I spent the other weekend working on this guy as a follow up to the Heroes of Armageddon project. After talking to my friend about the color scheme, he pretty much gave me free run with the model.
We decided to go with the standard blue Librarian color scheme with this guy as it marks him for who he is on the tabletop and the blue ties in nicely with the rest of his army as well. I tried to use the more complex zenithal approach I guess you could call it that I used on a previous Librarian I painted before.
I wanted the robes to contrast from the armour so I made them a tan color, but didn't want the scrolls and such to blend in with the robes so I chose a slightly different tan for those. And it wasn't just the base color, but how I shaded and highlighted them as well.
I ended up using the official GW version as sort of a guide to what I would paint what in terms of colors. I just decided to mute things a bit and stay away from the cartoon look as much as I could.
Originally, I'd painted his whole face and chest area to represent a strong glow from inside his hood. Enough that it spilled out onto his surrounding armour as well.
I even went so far as to make the cables running up the sides of his chest look like they were glowing too. Once I'd spent a huge amount of time on it and had it looking just right... I scrapped it all because it was just too much glow.
I wanted the effect to be there to enhance the model and not overtake it like I'd done in my excitement to do it well.
So I scaled it all back, painted his face back onto him and removed the glow from the majority of the model. In the end, all I left was a bit of glow around the sides of his face to show the effect. I think this is much better as it adds to the character of the model without going overboard and becoming a focal point.
Even with all that the model has going on, I want to give him that extra touch here and there. That meant squeezing in a small icon on his right knee pad along with some trim detail on the inside of his tabard.
I added some script to the pages of all his books for good measure too. One thing I've found when adding script like that is to stay away from using black. If you use black, it draws a ton of attention to the element due to the high contrast most of the time.
Instead, I use a medium grey color that has just enough contrast to stand out, but not so much that it draws your eye right to it. I've found this to give me a much better result in the end.
And the base
The base was painted to match the rest of my friend's army. At first, I was worried about the contrast between the red and the blue. In the end, I think it's one of my favorite bases to date. It doesn't have much detail to it, but the red makes for such a nice change of pace. It's not just another grey battlefield base.
I did try and mute it a bit with some washes and by adding tan into the highlights. After that. I did few quick passes with some weathering powders to tie the model to it. There was no way I was going to do a red dust type basing and not show the effects on the model. I used a couple colors from Secret Weapon Miniatures and brushed them along the lower portions of his legs and the bottom of his tabard until I had what looked like a good result to me.
In the end, I think this guy came out fairly well. I love all the color he has on him, but it's not way over the top. I guess that's what makes me the most happy. I was able to get the scheme I wanted and have it look somewhat believable... for 40k that is.
Make sure to check out these posts as they might help:
Object Source Lighting, an in-depth look
