Idea for colour scheme, criticism/comments wanted

Hello all,

Looking to get back in to my Lizardmen after a couple of years hiatus.

Previously I've always done the multi-coloured Lizardmen, where different troops are different colours (green saurus, purple skinks, red salamanders, etc). Nice looking models individually, but the colours always seem to clash on the battlefield which I don't really like.

So I'm going for something more uniform, all models in the army will be painted with a similar scheme to the Saurus shown below.

I just picked up my first airbrush a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd give that a crack to produce this scheme. That's another reason for just doing the entire army the same colour, airbrushing works best in large batches

Originally I was just planning on having dark green scales and then a thin red strip down the center of the scales... but I got a bit excited with the airbrush and the dark green sort of got swallowed by the red/orange, lol. I think I will try and make the orange strip narrower on future models.

Oh, also, the belly of this guy is pale green, but being a Saurus the belly isn't massively exposed. But on Krox or some of the larger lizards, the pale belly will stand out a bit more.





Any ideas on a colour for the shield? I want the main "pop" of the army to be the orange spine, so the shield colour needs to be subtle, maybe a black, brown, dark green or dark red.

Any comments or criticisms?

How do you feel about this being an army wide scheme? Maybe I should only use this scheme for Saurus/Krox/Skinks and use a different scheme for beasts (sallies, stegs, etc)?

 

As a general scheme I rather like it,
but it could still usee some highlights
to make the scales pop a bit better.

Ps. maybe for the shield, a black basecoat with red and orange drybrushing.

 

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out the best way to make the scales pop without destroying the nice airbrush blending and also something that won't take me too long as I'd like to get 40 or so Saurus painted in the next few weeks, lol.

I'm thinking a black oil wash, but so far I'm failing at that, lol, just making a mess of it. Maybe I need to buy better quality oil paints and a use a gloss varnish before the wash. Not really sure, I see people doing lots of nice things with oil washes and for some reason they just mess things up for me.

 

The gamesworkshop technical primer is my best friend when it comes to showing up the scales on my saurus,failing that agrax earth shade should work well!

 

How do you use the technical primer to show up scales? Use it like a wash?

I've never used the GW technical primer, I figured it was just a primer, lol.

 

Its a wash of sorts, just thin, designed to fit into the cracks and gaps in a model to show the detail.

 

Do you just thin it with water or some thinning medium? I'm trying to avoid "filtering" the model, as I like the blend I created with the airbrush and don't want to darken it, which is why I'm staying away from traditional acrylic washes (agrax and such).

I think I discovered what MAY be a problem with my oil washes. Not all mineral spirits is created equal, when I'm applying the mineral spirits to clean off the excess, it's removing the underlying paint even if I varnish it first. It seems there are less harsh mineral spirits that won't do that.

That could be the problem, or maybe I just suck, lol, I dunno.

 

It won't darken it unless your really over zealous, just make sure the model is dry, dip your brush in quick, add a dab of water and thinly coat the area, you may need a couple of coats dependant on how dilute you made it.

 

What do people think about using this scheme on ALL models in the army? I think the only place it might look a bit strange is on mounts, like it might be a bit odd to have a saurus riding a cold one or carnosaur that has the same scheme, or skinks riding on a stegadon that has the same scheme.

Reckon I should try for a different scheme on mounts? Maybe the same basic scheme, just do it more reddish rather than orange?

After playing around a bit, I think the best bet on the Saurus is to oil wash (once I figure out how!) or see how the imperial primer works (have to buy some first, lol) to darken the crevices of the scales without darkening the whole model. Then throw a gloss coat over it. It's definitely the sort of scheme that looks better with a gloss coat, or maybe a satin finish, the airbrush finish is a bit too matte. Pops a lot more with a shinier finish.

I've ordered a few vallejo model air paints, will spend this weekend cleaning mould lines off as many models as I can so they're ready for when my vallejo paints arrive

 

Actually I'll probably do things like the Slann a different colour anyway.

 

I'm a big fan of the Scheme, i like it.

Personally when thinking other models i'd go with :

Brighter colors on skinks.

Darker colors on older saurus (even though or army book states the opposite!)

Random colors on dinosaurs, but having 1 main color match the army theme.

Similar theme's for mid sized beasts, razordons, salamanders, cold ones - The salamander might be the odd one out though (he is for me).

