Recent projects

[Landlubber]

Been working on paint schemes for my RoF and Chinese Federation ships.  Finished a squadron of French cruisers in their new scheme, and 1 Chinese cruiser in my test scheme.  Interested to hear your thoughts.  I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out, although the Chinese color scheme is ruining my brushes.











On the French ship, I tried object source lighting for the first time--look at the metallic grille in front of the heat lance.  Not sure how well it turned out. I painted the heat lance itself using Ruckdog's tutorial from his French fleet.

With the Chinese ship, the goal was to make it look bright but also dirty.  To me, when I look at pictures of temples in China, the colors look almost...garish.  So I went for that theme with this ship.  Red symbolizes luck and good fortune to the Chinese, which is why I went with that color for the hull.  To get the "dirty" effect, I did most of the ink washing using GW's Devlan Mud--the hull, roof tiles, and deck all received very liberal coats. You can see some areas along the hull where splotches of the ink dried--that was the effect I wanted.  I only used black ink for the undercoat of the metallic areas.

As I look at the pics, I realize that I forgot to touch up some of the green on the Chinese cruiser, so please overlook that. Also, the lighting makes the roof tiles on the Chinese ship look much yellower than they are--the base color is GW's Tau Light Ochre.  The head-on picture looks truer to the actual color.

Comments and constructive criticisms welcome!

[MajorMcNicol]

I LOVE that CF scheme!  Very well done!  Be sure to post (lots) of pictures of the fleet when it's all painted up and together


I also like the source lightning effect from the Heat Lance.  I have never done source lightning myself in any significant way, but at least from this distance it is clear what it is!

[Andrewchristlieb]

I like the frenchy, your osl looks good for your first shot at it! I'm working on my Armageddon with engine glow, I'll put up a couple pictures shortly too. I feel that my directorate which are posted here came out a bit too all over with the glow while my Oroshan have a much more subdued glow (of course its hard to get a yellow glow on yellow hull to show  )! It certainly takes a bit of playing to get comfortable with it.

The Chinese is a bit harder to tell, it looks like a lot of metallics are washing out the pictures a bit (that would explain the brush destruction too). The red kind of makes it look like a bit of a floating McChina, I'm sure that's mostly due to the lighting though. The turquoise would also pop out a bit more with a bit of a ~blue-green wash to give it some depth then a quick dry brush of the turquoise color you have there. Actually being Chinese I would maybe go even a bit darker on that and hit it with a straight green wash then turquoise dry brush to give it a Jade like feel, but that's a preference not really a critique.

Something else that's really quick and easy but makes models really pop is highlighting the glass. You can see this in both of your ships with the windows. Check out these trucks:



You can see they pick one corner and drop a dot of white, then in the opposite corner you put about 1/3 to just a shade lighter then your base color and then just a line of a bright highlight, I usually just do white again but an even lighter shade of your original color is less harsh.

$.02

[Stephan]

The Chinese looks really nice.  That's some amazing detail work in those windows!  Can't wait to see them on the table.

[Landlubber]

@Stephan--thanks!  Those windows were a pain...

@Andrew--I think it's the lighting--there aren't that many metallics on the ship.  The brush destruction is actually a result of all the red.  The hull and superstructure are based in GW's Mephiston Red, then washed heavily in Devlan Mud, then drybrushed with GW's Blood Red.  That brush pretty much can't be used for anything else but red now.  But that's ok, it's a cheap brush. 

Duly noted on the wash, and that's not a bad idea.  I didn't put a wash over the green area.  And actually, that color is Jade Green, but it's hard to tell from the lighting.  I'll dig around and see what I can use for a wash for the green areas.

I like that effect for the windows, but the windows on this ship are WAY too small.  My interpretation of the windows on the Chinese ships is that they have a square sunken frame around them (the area I painted in Jade Green), then the actual round window behind/inside that frame.  But those windows are way too small for me to attempt that effect.

As for the overall color scheme, I had this in mind as I was painting:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wong_Tai_Sin_Temple_(Hong_Kong)

We visited this temple on a trip to Hong Kong last summer.  It is a riot of bright colors, as is a lot of Hong Kong.  While this may not be "traditional" Chinese (the temple is a bit of a tourist trap, but it is also a real, functioning Taoist temple), I thought the overall scheme would be good for a Chinese fleet.  Plus, it stands in HUGE contrast to my RoF (lots of light gray) and my FSA (lots of dark metallics).

Thanks for the feedback!

[Quickdraw]

To your credit, that Chinese ships looks like a great representation of the picture you were referencing. But I agree that a green wash could make it pop.
Also, tremendous work on that object source lighting. Impressed 

[Ruckdog]

I LOVE that CF scheme!  Very well done!  Be sure to post (lots) of pictures of the fleet when it's all painted up and together


I also like the source lightning effect from the Heat Lance.  I have never done source lightning myself in any significant way, but at least from this distance it is clear what it is!

Agreed! I think the Chinese ship looks pretty good as-is, but I'm curious to see what the results of the wash will be.

Your RoF ship came out pretty good too. I'm glad the tutorial was helfpul to you. BTW, what is the third color you are working into the scheme other than grey and blue? It looks almost greenish...

[MadDrB]

French ship looks very good, in my opinion.

And GW's Tau Light Ochre is one of my favorite colors right out of the pot!  I can't help but love your Chinese color scheme especially since you managed to slip some green in there.  Now I'm leaning even closer to picking up some Chinese ships.

[Landlubber]

Thanks for the kind words all.

Regarding the wash...so far, all my experience has been with ink washes, which come ready to apply for the most part.  The Jade Green is from the Master Paint series; I also have a couple of darker shades.  I guess I could thin one of those down and see if that would work as a wash, but that's a technique I've not yet tried.

@Ruckdog--the third color on the French ships is GW's Nurgling Green.  It's a sickly-looking color, but it was a light enough green to work for sea camouflage (as opposed to woodland camouflage, where it wouldn't be dark enough).  The other colors are Hoeth Blue and Administratum Gray, both from GW.

@MadDrB--thanks!  Plus, you can't have a Chinese ship without some jade, IMHO. From what little I've played them, they are a bit of a finesse fleet--unlike my brawler FSA.

Might try the wash this weekend, will post pics if I do.