Highlingting Mephiston red?

[Token]

What colors are good for highlighting Mephiston red?

 

Please excuse grammar, spelling mistakes and such.

[dread05]

You can edge highlight with evil sunz scarlet and wild rider red but these colours combined with an agrax earthshade wash give an orange tint to the models which I dont really like. I drybrush kindleflame and shade with carraburg crimson which give a much darker tone to the models, close to how forgeworld paints their blood angels.

[Token]

Thanks, could another color be used instead of kindleflame? Maybe one that isnt a drybrush color?

 

Please excuse grammar, spelling mistakes and such.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Don’t use orange.

[Ekfud]

Not that I went that way... but starting blood angels again, I'd probably ditch the meph altogether:

https://www.themightybrush.com/tutorial/how-to-paint-blood-angels-part-i/

Luther's army looked ridiculously good. And probably even would have been faster than a couple of layer highlights. 

 

If you *do* stick to evil sunz & fire dragon highlights, keep them very small and/or wash with carroburg (or even winsor & newton red calligraphy ink) and you won't go far wrong. GW used to do an excellent red wash, but it's been out of production for several years now.  

[Xenith]

I base meph red, highliught evil suns, highlight that wild rider red. Extreme highlight of fire dragon red then ungor flesh, depending how I'm feeling.

That leads to this effect.

If you go heavy on the orange/salmo highlights, bloodletter red glaze over each plate will bring them all together to a smoother red tone. I personally like the brighter terracotta look.

GW red ink at the time gave a beautiful colour, but it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It was often blotchy, and pooled when used as a wash (which it should never have been), but also had a glossy finish, compared to the matt paints, making it hard to make an army look uniform.

If you want to recreate it, use a 50/50 mix of carroburg crimson and lahmian medium.

[dread05]

That sergeant with the powerfist is one of my favourite models of your collection :D

[Karhedron]

I highlight by drybrushing with Ryza Rust and then Hexos Palesun. This gives an orangeish tone which I then counter by washing Magenta Ink. GW used to make this some years ago but stopped when they introduced washes. Other companies make something that looks like the original magenta ink but I have not tried it myself yet. The result is a very strong, bright red that is quite striking on the battlefield although it is different to the darker shade that many people favour today. The highlights look brighter in real life than the photos below imply.

[Chronos1985]

If you like GW's box art, then it's Mephiston Red, (Shade Abaddon Black/Khorne Red/Lahmian Medium 1:1:2 Wash), Evil Suns, then Fire Dragon Bright. If you like Forgeworld's less pronounced red it's the same as above except use Wild Rider Red, instead of Fire Dragon Bright.

[Inquisitor Eisenhorn]

Red is, bar none, the hardest color to make look good on power armor.  It's worse than yellow, there, I said it.  

 

Red highlights are perceived as different colors more easily than others.   You can add white but then the highlights are "pink", or you can add yellow, but then they read as "orange".  When we paint blue, green, yellow armor, we tend to just process those colors' highlights as "light blue" or "light green". This is sort of arbitrary and a byproduct of our color naming conventions, but I think it has an impact on how we perceive color.  That means that you need to highlight with a much more careful and precise hand than other colors, because when the pink or orange stray too far from extreme edges, you negate the sense of "red".  That just doesn't seem to be the case with other colors.  This highlighting problem leads a lot of people to try to get away with not adding enough highlights, going for a more flat red "realistic" look, but most of the time that approach doesn't look good from more than about a forearm's length away, and doesn't photograph very well either.

 

The other pitfall is not enough shading.  I think having extremely hard shadows in the recesses of red armor is essential for preserving detail at a distance, because you can't rely on just highlighting for the reasons discussed above.

 

I don't actually think the exact paints/washes you use matter as much as simply attending to those issues.  I've used Coelia Greenshade in the crevices and that works pretty well, but lately I've been just using carrowburg crimson because it's easier, although it doesn't get the same dark shade in the grooves.  