 

Yeah all my big beasties have a blue base coat, like my skinks and Saurus, but instead of having grey backs they have something else (lighter blue on my Stegadons, Hawk Turquoise on my finally painted Carnosaur)

 

I think what I'm going to do for big beasties is use the same green, but not do the spine orange. I actually have a decent amount of contrast in the green, as it goes from a pale belly to almost black on the scales, you just can't see it on a saurus because the belly is more hidden, but I think on a monster it will give sufficient contrast to still look cool, but without the orange it'll set them apart from basic infantry.

I painted a few more Saurus to refine my technique a bit, also bought some VMA colours to replace the citadel colours I was using previously, they're heaps easier to airbrush.

 

Lovely! Ah, how I would love to try airbrushing some day... How about you use same colour scheme for the big dinosaurs, but "pull" the pale colours up, so that most of the dinosaur (I'm thinking of Carnosaur here) is greyish green and only the very top scales are darker green and then just the spine ridges are deep orange? With airbrush, it could look very cool!

 

looking really good now.

 

Yeah, it's funny, the main difference between these models and the I posted originally is just the difference between a satin finish and a matte finish, haha. I did the airbrushing a bit neater, but for the most part the only difference is the glossiness.

@Capra, yeah, that could work. Though I think it will still look a bit too similar to the infantry. Maybe instead of going all the way to Orange on the spine I could just go to a darker red, or go to something completely different like a blue.

I'm trying to avoid too much variation as I kind of want the army to look unified, at first everything was going to be the same with only things like Slann/characters painted differently so they stand out, but then I realised that it might look odd to have a Saurus riding a Cold One/Carnosaur that is the same colour scheme... kind of like a small human riding a bigger human, lol.

I think I'm going to have to alter the scheme slightly for skinks anyway, maybe just a single green that's half way between the belly and the back of the saurus, black scales and then the orange spine, so only 3 colour changes. After painting a few Saurus it occurs to me that a skink is far too small to transition pale green -> mid green -> black -> red -> orange like I'm doing on the Saurus. Too many transitions in a small area for my limited airbrush skills, and it might look a bit odd even if I could achieve it.

P.S. I'm loving the airbrush. If you can swallow the price it really takes your painting to the next level (I paid about $200 AUD for my setup and have since bought additional paints, cleaners, thinners, etc for about $100... though I'm sure it's a lot cheaper in the US or UK). There's things I'm doing that for years I've wished I could do but couldn't (or tried to do with a hairy stick and just failed badly, lol). Also it's massively faster when you batch paint.

 

Oh, yeah, I definitely like the idea of red at the top of the dino! I haven't been on the look-out, but I would wager that airbrush systems are more expensive here in Finland, as the user base is so limited. Also, I currently have no room for such device. But maybe one day... Well, as you already have it, I hope we'll get to see more your work!

 

Well, it's been slow going, had little free time because of work. But, here's the first 25 Saurus with skin and scales finished. I decided on one model I'd try a darker scheme, didn't like it, and on the rest I went for a lighter scheme which I like. Actually I like the mixture of a few dark models mixed in with the light ones, makes it look more, I dunno, real I guess.

There's a few spots where I messed up with the airbrush and a few spots that need touching up. I think I'll leave them for now and move on to the next regiment, then do the bases and come back to do the details later, that way I can actually play some games with the army while I'm finishing off the details!

All the Spears are magnetized so I can swap them out for Hand weapons when need be. It took a while to magnetize them, so I'm thinking for 40 Saurus, have 20 magnetized arms, permanent 10 hand weapons, 10 Spears, that way I can mix and match to have 2 full units of spears (hide the 10 hand weapons among 30 spears), 2 full units of hand weapons (hide the 10 spears in 30 hand weapons), or one unit of each.





I did forget how awful the Saurus models are. I painted them before gluing them which was both good and bad, made them much easier and faster to paint (painted these guys in about 2-3 hours), but it made assembly a pain and now I have areas I need to touch up (took me a few hours to assemble them and will probably take me another hour or two to clean up certain areas).

 

Working on a Stegadon.

I can safely say this will be my first and my last Stegadon! I normally enjoy painting monsters because I can take more time, but they're still faster to paint than similarly costed regiments of infantry. Not true of the Stegadon! This this takes bloody ages to assemble and paint even to only an "average" standard.

Anyway, not sure I like the results, the brown didn't really come out the way I had envisaged. I'm tempted to go back over the brown with green to get rid of it, maybe use a darker green instead. What do you think?







EDIT: Actually, the brown stays, I already removed the masking from the horns so I can't remove the brown without remasking them and that was way too time consuming for me to bother doing it again, lol.

Though I could add some darker green to reduce the impact of the brown (without spraying all the way up to the horns themselves)