Red is a pain to work with, everyone knows it. Transparent, lousy coverage, generally hard to make it look the way you want. I generally use a warm primary (GW Blood Red) for most red things, but for the Fourth Doctor's burgundy-ish jacket I chose a cooler crimson. I used this random Mage Knight mini as a test piece to try and work out the troublesome red highlighting issue, and hopefully learn something:
Left side: Games Workshop Crimson Gore/Scorched Brown base coat, shaded with Scorched Brown, highlighted up with mixtures of C.G/yellow. A very warm result.
Center: Games Workshop Crimson Gore/Scorched Brown base coat, shaded with Scorched Brown, highlighted up with mixtures of C.G/white. This gave me the pink highlights that people tend to try and avoid.
Right side: Games Workshop Crimson Gore/Scorched Brown base coat, shaded with Scorched Brown, highlighted up with mixtures of C.G/Bleached Bone. The result is slightly less pink than mixing with white.
I'm not sure either look is particularly satisfying, but as always, this is a learning experience. And... this isn't for the Golden Demons or anything. I just want my growing Doctor collection to look pretty good :)
Ah, the joys of painting that dreadful color... the most annoying result is when it turns to pink but TBH both results (yours) are pleasing to the eye.
ReplyDeleteYou can try to knock back the reds with washes/inks or maybe just make flat red (vallejo) your lightest shade of red,starting from almost pure black to burnt cadmiun red then crimson,etc.
Nice to see you managed to paint stuff while being so busy with your parenthood.
It makes me feel like a filthy lazy bastitch.
Cheers ;)