Praetor WIP 3

The armor was a bit of a challenge on this guy.  While I feel pretty confident painting white, I'm still very apprehensive when it comes to painting black.  As with white I want to stay way from the neutral black and grey mix.  I've done some brown-blacks but this time around I wanted to do more of a blue-black.  I guess the standard approach would be to start with a black, mix in some dark blue (like a Prussian blue), and then use some skin tones to create the highlights.  However I took a bit of inspiration from the Sons of Horus and picked a sea green shade instead of a dark blue.  From the Reaper line the paints I choose were black, marine teal, and tanned skin.

Of course I don't use pure marine teal or tanned skin.  I work from pure black to about a 3 parts black to 1 part teal.  Enough so you clearly can see the difference from pure black, but not too light.  More of a dark to medium grey.  I then take the black/teal mix and start to add tanned skin.  Depending on how light you want it maybe you get to 2 parts black/teal to one part skin.  These are just rough estimates.  Mix in a little bit at a time and see how it goes.

The idea for the brown black is the same, you just switch out a dark brown for the blue/teal.

The shoulder armor is done in read to match the Justaerin color scheme.  I like to go with a bit of a purple tone in the shadows, so I started with burgundy wine and then violet red before I got into one of the brighter red shades.  The red leather strips still need a lot of work but I think the little bit of color there helps.

Praetor WIP 2

Okay, on to the body.  I was trying to avoid doing the black armor since black can be a tricky color to paint.  So I started with the gold sections since lately I've been having fun with metallics.

(The head is just sitting there to see how it all looks together)

I've found a mix I like for yellow metal (gold and bronze).  I start with Reaper Master Series Old Bronze and mix in a lot of pure black.  The mix should look almost black but under the light you'll see the metallic paint reflect a bit.  This gives you some nice dull shadows in the recesses.  From there I work up in several layers to pure Old Bronze.  This is my midtone, but I apply it more like a highlight (in very limited areas).  Up to this point you can get away with any brand of black and bronze paint, but the next step works so much better if you use Vallejo Model Air gold.  This is a very odd gold shade, but it works wonderfully as a yellow metal highlight.  Since it's designed to work through an airbrush it's amazing smooth and flows so nicely off the brush.  Other metallics (especially the GW ones) often feel chunky, like painting with paste.  This stuff is as smooth as any nonmetallic paint I've used.  As before I start to slowly mix in the VMA gold into the Old Bronze and take care of those top highlights and edge highlights.

When I place my metal highlights and shadows I look at non-metallic metal work for direction.  Although the metallic paint with naturally catch and reflect the light, you really want to exercise some control over it and force it to only shine in the areas you want.  That's one of the reasons you use flat black mixed in with the bronze to create your shadows.  That flat black really dulls the shine and keeps those shadows dark.  The knee below is a good example where I've tried force those shadows to stay dark and then just hit small edges with the VMA gold.  There are a few areas where I've done a small gradient from dark to light (on the bottom section dark in the top right, light on the lower left, and opposite of that on the upper panel).

I wrote a section on my metals in the Hoplite tutorial.  For the Praetor I've made the light to dark more extreme, but the idea is the same.

Okay, I've stalled long enough.  Next time I'll start working on the black sections of the armor.

Praetor WIP 1

So, with a move imminent I didn't want to start on a big project.  Instead I decided I'd paint a 28mm figure but try to do it up to display standard.  I've been wanting to paint some Forge World figures for a while so now was my chance.  Although a little on the expensive side, I think Forge World comes up with some really nice looking figures.  Plus I love that they're making models from the Horus Heresy.

This little guy is one of the two Legion Praetors.  I picked the one with the more dynamic pose to start working on.  I glued the hands on to the arms, but left the rest of him in pieces.  The neck guard blocks most of the face so painting that in place would be a nightmare.  The arms aren't really a problem, but with that big shoulder armor I decided to leave them off too.  I'm going to paint him as one of the Sons of Horus Justaerin Terminators.  I ordered the Horus figure and thought this would be good practice.  By the way, the Horus figure looks great and I will be doing an open box review as soon as I get the chance.

Okay, back to the Praetor.  I started with the face.  Although the body was primed black I went with white for the head.  Easy enough since it was separate and it's nicer to work over the light color while I do the skin.  Popped it on a bit of sticky tack and a cork and off I went.

The skin is a mix of Reaper Master Series paints

Once I was finished there I went over the top with some diluted GW Bloodletter glaze to add a little more life to the face.  This went in the cheeks, around the nodes, in the scar, and around all the implants.  I then mixed in the Guilliman Blue glaze to create a purple.  This went in the shadows around the eyes, in the dark section of the cheeks, and around the base of the skull.  I could have used some GW shades instead, but I didn't want things to get too dark.  To clean it up a bit I went over all of the implants with black.  Since those will be metallic I like to work on top of a darker base coat.

For the metal parts around the head I went with a steel color.  I'm using Vallejo Model Air metallics.  They're just regular metallic paint, but since they've designed for the airbrush they are really smooth and flow of the brush very nicely.  I continued to tweak some of the skin shadows and mixed in a bit of pure white for the highlights on the cheek, nose, and top of the head.  A little bit of red was added to the skin tone to paint the lips.

Now he just needs a body...