Shredders "finished," Kovnik Joe WIP #1

Finished?

A bit of housekeeping first.  For this post I've re-sized and cropped the pics in an effort to a) decrease upload size during this time of slow, slow internet b) make the page load faster for you, the reader, in said time of slow, slow internet c) cut out all the extraneous bits of the pictures d) save some storage space, not that it really matters but it never hurts to be frugal when you can.  If it's horrible or wonderful then let me know and I'll adjust (or not) accordingly.  This is also post # 2 of the new naming convention for painting update posts. 

This is the "dirty" one in my mind.

Today was more productive than I expected, though in retrospect I shouldn't be surprised.  As the title says, I finished up the Shredders today...at least for now.  Keeping with the spirit of experimentation I took two different routes to the same goal.  I started with the raised foot Shredder, who you might recall didn't get a basecoat on the chitin in the first session, and used a bit of the techniques for Live to CRUSH's Legion scheme (part two of the tutorial here) by basecoating in orange, and being less precise than usual while doing so.  The idea here is to leave some of the orange showing at the base of the chitin, between armor plates, in nooks and crannies, you get the idea.  From there painting followed the usual approach of layering, starting with a 50/50 VGC Scrofulous Brown (which is somewhat orange on its own) VGC Hot Orange, then another 50/50 of VGC Filthy Brown and VGC Firey Orange, then a final layer of Orange Fire.  There may have been another coat of 70/30 Orange Fire and Hot Orange in there as well.  The results weren't quite what I was hoping for as all the oranges blended together, visually at least, and just looked messy.  Thus the "dirty" label I attached to it.  To try and break up the orange hegemony I did a Devlan Mud wash on the orange areas which helped add a little separation and toned down the ORANGE effect, but I'm not 100% pleased with it.  The solution here may be to use a different color as the base, maybe a red or purple as suggested in the last post's comments, which would hopefully give some more definition between the various layers.

"Clean" Shredder.

The lowered foot Shredder finished the last session with a coat of VGC Leather Brown on the chitin.  With that as a base I applied the same steps as the "dirty" Shredder.  The results are much the same, though this Shredder (the "clean" one) is a bit oranger than the "dirty" one.  Then again, the "clean" one didn't get a Mud bath, so that could easily explain the difference.  Time is starting to run up on me here, and I still have another two pictures, so it's time to cut some of the chatter short.

See how the oranges run together on the left?

Overall I'm happy with how the Shredders turned out.  The blue skin/orange chitin combo looks good enough and was quick to paint, though that's probably due to only having two colors on the models (teeth and tongue excluded) and their simple design,  The brown base to orange highlight approach worked as I'd hoped it would with the end result being something that is obviously orange without slapping you in the face with a pumpkin.  The only big reservation I have is that the orange doesn't feel defined, especially on the "dirty" Shredder.  There isn't a neat progression of shading to highlighting, though I could probably push the highlights more to help with that.  The other problem it that I'm not sure how to approach applying this scheme to infantry.  Another color will have to go in to the mix.  Perhaps I can stick with a blue for the clothes/armor and just make it a very dark, almost black, sort of blue.  That's something I can ponder while bored at work tonight.

Got to get Tough?  Go Joe.

Speaking of work, I need to leave nowish, so no real explanation for Kovnik Joe here.  There isn't much to talk about though, just base colors and a wash, so it works out.