Superheavy tank color input

[grazer]

I've finally decided to paint up my old Armorcast Baneblade and Shadowsword, since I decided on a color scheme. As of right now, the primary paints are on, which are GW Necron Abyss Blue & Vallejo Luftwaffe Grey in a blobby camo patern, using P3 Frostbite to outline the camo pattern, and all the blacklining in GW Badab Black Wash. I've never painted tanks this size before, nor have I really worried about much detail on my Blood Angels company tanks as they are all basic tabletop standard, but since these are big models, I want them to stand out.

 

So, I'm looking for some advice on a few things.

1.) What color(s) should I use for details like kill markings, squad numbers, etc? Black doesn't seem like a good idea since the blue is so dark, and white isn't a good choice since I have the frostbite (blueish white) lining covering most of the vehicle.

2.) I have no idea how to go about making the colors have more depth. I'm assuming I should highlight the sharp edges, but do I do the blue and grey in different colors or do I highlight them both sparingly with white?

3.) Would drybrushing a lighter blue and grey over their respective sections add depth, or should I sparingly add lighter highlights near the edges of each camo blob as they approach the Frostbite outlines?

 

As you can tell, I'm not very well versed on painting vehicles, especially not when it comes to highlighting them, so I could really use some hints. I've read the GW articles on painting tanks and watched a few videos, but they primarily deal with painting the normal green & brown camo patterns.

 

Thanks in advance and as soon as I find my camera I'll get some pics up for better reference

[perfectionist]

Hi and first of all the best of luck with painting your super-heavy!

 

1. For the icons and company markers I would always use a color like black/white/red. In this case red sounds like a good candidate, since it will contrast nicely to both the dark blue and the blue/grey. If you want them to pop a little less, then I'd use a dark purpelish or slightly brownish red.

2. you might want to consider doing several highlighting steps on the bigger areas, working up from the basecolor in the center to the extreme highlight color on the edges. I would take caution with overdoing this though, since if you overdo it, bigger flat areas might start to look like they are sloped towards the centre.

3. the more highlights/shadows you paint, the more depth you'll create, however this might not be the desired effect (also see 2). I don't think there is anything wrong with flat areas looking flat. I'd say just hold the basecoated model under a lamp and see which areas are lighter, then paint these areas with some lighter paints of increased brightness and work towards the edges.

[Hemal]

Use techniques such as weathering on teh flat panels to show dirt/dust running down panels, which will break up the flatness of the panels - as stated, flat panels look flat quite often - look at a Challenger or Abrams - they look pretty boring unless they've gotten covered in dust/dirt or pollution rich rain!

I would NOT drybrush these sorts of models, apart from along extreme edges - use layering to hihlight the edges of panels and shade back, to unify the colour scheme between highlights. A few glazes would do wonders to alter the tint of flatter panels towards the centre if you want to get a bit of a contrast - e.g wash the lighter panels with a really light stain of asurmen blue, with a second thin layer towards the middle of teh panel.

[grazer]

I sort of like the large flat look of the armor plates, since it's the old armorcast one, there's not a lot of detail aside from the giant rivets, so I've washed around those with Badab Black and made some oil drips coming off of them. I think that I'll go over those again with Devlan Mud just to add more depth to the rivets, and then dry brush the tops to bring them back up to the same tone as the rest of the tank.

I'm not certain about doing extreme highlighting from the middle of the plates out. I've never really done it before, and I'm afraid that since the panels are a mix of different colors (blue, grey and blue-white in the camo pattern) that I won't get an even highlight out of it and it will just look muddled.

I think that I'm going to just do a 2-3 layer edge highlight on higher up portions of the tank, so the tops of the armor plates, fading out as they go down the sides, since light will mostly be hitting the top. Probably use Regal Blue and some generic light grey I have as the lightest colors.

As for the details, I do think that a brown-red will look nice, so I'll see about Mechrite Red with a Devlan Mud wash and then some a little Blood Red highlighting. Should really make the eagle and numbering look nice. A few more pics of the shadowsword are in my gallery, and I'll add the baneblade soon also.

Oh, and one more question, the wheels, should I do them in blue with steel wear and tear, or should they just be black brushed with boltgun metal with wear and tear? In the GW articles, they painted them green to match the tank, so I was thinking blue might look ok, but I'm not certain. Seems to me that they'd just be metal colored, but then they'd not be much different from the treads.

Thanks again!

[SquigBait]

Yellow would contrast well with that color scheme for markings. Other than that, weathering will reduce the flatness of it. The addition of purity seals and other details would really help with that as well.

[grazer]

I've decided on Mechrite Red with a Devlan Mud wash for the aquila on the front as it looks quite nice. I totally forgot about things like purity seals. I dug out a few bits, but I didn't want to mess up the smoothness of the general shape of the tank by adding anything too tall or angular, but purity seals will really help.

 

I've been doodling some banners that I may attempt to freehand onto it to further personalize it, but that'll be a while in the making as I'm not a great freehand painter at all.

[Hemal]

Generally Guard tanks have a banding on the front or rear flanks (look at White Dwarf for this month's article for useful info on kill markings) - this nading signifies the company. They also have campaign markings, and depending on which tank this is in teh copany (SH companies = 3 tanks) you would have an appropriate number of barrel stripes.

[grazer]

I'm not really wanting this to be a Guard tank. In my world, the Ad-Mech controls all of the superheavies and doesn't just hand them out willy nilly to every IG army out there :angry:

 

But some stripes and banners will make it much more characterful.

 

I've painted the bolter mounts Mechrite Red, as well as the Aquila, and I've done some light grey edge highlighting on all of the grey parts and it's really starting to come together. Still need to highlight the blue and paint all of the metallic bits up.

[Hemal]

Same applies to Skitarri /Tech Guard tanks as well...