Colour advice... painting bronze and a colour to go with it...

[Andaah]

Hey all. For my next army project I plan to do a Space Marine army. I will be using the new Black Templar models when they come out. So there\'s typical power armour and then tabards and cloths.

I would like to do them a spartan bronze.

How would I go about getting a nice bronze colour on power armour?

And also what would be a good colour to match with the bronze for the cloth and other details? Would an aubergine colour and a yellow colour match?

Any suggestions appreciated. My colour theory sucks.

 

[Equus]

Metallics I\'m not so good at...non-metallic metals I\'m even worse. ^_^ So I can\'t really help you too much there, though I think with the amount of area you\'d have to cover with space marine armor, non-metallic might be a good way to go.

I actually had to look up \"aubergine\". What I came up with was some type of eggplant, so if you\'re thinking of some sort of dark purple color, it would work very well as a contrasting color to a bronze that might be closer to the yellow side. Yellow would work in a different fashion, since it would be so much closer in the spectrum to bronze. Maybe yellow with a dark purple trim to help differentiate it from the bronze well would work.

Guess it depends on if you aesthetically like highly contrasting colors or not. I\'d shuffle around for some example of color theory or neat minis to look at, but I just got home and am feeling incredibly lazy.

 

[provoke_me]

a yellow...what shade of yellow?
because that can make a big difference.

 

[Wolf_Fang]

for bronze simply paint the entire thing with the bronze metallice (reaper\'s bronze worked nice for me) then simply drybrush sikver over top once the bronze has dried... this will highlight the higher areas and will still apear slightly bronze.. tho higher areas not only will look highlithed but slightly worn... as for cloth brown-bleached bone should look nice!

i did the armour and staff on this using the discription above

 

[Andaah]

Looks nice Wolf. I will try it.

And as for the dark purple I can see it going well with bronze. Perhaps with white also.

I will have to do a test scheme but I have no spare marine models. Hmm... I\'ll try another model.

If anyone else knows any good ways of painting a rich, dark bronze please let me know.

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by Andaah
I would like to do them a spartan bronze.

How would I go about getting a nice bronze colour on power armour?

You want to paint them with traditional metallics and not NMM right?

Where are you based? If you can get them locally Daler-Rowney make a kickass bronze acrylic paint in their Cryla line, it covers well and it\'s finely pigmented. It is quite light and pinkish, making it a very good match to a fresh-cast bronze colour.

Originally posted by Andaah
And also what would be a good colour to match with the bronze for the cloth and other details? Would an aubergine colour and a yellow colour match?

Any suggestions appreciated. My colour theory sucks.

What goes with another colour is a very subjective thing - for example, a lot of people like green/violet as a combination (this was big in fashion in the early 80s for a few minutes) but others loath it. Generally speaking though you\'ll often get a pleasing effect using analogous colours (things fairly close in hue: like orange + yellow, scarlet + reds, crimson + red-violets) with maybe a touch of a colour just off being directly opposite on the colour wheel as an accent. By the way, the darker and duller colours are the more easily they won\'t clash.

So here, a dark purple like aubergine will work just perfectly IMO, for the yellow I would stick to one that is just a bit orangey.

Einion

 

[daryl_ks]

The problem with Bronze is that it is much darker than gold and therefore you need colors that are going to make the bronze stand out so that it doesn\'t get \"lost\" to the eye...

I would probably suggest that yellow, browns, and potentially reds (depending on your bronze) may be colors to steer clear of...

That turqoise looked good and purple, as already suggested by several, would probably work pretty damn well on your tabards and such...

Do you plan on using a different colour for the trim and small detail pieces on the armor, or just drybrushing a sliver over the whole thing to help the detail stand out?

If you are so inclined, a wash of brown ink followed by another highlight if the base bronze could help to bring out the detail as well...

Cheers!

Daryl

 

[Andaah]

Here is a test of the bronze. I rather like it. Sadly the light when I took it (afternoon) wasn\'t good enough to show the higlighting very well. I painted it GW dwarf bronze (2 coats) and then hit it with the brown ink in recesses. Then I lightly drybrished dwarf bronze again then highlighted with a 60:40 mix GW chainmail to dwarf bronze.

If you look at the tops of the knees you might be able to see the blending or you might not. Whatcha think?

How about aubergine and white? Aubergine chest eagle and shoulder pads and white trim on them shoulder pads? Perhaps a diagonal slash of white on them shoulder pads too?

 

[Wolf_Fang]

looks good how ever id go pure silver at the high spots.. blend from pure copper (bronze) then up to silzer at the high spots....

 

[Andaah]

I have just bought some vallejo hexed lichen for the purple.

Do you lot reckon this is okay or will I end up mixing it darker? If so how should I make it darker?

 

[Wolf_Fang]

i dont know the shade of it but if you want to darken it just mix a little black with it

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by Andaah
Here is a test of the bronze. I rather like it.
...
If you look at the tops of the knees you might be able to see the blending or you might not. Whatcha think?

That\'s exactly the look I\'d aim for, looks great to me. I think it would look even better if you do some extra lining to add more definition to the edges.

Einion

 

[Andaah]

I agree but with it only being a test I will leave it now and get on with other jobs. I have a few months before the BT come out.