Diane Tianseen Part 1 - Cold Black

Welcome to Part 1 of painting Diane Tianseen from Scale 75. There are actually two variants of Diane at the moment - the large, 75mm version and the Fallen Frontiers 35mm version, which has recently been put up for pre-order on the Scale 75 website. While I have both, I'll be looking at painting the small, resin model opposed to the large metal one :)

There is going to be more talking about paint in here than actual paint - up until a couple of days ago, I hadn't picked up a brush in close to four weeks, possibly through the recent warm weather, most likely through mojo burnout. So, I treaded myself to a couple of new Scale Color boxes, which now takes me up to a nice round dozen. The paints I'm going to look at and use today are from the Shades of Doom, Unnatural Flesh and Creatures from Hell Fantasy & Game sets.

As you can see below, Diane is in the sort of uniform and colour scheme you'd associate with an Imperial Guard Commissar.

With this picture in mind, it leads me on to one of my favourite painting topics at the moment - Cold Black - namely because I came up with the recipe myself and because it makes sense in my head. 

The basic theory is that when painting cold black, you don't want to use any black paint at all. This is for a couple of reasons. The first is that when painting, you want to be able to use a highlight and a shade, or multiples of both. If you are starting from black, you are at the darkest point you can possibly be - there is no color that can offer more shade than black. The same goes for white - when highlighting, to me, white is a last resort as once you hit white and feel the need for further highlights, there isn't anywhere else you can go.

The second reason is that due to black being the darkest you can go, it's also neutral - you can make it warm with browns and reds, you can make it cold with blues and greens. If we're after a black that is cold, you may as well start with a dark tone that is already cold.

For my standard cold black, I start off with Necro Grey, which is almost black, but has a grey tint to it. Using this as your darkest shade and starting point allows you, if you feel the need, to turn to black as a final shade. Also going into the palette are Rlyeh Grey and Innsmouth Blue, along with GW Fenrisian Grey. When layered up, starting with Necro and slowly adding increasing amounts of the two mid tones (Rlyeh to add the lightness, Innsmouth to add the blue tone), you create a cold blue effect and highlight.

Diane was primed grey, then had a couple of layers of Necro Grey added to form a solid base.

I set my paints up in the palette in order, mixed with some water, thinner, glaze and matte mediums so I can move from one to the next and keep rough track in my head of where abouts I'm headed.

The first layers of Necro Grey with Rlyeh Grey added.

A clear blue highlight emerges when Innsmouth Blue is added to the mix, in addition to the increased Rlyeh. Very much still WIP.

I've only tried out this technique on "soft" surfaces so far - just fabric, no power armour or similar solid surfaces with sharp edges.

The arm of my previously completed Commissar, showing off the finished highlight.

Once I got comfortable with using blue as a highlight, I started looking around for colours to adapt the recipe with. The blue below has already been used, but I thought I might be able to replace it with Despair Green (also from Shades of Doom) or Hastur Purple (a sort of berry red/purple from Creatures from Hell). Both of those initial tones would require some kind of pastel lighter shade as a final highlight, as Fenrisian Grey does for Innsmouth Blue. This is where the Unnatural Flesh box comes in.

As you can see, while there are a few interesting flesh shades in there along with a darker red and green for shading them and creating those unnatural tones the box was put together for, there are a couple of nice pale greens and a light purple, almost perfect for adding as the equivalent of Fenrisian Grey.

I dived straight in with the green, using both Undead Flesh and Hellbound Flesh as highlights for it.

 There is still quite a lot of refining to be done in terms of layering but the initial tones and highlights are in place. It's a lot more green than black at the moment, but it's all a learning process so it might end up finishing looking completely different.

The deadline for getting her done for the Eavier Metal Eadbanger comp in which I plan on having here entered into is next weekend, so if I can get the painting juice moving, she might well be finished the next time she sets foot on the page. Big "if" though ;)