WIP On the Desk: How I Paint Red for my armies.....

Over the years, I have painted a lot of miniatures in a red paint scheme for my armies.  I have often been asked what colors I use and when I tell people they think: 

A.  Games Workshop is the only one that makes paints.  or

B.  They think its too many colors and too hard to do.

Above are the paints that I often use.  Now when I painted my 2008 GT Khorne Demon army, I used a lot of 50/50 in between blends.  When you paint just one off show piece models, you can get away with using just a couple of colors and wet palette.  Super time consuming for me if you are painting an army.  I prefer a formula that can be written down or remembered from sitting to sitting and works with an assembly line style of painting.

So the following is what I did today on a couple of Romans and couple of Normans in the next batch of minis that I am working on.  For my initial stage I block in the reds with a large No. 4 round brush, using Vallejo Model Color - Hull Red.  If you do not have that you can substitute Reaper Master Series Red Brick.  If you have just GW colors, I can't help you.

So next up I did a 50/50 blend of Hull Red with Reaper Master Series Deep Red.  If you don't have that you can substitute GW Scab Red or Vallejo Game Color Scarlet Red, pretty close to the same colors.

For these colors I want to put them on pretty fast, as we are army painting after all, so I'm using a worn out Round No. 1 that gives me a bit more control than the No. 4.

Below you can see the worn out brush, all splaying and beginning to curl, a Simply Simmons brush.

 Next up I paint on Vallejo Model Color Red.  A bit more controlled, painting like I'm building a contour map of highlights from dark to light.

 Following that step, I use a 50/50 VMC Red and VMC Carmine Red blend.  Now I know these are historical minis and often times the reds in real life fade to a sort of pinkish color, but I'm just not into pink.  I prefer a bold bright red.

For the final step I pull out a Red Sable for better, finer, brush control and pick out the sharper edges and high spots for highlights.  So there you have it, how I paint army reds.  I probably later go on and apply some dark red washes in the recessed areas to make the shadows and a bit more depth, but I will wait to do that when I address the armor and skin tones.