So apparently monthly blog posts seem to be more my speed especially considering my ever changing schedule. Regardless, at the time of writing this Nova is only 13 days away for me and I’ve done quite a bit of experimentation and actual work on my piece. However, I don’t want to skip parts of the process just to catch you guys up and so let’s start with the basecoats I’ve laid down on Joan and why I chose these colors in particular.
Starting with the armor, I based it entirely with VMC Dark Prussian Blue which is my darkest shadow color. Every scheme I saw for Joan or any Panoceania model in general started with the color and I figure why not start this way as well. I had decided on a more high contrast version of the box art since I was handbrushing the model as opposed to airbrushing it and starting from the shadow color saves me a step and allow me to better visualize where to place highlights.
The red was something that took some experimentation and it wasn’t until I discovered Flameon did I find a technique I was comfortable with that gave me the saturation I was looking for. Essentially, he would paint white where his highlights would be and leave the deeper shadows with the black primer. From there, he used the Andrea Red paint set and would paint his base color with the first highlight in the set (instead of the actual red base in the set). This allows for a very vibrant red color with the only downside being that highlighting from there is a very subtle process that can be a little finicky.
The underarmor was done with Flat Black from Scale 75 which is not what is shown in the photo which is VMC black grey. I originally intended to do VMC Grey Black and then use a black wash, but once I tried it on my test model I discovered that it just looked dirty and sloppy even though I had thinned down the wash for it to flow better. So I transitioned to just using Flat Black, which will yield a result that is probably closer to the box art.
The bicep armor piece and shin armor was done with VGC Wolf grey with a little bit of VGC Sombre Grey. And let me just say that painting that shin piece was by far the most frustrating thing I’ve had to do because the model has the ankle guard piece in front that makes getting to that shin armor incredibly difficult
The belt was based following the dark leather receipt from the Vallejo Wood and leather set which calls for VMC Chocolate brown. The sword was based with Scale 75 Graphite Grey and the hilt with Instar Deep brown, but only after I spent a literal week testing Gold NMM recipes and Steel NMM recipes (those will get their own blog posts in the future, maybe a tutorial if I feel competent enough at it)
It took me a long time to even start the process of laying down these base coats. The reason being was that I was afraid, I wasn’t really confident I could pull this off so procrastinated a lot. Doing tests on a spare Joan model helped me develop a plan and boosted my confidence because it allowed me to test colors without having to worry about messing everything up.
…..Also, the crushing weight of a deadline is one hell of a motivator.
Dr. Schemes Miniatures 