 

Basically, there are no shortcuts, because you can't rely on dry brushing to the same extent that other colors because the shading and highlighting needs to look precise to read well at any distance.  

[Paladin777]

At the risk of going slightly off topic, I’d like to say that I prefer to start with khorne red, then wazdakka red, finishing with evil sunz scarlet completely eschewing Mephiston red. They are certainly differing levels on the dark-light scale, but I don’t think any of them have any ‘orange’ or ‘pink’ to them so they’re not going to clash. However, I’ll admit that this method is not going to give you a large amount of contrast if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s just textured enough for my taste whilst still being easy.

[Inquisitor Eisenhorn]

At the risk of going slightly off topic, I’d like to say that I prefer to start with khorne red, then wazdakka red, finishing with evil sunz scarlet completely eschewing Mephiston red. They are certainly differing levels on the dark-light scale, but I don’t think any of them have any ‘orange’ or ‘pink’ to them so they’re not going to clash. However, I’ll admit that this method is not going to give you a large amount of contrast if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s just textured enough for my taste whilst still being easy.

Khorne red has a lot more blue in it than Mephiston, so it is a pretty good base color for red armor because it makes getting the dark contrasting areas less work.

 

I start with Mephiston base spray, and then immediately HEAVILY cover the whole model with carrowburg crimson, like a ton, and then I do a "wet" dry brush of mephiston again over the majority of the flat spaces.  I then clean up and re-articulate any sunken parts with precise use of carrowburg that might have gotten hit by the dry brush. I then do the same thing with red sunz Scarlett.  I then do a light pink dry brush and clean up anything not on an extreme edge, then use bloodletter glaze to tie things together where they need it.  I then do a careful line highlight with a light pink, and again carefully make sure to modulate the highlights with bloodletter.   

 

I also think that dry/wet pigments for dirt and or battle damage works better on Red than other colors, and can really help to draw attention to the redness of the armor.

[Panzer]

Red highlights are perceived as different colors more easily than others.   You can add white but then the highlights are "pink", or you can add yellow, but then they read as "orange".  When we paint blue, green, yellow armor, we tend to just process those colors' highlights as "light blue" or "light green". This is sort of arbitrary and a byproduct of our color naming conventions, but I think it has an impact on how we perceive color.  

 

It's mainly due our eyes being able to see a smaller spectrum of different reds than different greens and such. That's an evolution thing. We needed to be able to differentiate between lots of different greens to know which plant is which (which also kept changing with the seasons) while red had only really one meaning in nature "danger!".

[Brother Crimson]

I must add that red is susceptible to colour change from light sources.

 

My marines have nice bright red under my white lamp at home but appear slightly orange-ish at my FLGS. This is because their lights are slightly more yellow and we then perceive the red as a bit more orange.

[Xenith]

At the risk of going slightly off topic, I’d like to say that I prefer to start with khorne red, then wazdakka red, finishing with evil sunz scarlet completely eschewing Mephiston red. They are certainly differing levels on the dark-light scale, but I don’t think any of them have any ‘orange’ or ‘pink’ to them so they’re not going to clash. However, I’ll admit that this method is not going to give you a large amount of contrast if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s just textured enough for my taste whilst still being easy.

 

That's good for a darker red - that's basically how I did my last Fleshtearer - I think it's also GW's standard FT formula

[Inquisitor Eisenhorn]

 

Red highlights are perceived as different colors more easily than others.   You can add white but then the highlights are "pink", or you can add yellow, but then they read as "orange".  When we paint blue, green, yellow armor, we tend to just process those colors' highlights as "light blue" or "light green". This is sort of arbitrary and a byproduct of our color naming conventions, but I think it has an impact on how we perceive color.  

 

It's mainly due our eyes being able to see a smaller spectrum of different reds than different greens and such. That's an evolution thing. We needed to be able to differentiate between lots of different greens to know which plant is which (which also kept changing with the seasons) while red had only really one meaning in nature "danger!".

 

Thank you for validating my years of struggling with red armor!