ETL Done, Journeyman Begun

All done.  Except for static grass, varnish, squad markings...

After a bit of a forced painting march my ETL vow is complete.  I stalled out for a while in the second half, but I rallied with a month and change to go which is a much better showing than I had for the LPC.  My finish wasn't especially strong on this squad.  I missed models multiple times while going along the assembly line, though I did mostly go back to finish the models off, and the overall quality of the squad isn't quite as high as the Dark Vengeance squad, but it's still fine quality and well above a tabletop standard (as defined by my Legion on the high end and my Axis on the very low borderline).  I'd like to put in a second vow but will wait and see how far beat down I am by the Journeyman painting grind before committing.

First step on the path to painting.

Speaking of Journeyman painting, I got a start on the Kayazy after a well-deserved break following the completion of the Dark Angels.  It's not much to look at, just roughing in colors to see how things will pan out, but it's a start.  The Kayazy models get hammered all around the internets.  After spending some time staring at them today I'm not sure they deserve the rough treatment.  The foppish crown hats are unfortunate, but the sculpts are fine overall and they have a definite "thick-necked mobster in a designer shirt" feel to them.  I have a good idea what paint will go where, except for the pants and boots.  My first impulse is for brown (leather) pants and black (leather) boots, but there are a ton of belt pouches that are likely to end up brown (leather) as well.  While I can do different shades of brown it's not an ideal solution.

Picture unrelated, but figured I'd use it.

On further reflection (just now) what I should do is make the pants fancy cloth to fit the "thug in Gucci" ideal from above.  The problem there is what color to go with.  While the Kayazy are in-faction mercs, and therefore ripe for a deviation from my 5th Border Legion palette, I want them to look like part of the army while also having some of their own flavor.  The plan for this was to invert the usual scheme, meaning red clothes and green cloaks, but that approach is what led to the pants problem.  Looking to my established palette shows: red, green (olive drab), black, white, green (neon), grey. brown, metals.  Basically red and green, which is no help at all.  I've used a bright blue in the past for Blood Angel purity seals (and targeting lenses on the Dark Angels) and it's worked great as a spot color for accents, but I have my doubts about it over larger areas.  Yellow is my next choice since I love yellow almost as much as I do red, but the concern there is going from Christmas tree to traffic light, plus I already have plans for yellow trim on the tunics and hats.  Ideally I'd consider Mercs as an army, potential future builds, possible color schemes, and then implement whatever I came up with on the Kayazy, but that's not going to happen quick enough to be of use here.  Plus all I really want to do with Mercs is run Ashlynn with Gun Mages to fight for Llael, a mission I doubt the Kayazy would sign up for.  Having a handle on color theory would be great, but that isn't an option either.  Instead I'll hope for thoughts from the peanut gallery that frequents this blog, plumb other resources, and hope for a lighting bolt of inspiration.  Maybe I could do a cream/bone sort of thing that would be enough like the white and blue/white grey already in my palette while still being different enough to stand out (a bit).