Brother Christopher's Purple Marines Project

[Firedrake Cordova]

Just an FYI, the current line of Shade paints use Contrast Medium as their base (the older versions in the bigger 24ml pots used a different base). If you heavily thin a Contrast paint, it can make a good wash (Basilicanum Grey is a good candidate, thinned about ~7:1).

 

Also, some of the Contrast paints are rather flat, but heavily pigmented - Imperial Fist is a very flat yellow, that can be used to gain coverage, for example.

[space wolf]

On 10/14/2025 at 4:45 AM, Brother Christopher said:

You have my complete trust when it comes to colours: I'll go ahead with painting gold with more confidence. 

 

Also, thanks for the recommendation about contrast paints: I'm slowly dabbing into using them but don't have too much confidence yet. I think I'll go with the 'traditional' approach, i.e. regular metallic paints + washes.

Well thank you! Purple and gold is always a great combination. I agree with your assessment of contrast. I myself, primarily use them for tinting. I will "underpaint" a model, then put a contrast over it (sometimes you have to thin it...water is usually fine) and it gets me to where i want to go. Example, when i paint my leather, i use a light, almost purpleish brown. Then i take an off white and put scratches all over it. The color contrast here is unnaturally stark. Then i take some snakebite leather contrast out of the pot, and slosh it all over. Instant dark, worn leather. The contrast paint, ties everything together. Ive found contrasts are really most useful AS specialty paints as opposed to painting everything with them. Its possible to do, but you have to underpaint well, in order to do it.

 

Painting camo is hard, ive discovered the reason, is you have to intentionally paint a pattern, but make it look random...thats hard as our brains like order and symmatry (sp?). Ive found if you layer things on top of each other it works a bit better. So start out doing like a sharp angular geometic shape (like a pentagon where one corner has "caved inward") do that all over in one color. Then paint triangles in different places all over the model. Dont worry about what they cover, just space them out a bit. Then once dry, paint three dots (close together) that make a triangle shape and space them out like above. Instant urban camo. By just ignoring the previous layer youll create some natural overlap and chaos that will read correctly as camo. Hope that helps :)

Edited Wednesday at 04:28 PM by space wolf
Spelling

[Firedrake Cordova]

One of the other reasons for camo being difficult is that it's purpose is to break up the outline of the thing it's on, i.e. it will make your model less "readable".

 

Darren Latham, Duncan Rhodes and The Painting Coach have good tutorials which cover it.  

[Brother Christopher]

Thanks for the resources. I feel I have had some experience with some camo cloaks for my Firstborn Scouts. However, I decided that I wanted something else. This is what I've ended up with:

 

 

With the Phobos Captain model, I'd say that the cape needs some more work but I'd say it's almost done.

 

With the sniper, well, I'm not sure here. I will add more patterns on the cape, that's for sure.

 

While doing some research, I've noticed that it's fashionable to make a camo cloak activation effect on capes. However, I figured that I didn't want to go with the most popular, textured approach (it seems that painters apply the same material on the cloak as they use for the base). 

 

The idea for my cloaking was that the cape imitates what's in front of it. Hence the green bit: I thought that it'd be a cool idea to add more colour and I planned to place a green tuft in front of the Marine. For the grey, I wanted to do a gradient from the darker greys at the bottom (i.e. the ground) to lighter tones.

 

Yeah, but at this stage, I'm not convinced I like what I have right now, nor the direction this went. Regarding the grey parts of the 'cloaking' effect, I think it's okayish. The green bit, however, makes the thing a bit too landscape-y and - dare I say - childish or cartoony. I think I'll paint it over but I'll wait for the decision till the new day. I think I should perhaps be more blurry/distorted but I'm not sure about the direction at all.

[space wolf]

Honestly...i dont know what youre talking about. That looks great to me! The camo and the cloaking affect, realy work as far as im concerned.

[bloodhound23]

7 hours ago, Brother Christopher said:

Thanks for the resources. I feel I have had some experience with some camo cloaks for my Firstborn Scouts. However, I decided that I wanted something else. This is what I've ended up with:

 

 

With the Phobos Captain model, I'd say that the cape needs some more work but I'd say it's almost done.

 

With the sniper, well, I'm not sure here. I will add more patterns on the cape, that's for sure.

 

While doing some research, I've noticed that it's fashionable to make a camo cloak activation effect on capes. However, I figured that I didn't want to go with the most popular, textured approach (it seems that painters apply the same material on the cloak as they use for the base). 

 

The idea for my cloaking was that the cape imitates what's in front of it. Hence the green bit: I thought that it'd be a cool idea to add more colour and I planned to place a green tuft in front of the Marine. For the grey, I wanted to do a gradient from the darker greys at the bottom (i.e. the ground) to lighter tones.

 

Yeah, but at this stage, I'm not convinced I like what I have right now, nor the direction this went. Regarding the grey parts of the 'cloaking' effect, I think it's okayish. The green bit, however, makes the thing a bit too landscape-y and - dare I say - childish or cartoony. I think I'll paint it over but I'll wait for the decision till the new day. I think I should perhaps be more blurry/distorted but I'm not sure about the direction at all.

Looks amazing, respectfully you’re wrong.

[Firedrake Cordova]

The cloaks look great to me. 

 

Personally, I think the activation/deactivation effect is over-done by the community in general (I guess I always saw them more as a passive device like modern-day camouflage, rather than a Predator- or Crysis-style active suit), but yours are really nicely done.

[Brother Christopher]

Wow, thanks for the overwhelmingly positive feedback. I must've been tired yesterday  After a good night's sleep, what I pained has grown on me. I'll probably paint over some of the green part - I have a good feeling that it's the right way to go about it.

 

5 hours ago, Firedrake Cordova said:

Personally, I think the activation/deactivation effect is over-done by the community in general (I guess I always saw them more as a passive device like modern-day camouflage, rather than a Predator- or Crysis-style active suit), but yours are really nicely done.

 

I agree - I've always considered SM's camo cloaks to be basically what we have now. However, I wanted to try something new/exotic. With the extra background you provided, I'm particularly glad you like what I have.

 

I'll fundamentally keep it but will try to do some more work, while paying attention not to overdo it. I think that I will paint over the second activation point on the right side, though. 

[W.A.Rorie]

Gorgeous @Brother Christopher