Sentinels of Terra purple aquila

[organ splinter]

So im looking through SoT and the aquila on the chest plate on a fair few of the minis are pruple.

Does anyone know what GW used to paint them like that?

Im not sure if they are just based in a white and washed purple or what.

 

thank you

[Brother_Marius]

Bumping for interest. Did you find it out yourself, by any chance? 

[Lucien Eilam]

Purple is complementary with yellow. They look good together. Doubt there's anything more to it than that.

[Durus]

I'd think of it more as an off-red than purple, chosen because the color scheme would be red trim with red aquila and that would look a little too cartoony, if you go with an equally bright red on the chest. The red would dominate the yellow.

Due to the black lining the even the 2nd edition Marines' aquila was a little darker.

 

It's just so they don't look like Captain McDonald's personal strike force imo.

[Brother_Marius]

Guys, the question is not -why- their aquila is purple. It is how it is painted ;) 

 

Personally I guess it could be an undercoating of naggaroth night highlighed upwards with xereus purple and/or genestealer purple and then maybe some white.. but idk.

[recon0321]

Can you link the picture?

[Brother_Marius]

The purple aquila can actually be seen on pages 150 and 151 of the current Codex: Space Marines. Could anyone give a hint at which paints could possibly be used to paint them like that?

[Toxichobbit]

That't not purple, it's a red with a purple hue. Painting it purple will not give you the desired effect. I barely use Citadel paints, but if your looking for a purple-red colour I'll try my best to match to Citadel.

I think the colour on this cloak is fairly close to what your looking for?

The recipe I used for that was:

Basecoat of Sanguine Base.

Shade with Sanguine Base + Exile Blue.

Deeper shading with Sanguine Base + Exile Blue + small amount of Coal Black.

Highlight with Sanguine Highlight.

Edge highlight with Sanguine Highlight + Menoth White Base.

That's using P3 paints, rather than Citadel. Here's the P3 colour chart to give you some idea of the colours used.

If I was to try the recipe with Citadel, I'd probably swap the colours for the following:

Sanguine Base - Khorne Red with a bit of Screamer Pink mixed in.

Exile Blue - Kantor Blue, although any dark navy blue will do.

Coal Black - Dark Reaper. To be honest, on such a small area you could easily miss this stage which might be for the best as Coal Black is an odd colour and I have no idea how it'd match up to Dark Reaper.

Sanguine Highlight - Screamer Pink. Sanguine Highlight is nowhere near as pink as it looks on the colour chart.

Menoth White Base - Screaming Skull, or any dark cream colour.

Using the Citadel paints won't replicate the colour on the cloak exactly, but it should come close. To be honest, I wouldn't worry too much about exact colour matching, go for a dark red with a purple hue for the base, add a bit of the navy blue to shade and then highlight first with a dark purple-pink then add cream to that for the edge highlighting. Then just glaze with either purple (very thinned down Carroburg Crimson) or red (Bloodletter). Personally, I'd go for the red glaze as I think the chest eagles are a tad redder than the cloak above, but really it's something you'll have to judge when you get to that stage.

There are other ways you could do it with the Citadel paint range, probably using the Citadel system (base, layer, shade, glaze etc etc) but even when I do use Citadel paints I ignore their system as it's too restrictive, so I'd just be guessing which colours to use.

If your going to buy paints specifically for this colour, then I'd strongly suggest just using the P3 recipe (I know it works plus the paints cost less for more paint) and glazing to adjust it to exactly how you'd like it.

Hope that helps .

[Brother_Marius]

Eh I dont mean to be rude but I dont feel like this would help me very much... way to many steps for me (I'm the kind of guy who paints his imperial fists by spraying them white and then applying a Cassandora Yellow wash, tadah, done!)

I was looking more for a three-step way, something like

1) Apply basecoat (looks to be purple, maybe some dark eldar-esque color?)

2) apply wash (wouldnt really look necesary so can be skipped)

3) apply highlights (looks like a light purple-pinkish color)

That doesnt seem to involve red or blue at all. Maybe you're just a much more capable painter than me, but your method seems terribly complicated to me... but I do appreciate your answer, sure sounds like an interesting way to get it done...

PS also I use only Citadel paints

[Toxichobbit]

That's ok, your not being rude. Not every technique suits every painter. That said, what I suggested is a very similar recipe to something you said you'd consider, just with an extra step of shading and and extra step of highlighting. The basic principle is the same, base coat, shade, highlight.

You can easily change most techniques to suit a level of painting that your comfortable with, either making them simpler or more complex as needed. Extra steps, be they shading, washes, highlights or glazes are usually just used to emphasise the shadows/brightness of colours or change the tint slightly, so they're often entirely optional. Just go with a version with less steps in if that's your preffered painting style.

For example, a base colour of a purple-red, wash of a dark red, then a highlight of puplish-pink. I listed the colours I thought would best match in the Citadel range in my above post, although like I said those were educated guesses so might not be an exact match to Sentinels of Terra. If I was to go with a three step technique, I'd try this:

Khorne Red or Wazdakka Red with a bit of Naggaroth Night mixed in to make it closer to purple*.

Optional wash of Bloodletter.

Highlight of Screamer Pink.

If I had the colours I'd try it out and be able to give you a better answer than just a guess, but unfortunately I don't so you might need a bit of trial and error to get the exact colour you want.

Regardless of how much shading and highlighting you put into it, I really think you still want a red base for the eagle, not a purple one. If you go for a Dark Eldar purple you'll end up with a pure purple chest eagle, closer in colour to Emperor's Children armour rather than the red-purple one in Sentinels of Terra (which I'm looking at as I post this for referance).

But whatever you choose to do, good luck and I hope it works out .

* I looked through the entire Citadel range and they simply don't have a nice purple-red/maroon anymore that you could use as a basecoat without mixing. It's one of the reasons I stopped using Citadel, their range is very limited to colours specific to their studio armies colour schemes.

[Brother_Marius]

Thank you I will just give it a try on some test models and see what works :)