hum. what's wrong with this dragon?

[me_in_japan]

I hate painting yellow. I really do. It always looks flat. Except when it looks washed out. And black? I hate that, too. You can either spend ages blending in a nice smooth transition to sharp highlights on the edges, or just spludge on grey and accept itll look spludgy. Oh, and dont talk to me about gemstones. I hates em, yes I does.

So, why, I hear you say, did I decide to paint my gemstone bedecked fire dragons yellow and black?

buggered if I know, chaps

Here's finished dragon number 1. They've been half painted for ages, and I've decided to finish them so I can lay em to rest and move on with the rest of my eldar.



Sloppy painting aside, there's something about the colours that bugs the crap out of me, but I'm tired and can't put my finger on the problem. Anybody got any ideas? Hopefully easy, 1-step fix ideas, if at all possible...

[Admiral-Badruck]

黄色はあまり強くないです。

[Primarch]

Overall, the yellow and black look ok, kind of like a hornet. It's the blue which doesn't fit IMHO. Maybe something warmer like a deep red or a yellowish brown for the gun barrel?

[Mike the Pike]

IMHO it's the black that's the problem.There's too much and the yellow isn't really strong enough to make an effective contrast. I reckon the orange areas need to be yellow. Fusion gun needs to all Wraithbone or something else not black. The nozzle should also be a different colour to the gems too.

Ooh just found these. A good example of Yellow and black...Not sure about the white as a 3rd colour



although the painting itself is a bit sloppy.

[Admiral-Badruck]

To elaborate the blue and yellow have a hard time looking right mostly because of the shade of yellow.

http://page.freett.com/realmofrman/gallrey225.htm

This is an excellent example of the way yellow and blue can go together the key is the bright yellow and the pale blue. Think yellow sun an pale sky.

Black is never a color I like to use. When I start my FDs I will use a this as a model for them.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/13713 ... agons.html in stead of black I will use a dark blue.

[job]

I like the model, but if you were trying to do more, I think I'd agree with Badruck and Mike on having a brighter yellow and some kind of dark orange for the recesses (maybe an dark orange wash?). Are you trying for a flame or molten look? If so, here's a pic of warjack where the guy used a very similar palette.

p1010852j.jpg

He goes by ErictheFat, just to make sure he gets the credit. The scheme uses white the flame impression, so I think white would be very reasonable if that is what you had in mind.

Anyway, good looking model, and good luck with your next Fire Dragon.

[The Other Dave]

Agreeing with Mike - yellow and black alone ought to look snappy, yellow and black and orange muddies up the palette.

Speaking as someone who paints a bunch of yellow, it's hard to tell from the picture, but it looks as if you might be having a problem with how the yellow sits on its base coat - it looks a bit gray, which in my experience usually comes from that. How are you putting the yellow down?

[Spevna]

Too much black.

The yellow is too subdued.

Were you going for subdued pastelly colors?

[Tenorikuma]

I agree with Job. The yellow needs to shade down into an orangey brown, not into a black-tinged yellow.

[me_in_japan]

Thanks for the comments, all

Basically, I think you're all right. I have complete painters block when it comes to eldar at the moment. Its the armour plates - they do my nut in. You have to do every single one of them indivudually, and they all have edges slightly less than 1mm deeep. Pain in the ass, they really are. I can paint 7 plague marines in a week, but a squad of 6 eldar takes me about 3 weeks to do, working at the same speed. To sumamrise - it looks uninspired because it aint inspiring me

However, I want to get these guys done. Sometimes ya just gotta push through if you want to make progress, and this is one of those times.

The yellow looks dull because it is - it's a base coat of Iyanden Darksun, which is a kinda dun-yellow colour. I highlighted it by adding VMC Ivory (basically warm white), and shaded with a bit of necron abyss. I think I'll go back and re-do the armour with one more layer of Iyanden, followed by a coat of Golden Yellow. I'll then highlight this with the ivory, and shade with a dark orange like I usually do for my yellow (e.g. the yellow I did on my Ork a while back was a warm shaded yellow.)
The orange is also kinda dull because its the foundation orange. I reckon it can stay, though.
I've also redone the gun in all-wraithbone, which seems to work. The blue gems and blue gun barrel are going to be red, but I'm going to keep his eyes blue and maybe add a wee bit of freehand blue fire coming up from them over his helmet (if I can pull it off, anyway.)

I really want to keep these guys pretty simple, but they have so much detail (gemsgemsgems) on them that it's impossible to just slap some paint on em and call em done. For some reason they seem to have way more gems than even normal eldar do, and thats saying something.

Anyway, I kinda know what I'm going to do with them, but havent had a chance to make much progress on them (Sean has been a bit difficult today, and tbh I'm bloody exhausted. I crashed out for about 2 hrs this afternoon, and I usually hate sleeping during the day...)