Help Needing some help with war paint on my skinks

Title says it all, up until now i have been using contrasts but with the darker scheme on my skinks i have been wondering how i should do it? White undercoat with contrasts untop? Or a standard base>shade>layer scheme?

 

Hey, it would be useful to know how exactly your current color scheme looks and what kind of war paint you aim to achieve. Maybe try a testmini or give us at least a picture of the skink and some rough keys to your next step.
All I can say is that Contrast paint is superb for low effort and fast painting of battleline troops but it fails miserably on small details or to achieve some real contrast between 2 surfaces as it´s basicly a thick wash. So you may do the base skink color scheme with Contrast paints and finish it up the traditional way.

 

Not the best image but should still give you a idea of the scheme, Skin is kabalite green, washed with 1 part terradon tourquise 4 ish parts medium drybrushed with kabalite then drybrushed again with sybarite. I then used Creed Camo for the "war paint" on the head hands and feet. However it turned out not great and quite a lot too dark.

 

Ok, so you figured out the problem yourself: Your color schemes is WAY too dark. no points of interest, nothing that catches the eye except the feather charm, shields blend in too.
As a general rule you should pick like 3 spots/sections of your model that "look interesting" make them "pop" you know. I used a very similar scheme for my skinks.


so what happened here? I too used dark colors to set off the face, hands and feet. But to make this work they have to contrast the rest of the skin. Dark war paint needs light skin colors or it will just look dark or just light--> not interesting
As for my first point of interest I chose a vibrant yellow to make their headfane? and eyes pop, help to bridge the 2 different skin colors and draws attention to the head of the model (head,chest, exposed back, weapons usually are good points of attention)
Second I chose the shield, contrasting it with red to blue skin gives a whole unit of this some distraction from the ever blue skin.
Instead of the weapon (quite muted green) I highlighted the scales on the back pretty bright just to set the skin further apart from the warpaint.

So what can you do? If you want to keep the dark skin color go with a bright warpaint (white or a bright yellow eg.) Dont make the shields fit the model, set them apart. Doesnt have to be some bright color like mine, just dont go blue or green like the skin.
If you wanna keep the dark war paint choose a brighter skin color. Washing an already dark color like Kabalite green with a Contrast paint will severyl darken it down. And you chose a pretty dark contrast paint too. I painted the whole skin of mine with thinned down terradoen torquise!

 

Might I recommend a voodoo-paint pattern?



These were some I saw on Twitter a while back, painted by a guy named James.

I used them as inspiration when I painted my gators.




@Benji love your painting style

Also you take pictures really well

 

@Benji I think i know what will do the trick, im picking up some Averland Sunset, pink horror, Wazdakka red i think that should do the trick for the crests. Thanks. You seem to use a similair ish scheme how do you wash/shade your mini? I tried Coelia Greenshade but it made the skin too dark, so since i had no medium for it i tried thinning down Terradon Tourquise instead sicne it had a similair colour.

@Warden That is a really cool idea, and definitly one im going to try out, though im not certain if the skin on my goons is really dark enough for it too contrast well. Im also not sure i have the skill for such smooth lines.

 

After doing some tinkering i could alternativly switch the entire scheme around using Incubi Darkness as the skin colour instead. I'll do some test schemes tomorrow and post how it turns out.

 

For my skin I only used Terradon turquoise thinned down 1:2 with contrast medium over wraithbone primer. I shaded some selected parts (between the back scales) with coelia greenshade, but never the whole model. After that I used Contrast Black templar thinned down with medium again to paint the face, hands and feet - One will need more than one coat with black templar. Shield is just Flesh tearer read, Scales are drybrushed in fenrysian grey and ulthuan grey and the yellow parts are phalanx yellow over wraithbone washed with cassandora.

I really like these white tribal paints over dark skin colors, till now I just never found a good example, thanks Warden.