From Chuck's Desk: Ariadna Spec Ops

 

Hello again, Chuck here with some pictures of an Infinity model I worked on last night to take a break from painting Eldar.  Camouflage and tactical gear can be hard to pull off on models as the effect of camo in reality is to hide something visually not to make people want to look at it and this can really be counter intuitive to painting minis.  This model is a Special Operative for Ariadna and as such I wanted him in black or grey gear which right from the start severely limited my palette to cold and neutral colors really nothing that is visually striking at least at first.

  The blue hues you see are Shadow Grey Astronomican Grey and Space Wolves Grey so a little blue in there to mix it up but still Grey.  The trick I feel to painting with colors like these is to push as much contrast across the the hue range for that specific color.  This is similar to black and white photography and drawing with charcoal.  If I was to grey scale these photos I would be looking predominantly for how varied my midtones are and the placement of the darkest shadows and lightest highlights.

I did not intend to actually limit myself in this way but as I started blending my greys I loved the effect I was achieving and figured it was good practice for slowly working up the same color through many stages.  The more transitions between extremely close hues the more subtle and smooth the effect but also the more time consuming.  I decided at this point to limit myself to only the grey paints I owned and see just how far I could push the tones.

The whole model actually turned into an experiment and I recommend this to anyone wishing to push themselves as a painter.  It is not only fun but you can learn a lot from a range of colors you have never used before or a range you use but only in one specific way.  It allowed me to get out of my comfort zone and add some cool tricks to my artists tool box.

I think I will base this guy to match my other Ariadna minis but I wanted to show him off in all his grey glory first.  Let me know what you guys think and as always tips tricks and comments are welcome.