Quartered Black and White Space Marines

[Captain Blut]

Man, it's been a long time since I logged in to my account. I finally got a new camera so I'll be submitting some stuff soon. I'm posting because I need some advice about the color scheme I'm using.

I've created my own Codex Chapter with a quartered black and white color scheme. Of course these two colors are some of the hardest to paint, but that's not my problem.

My problem is that I am stumped as to what to do with my large vehicles. I don't want them to be large blocks of black and white, but I don't want them to be too busy either. I have a land raider, a predator and a rhino to paint. Any suggestions? My chapter Iconography is a black five-pointed starburst much like the one found on the delta of Star Trek TOS command insignias.

I would appreciate any input I can get.
Thank you.

 

[Captain Blut]

My Color Scheme (picture)

Here is a picture from the Space marine Painter program. The vehicles should have a similar design.

 

[Captain Blut]

Chapter Icon

The Chapter Icon is the Starburst at the center of the delta. In other works ignore the delta part of the image.

 

[QuietiManes]

You could stick with the theme and paint the vehicles black with white sections. Instead of just quartering up the tank, section it up, along armour plates and such. Although this would still leave you with fairly large chunks of black and white, depending how you did it. Such as:

http://coolminiornot.com/240252

http://coolminiornot.com/239531

http://coolminiornot.com/241277

Then there's camo pattern black and white...possibly adding grey/blue/green/<insert favourite additional colour here>? Something like:

http://coolminiornot.com/174316

http://coolminiornot.com/article/aid/341

Or, well, I guess there's more camo patterns than there are people on the planet, a small selection:

http://coolminiornot.com/article/aid/61

Or this puzzle pattern is kinda cool and fun! If you're into that sort of thing:

http://coolminiornot.com/204431

Some might not be the greatest examples, I just did a quick search of the images and articles.

Then of course if you aren't into any of that you could also cover the tanks with battle damage or future technology I.E. shimmering fish scales/snake skin painted subtly into each armour plate or cover the larger sections in iconography and freehand then do numbers around doors and on the roof etc and warnings like "don't stand here" and "hot" and little flame and danger warning symbols around the guns and engine. Just about anything will break up the monotony, victims heads, ears, ropes, chains, bedrolls, sandbags, gas tanks, water tanks, shovels...

I'd suggest just looking around until you see something you like and modifying it as needed. There's endless options, really.

Best of luck.

 

[Captain Blut]

Thanks, Anyone Else?

Those are some great suggestions. Anybody else have any ideas?

 

[ded2day]

You could try doing a black (or white) main section and then do black/white quartered doors, front plates, rear plates, and small sections

 

[Wyrmypops]

In regards to the starburst. You could give it a stroke, a surrounding border to ensure that it will always stand out against whatever background it is applied to.

Also, have you thought about company colours? They're typically rendered on the edges of shoulder pads and the like. I presume you wouldn't favour that as it could upset the quaertered B&W scheme. Instead perhaps you could employ the starburst to fill that role, it being coloured to identify the company.
That could might well be suited to be echoed on the bolter casing, a stripe on a knee, and perhaps applied to the arrows commonly rendered on shoulder pads and/or a squad banner that signify whether a squad is assault, tactical or devastator.

You might like to look into getting transfers sheets you can print a design on to with a home PC. Could be a time saver, and alleviate stress if freehanding designs isn't your bag.

Of the black and white, the issue of highlighting the black and shading the white comes to mind.
I typically go for Space Wolf Grey to shade white on plasticy surfaces as it feels suitably artificial, and plump for Bubonic Brown or Snakebite Leather to shade white on more organic surfaces like robes.

Black is tricksy.
Black highlighted with a pure grey, feels rather artificial to me. Which can work a treat on things that aren't naturally coloured, like painted armour. It can however, leave the mini looking more like a dark grey than highlighted black.

I err towards adding Turquoise into the mix as it moves up through highlights. I feel the end result just looks like highlighted black, in our head - as we don't have a great deal of visual references to suggest otherwise with so little in our world being of those colours (except faded tattoos) so inform us otherwise.

I'm comfortable highlighting black leather with a bit of Regal Blue steering the rising highlights, it evokes those photographs of black leather and the palettes of movies (think Tim Burton, nothing saucy). With real world references like that in our head they work on us so that when we see a black leather holster on a mini painted Black with Regal Blue and White added for highlights our internal reference material clicks in and stops us merely looking at it like "eurgh, that's some funky blue".

 

[Godlikebuthumble]

What Wyrmypops said, basically.

Breaking up the monotony on SM vehicles is actually pretty easy even with only the two colours, depending on how "busy" you want the end result to look. Doors, specific armour plates etc could be one colour, the areas surrounding it another, you could do dags or checkered patterns, freehands according to the chapter's fluff, inscriptions... and that's only considering black and white. The metals on the guns could be somewhat blueish, the tracks of the tanks a rusty or muddy brown, you could break up large areas with various kinds of weathering... or you could straight up do a quartered tank (there was that great Land Raider poster, with some nice quartered examples that didn't look half bad), and either do the chapter icon or a checkerd stripe or other marking in the specific company's colour... Really depends on how clean or "busy" you want it to look and how much work you want to invest.
Hope that helps.

 

[Wyrmypops]

I do like Godlikebuthumble suggestion of the checkered pattern being incorporated. Reckon it'd go well with the black and white checkered motif, as essentially it is a black and white quartered design, just repeated to form a stripe. Could be some marvelous reinforcement of the central idea, and a chance to reward it with some decoration.

The vehicles stump me somewhat. I'm so unused to painting them, and their scale presents that additional challenge on whether the same scheme would carry over so well.
I think I'd have to nab a picture of one and work out some ways to go on paper (or photoshop) first.
Could be just quartering the whole vehicle would work best. I dunno.
Could be breaking it up would work better. Quartering the side of the vehicle for one application, the top down centre of the vehicle for another application of the quartered paint job, and giving the other side the same treatment.

In either case, I'd feel inclined to try that checkered stripe between the transitions. It could provide something different than is usually seen on vehicles, rendering it a large canvas for something arty, as oppsed to vehicles often being a cumbersome lump where the chapters colours try and fail to cover such a large area with any impact.
There'd be a choice in size of the stripe's elements. If as small as applied to the marines it could just tie itself into them,but leave the vehicle with large swathes of flat paintwork on it. If the stripe is rendered with larger sqaures it could still do that, though perhaps overpower or dwarf the vehicle, but surely be more of a bold rtisitc design choice.
Whether the checkered stripe is applied with a stroke/border to emphasise itself, or let it merge with the B&W either side of the transition in a more punchy design choice. Could be like like an Alice in Wonderland/Chess transition.