Paint scheme advice

[*Furyou Miko]

So, I'm finally painting some of my army properly, and was wondering,

 

Do people think I should paint the gloves of my Troops to match the robes? I'm definitely leaving the Dominions with black gloves, matching their armour, but I had a thought of using the gloves to distinguish Celestians, Dominions, Retributors and Battle Sisters (Seraphim, obviously, are distinct enough on their own).

 

As a reminder, this is my general colour scheme;

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v205/KaguraHakubi/IK%20and%2040K/OrderoftheSacredTome.jpg

 

I'm thinking of doing Battle Sisters with blue gloves (to match the robes), Retributors with red gloves (like SM devastator red helmets) and Celestians with gold gloves.

[WAR]

I'd go with matching the robes not unit distinction

[oreaper84]

i find many of the glove to be material instead of hard armour in appearance, so i have painted the different because it looked kind of like floppy armour gloves. Just my personal preferance, never though about squad distinction though.....may have to steal that

[Grgobart]

Making Battle Sisters, Dominions and Retributors distinguishable from each other, doesn't make enough sense to me, to justify voluntarily sacrificing flexibility in future army reshuffling. The only thing I had considered before painting my models, was distinguishing all of the above mentioned against Celestians (and Seraphim, but as you said, they're distinguishable enough already), since they have different stat-lines.

 

 

Now for aesthetics

To my taste, the gloves on most of the models are too closely located to the sleeves to paint them the same colour. It might make the whole arm seem all red, without any sort of "balance" to all black legs.

(I hope you or anyone else reading this, can understand what I'm trying to say!?!)

If you want the cloth-colour to appear elsewhere on the model (for balancing-reasons or otherwise), I'd recommend the collar, the weapon-housing and/or the helmet's visor-plate (which would - if I may add - make the "eyes"(bright) stand out more (against dark surrounding)).

 

Red for your Retributors, runs the risk of standing out extremely with your colour scheme and in an odd way at that, I'm afraid. If you really need an extra colour for them, I'd recommend (like with the other squad colours) something you're already using on your models, e.g. whatever colour you're planning for the little bags and holsters on your models' belts.

 

Something also worth considering if you're distinguishing models, might be, not just limiting your chosen method to the gloves, but including some other parts of the models to share said method (e.g. painting the spheres on the sides of the backpack the same colour).

 

 

Finally, I want to mention the "Glove-exceptions". Just so you or anyone else may include them in your/their considerations. (e.g. your painting your Celestians' gloves gold and your chosen Superior model for them happens to have a Fleur de Lys on the glove. What colour do you paint that?)

 

- One of the five 'basic-bolter-sister-models without helmet'-variants and

   one of the two 'basic-bolter-sister-models with helmet'-variants have some kind of bracelets instead of the usual gloves.

- Many of the superior models have bracers 'instead of'/over the gloves.

- Sister models with heavy weapons have a 'very different' glove on their left hand.

[*Furyou Miko]

I said red because I was repainting a Martyred Lady immolator gunner and the red glove looked pretty striking (it was the last thing I painted). I'm doing the holsters and bags snakebite leather with silver (normal) or gold (superiors) fastenings. Leather gloves on heavy weapons... well, leather right gloves, anyway (the suspensor gauntlet should obviously be metallic) could work though.

 

It won't really sacrifice much flexibility, because at the moment I'm only painting 600 points (so my Dominions are just 4 meltaguns and a sister superior, heh) - also, since I choose to interpret the codex as saying that all special weapon troopers are Dominions, I can just mix the black-gloved Sisters in with the rest of the blue-gloves in BSS.

 

You make a good point about the odd accents. Ah, well, it was a thought anyway. >< I guess the obvious answer would be to put the braceletted Sisters in Dominion squads!

[*Furyou Miko]

lol, I was just painting a grenade sister as a Dominion Superior when I realised that the ejection ports on De-az bolters are all on the left of the gun... so a right-handed firer shooting from the hip (as most Sisters are) will always be bouncing the shell casings off their own chest... except that bolters are caseless, which means that it's the propellant backwash from the rocket round that hits them in the chest.

 

No wonder they need boob plate.

[CaptainHelion]

Finally, the boobplate makes sense!

[WarriorFish]

I'm not sure it's a good idea to paint the gloves the colour scheme is fine as it is, and I think the different colours on the gloves might look a little odd. That aside are you sure you want to add another stage to painting? That's going to be a lot of gloves to paint!

[Grgobart]

lol, I was just painting a grenade sister as a Dominion Superior when I realised that the ejection ports on De-az bolters are all on the left of the gun... so a right-handed firer shooting from the hip (as most Sisters are) will always be bouncing the shell casings off their own chest... except that bolters are caseless, which means that it's the propellant backwash from the rocket round that hits them in the chest.

 

No wonder they need boob plate.

 

Even weapons using caseless ammunition need a (preferably quick) way to remove non-starting rounds and since in that (hopefully rare) case the wielder needs to operate the charging handle, its not much of an issue where the ejection port is situated.

As for propellant backwash. The whole case of using a barrel is to make the most of the used propellant and NOT let any* of it escape until the projectile exits. Whether the projectile has further propulsion then, is another story.

 

*the only exception I could think of is gas-operated reloading, but that would be just a minor detail and not result in anything significant.

[Eddie Orlock]

I was gonna take a picture to protest that you've stolen my scheme for Our Lady of Perpetual Ammunition, but to my mild vexation the box that I thought was half full of Battle Sisters was actually half full of Space Marines. On the plus side, I now know where the Storm Angles first company concealed themselves.

 

At a first glance, to correct your deficientcies in reproducing my colour scheme, the 'I's need to be red, the wings and helmet crest bone. I thought that base colours other than black (or white) for the armour looked odd, especially in the absence of other painted on heraldry.

[*Furyou Miko]

... they're based off the Thousand Sons post-heresy colour scheme, Eddie. This has been known since I first came down to this forum.

[oreaper84]

_{Being that you are going for the sacred tome, have you considered doing one or more portions of fabric in an off white parchment-esc color and perhaps some black scribbling to reflect a written tome? just a silly thought might ofset the dark tone of the rest of the mini}

[*Furyou Miko]

Actually, I put purity seals on the actual models that use that colour scheme, so kinda. :)