut the mask in masking tape (standard hardware store 24 hour painters tape), threw it on the Rhino and sprayed white.

Unfortunately I made two critical mistakes:
1) The tape quality is crap, so the edges bled. I've read that this can be prevented by buying better quality tape or spraying the original colour (green in my case) around the edges before spraying white. Apparently the latter technique means that if there's going to be any colour bleed, it'll be the original colour and won't be visible.
2) I put down the mask, then put more masking tape around it as a border, but still somehow managed to get overspray on some parts of the tank. I say somehow because I literally don't see how white speckles could end up on the front of the tank given the way I laid out the tape. Nevertheless it did, and I will ensure I mask better in the future.

Here's some pics:



Next Steps:
For "Tank 1" (I need better names!) I'll try fixing the white bleed with more green, but I'm not confident it'll be effective. Nor do I really care, that's why I'm using a test tank :) What I will do, however, is find another (smaller) logo and another place to spray it and perform the exercise again, using what I learnt, to ensure I have a known good method of achieving the technique. Then I'll go back to my plan stated above.

For "Tank 2", the next time I sit down I'll be tinting that puppy with oil - I'm excited to get into the new plan!

Closing Thoughts:
I enjoyed myself! I learnt some things, and while I was disappointing by the bleed and lack of progress, this is the whole point of Project Regalia, so I remain optimistic and enthused. More updates due this Thursday.

Until then, happy painting! :)

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