OK, as you\'re playing 40K, I\'ll keep this in Citadel colours... Oh, and this might be a bit simplified, but still pretty much what you\'re looking for.
Basically you start off with a black undercoat (or underpaint black if you primered your minis white). Then have an about 1/1 mix of Chaos Black/Scab red. Paint all of the armour Plates in that tone. Remember to keep the paint thinned, unless you want it to get grainy on the mini. You\'re better off doing 2 (or even 3) coats of one color than applying one thick one. But make sure to let the previous one dry completely. Otherwise, grainyness ensues again.
Now, add more Scab Red. Ratio should be more like 1/3 Chaos Black/Scab Red. Now paint only three quarters of each plate, letting the darker tone show on the rest. If you look at the picture of the Devourer, you\'ll see how the placing of the brighter tone implies where the light comes from. Just go with that and stay consistent on a single mini.
Next, you might use pure Scab red. This time, you do only 50% of each plate, letting the two darker tones show.
In the last step, add a bit (25-30%) of Blood Red to the Scab Red and cover the Scab red, but let a \"lining\" of pure Scab Red show.
Now, have a teeny tiny bit of Scab Red and make a glaze, i.e. thin it down really strong, basically barely recognizable. If you paint that over white paper, you should barely recognize what colour it is (Adding a minimum amount of dish detergent also helps break up all that water\'s surface tension). Now paint that over the armour plates. This will make the individual steps come together more, as the red glaze evens out the differences a bit. You will probably need more then one coat of that, though. Just repeat until satisfied.
When you\'re done with that, you can take some pure black and a fine brush and line out the edges of the plates. You can do that in the same step where you clean up the edges for their colour. If the plates don\'t have borders like on the devourer, you might finish the edges in an even brighter red (50-50 Blood Red/Scab Red) before glazing.
So, that\'s pretty much it. The result will look close to that in the picture, but obviously, the more and the smaller steps you take in building up the brighter tone, the smoother the transition will look when finished. However, I\'ve found Reds to be a grateful colour for transitions, so you should be fine with this recipe.
Hope that helps.:beer:
