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Author Topic: Desaturated Green  (Read 5545 times)

Offline Gneisenau

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Desaturated Green
« on: April 09, 2011, 10:51:05 AM »
A question: How do you do it?

Until now, I have painted green using Dark Angels -> Emerald Green. Putting green wash on top gives armour a decent "lacquered" look.

It is, however, a very "rich" green. What I want to do now is a green that looks more desaturated and dusty. A bit like the green parts on this Japanese tank
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Type10MBT.jpg

only darker. I've found out that Thraka Green (the foundation paint) is an excellent base colour for this. But what would be a good way to highlight it, without giving it a "rich" look?

Hope I made myself clear. Thanks in advance.

Offline Immovable Object

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2011, 12:01:57 PM »
Camo green and then further highlights of Camo Green/ Kommando Khaki? The Khaki should wash the green out a bit.

Offline Zoring

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #2 on: April 09, 2011, 12:02:58 PM »
Catachan Green as a base with 50/50 Catachan/Camo green highlight to Camo as an extreme highlight if you want to get fancy.

Offline Gneisenau

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #3 on: April 09, 2011, 12:06:08 PM »
Hm, both good ideas which I'll try.

Had another look over the paints - what would you guys think about Rotting Flesh for final highlights?

if you want to get fancy.

I do. :icon_wink:

Offline Immovable Object

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #4 on: April 09, 2011, 12:22:34 PM »
Rotting flesh is always a good highlight for green

Offline LochNESS

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #5 on: April 09, 2011, 01:42:02 PM »
You can also take a look at the Vallejo "model colour" range. These have (unlike their game colour range) a more realistic pallet of colours. I use them for example in the red basecolour (Burned cad. Red is the best foundation for red you'll find) but I also like the green colours as these are very realistic military colours.

However, if you do not feel like buying Vallejo colours (which I can understand, but remember they are a lot cheaper. More quantity of paint at a lower price ;-) but then again, the sell those colours at my local gamingstore) there are two ways.

1) the Foundation paints of GW are already more desaturated green. This gives a good start. Especially the Knarloc Green and Orc Hide shade fall into this group. Then follow up with the Camo Green, and Rotting Flesh which both are more greyish.
2) Mix greys into the colours you wanna use. Start this with Codexgrey in the first and slowly mix in Fortessgrey in the lighter colours. The mixing makes it harder though to keep consistent colours thoughout an army (harder at least then using Vallejo colours ;-)) Another way would be to mix in a little rotting flesh into each colour, but this will not give you the 'tank look' you gave in the above picture.
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Offline Gneisenau

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #6 on: April 09, 2011, 01:55:15 PM »
Thanks, guys!

1) the Foundation paints of GW are already more desaturated green. This gives a good start. Especially the Knarloc Green and Orc Hide shade fall into this group. Then follow up with the Camo Green, and Rotting Flesh which both are more greyish.

I realized I made an error in the OP: Of course I meant Orc Hide shade, not Thraka Green. Thraka Green is the wash; for some reason I thought it was the other way round.

So you recommend Knarloc Green... It looks very brown to me on the GW page, but perhaps my monitor has a weird setting.

Quote
2) Mix greys into the colours you wanna use. Start this with Codexgrey in the first and slowly mix in Fortessgrey in the lighter colours. The mixing makes it harder though to keep consistent colours thoughout an army (harder at least then using Vallejo colours ;-)) Another way would be to mix in a little rotting flesh into each colour, but this will not give you the 'tank look' you gave in the above picture.

Good idea!

Offline Siberius

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #7 on: April 09, 2011, 02:26:28 PM »
I recently have been using knarloc green, highlighted with rotting flesh and then washed with the green and then black washes. I only use the green wash if I want it to be real green though. It's really easy and looks pretty decent.
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Offline Gneisenau

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #8 on: April 09, 2011, 02:37:21 PM »
Is that what you used in your contribution to the painting competition? Just to check, because then I would get an idea how it looks straight away without having to try it.

Offline Siberius

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #9 on: April 09, 2011, 03:44:35 PM »
I'll go take a gander at the pic. My memory is pretty bad.  :-P

Ok, I went and looked. His jacket is just knarloc green with badab black wash. Even simpler. I'm often lazy about highlights unless it's something that has a lot of prominent bumps  :-P.




These orcs are knarloc with a green then black wash. As you can hopefully still see from the distant pic, it makes them quite a bit more satuarted... I like it cos it gives nice depth, but the green wash definitely does quite a bit (saturation wise) in my experience.

As it stands, I don't have any decent pics of anything I used the rotting flesh to highlight, but I have found that doing it pre-wash helps subtle it down a bit more than post wash. But then I don't like really blatant highlighting, I kinda like subtle dark tones.
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Offline patsy02

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #10 on: April 09, 2011, 03:46:00 PM »
Just do your regular green with some grey mixed into it, should be fine.
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Offline DJoker

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #11 on: April 09, 2011, 11:21:48 PM »
I use mostly Reaper Master Series paint triads. To do the color of green you're talking about (I think), which is the color of green I use for my Stirlanders, I do a basic 3-step painting, using Reaper's Olive Shadow as my shade coat, followed by Olive Drab, and then highlighted with Worn Olive. I then mix just a tiny bit of Reaper Offwhite with the Worn Olive to highlight the very highest parts if needed. It gives a good olive-drab color.

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Offline Ricardo-PB

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #12 on: April 10, 2011, 07:22:55 AM »
I think that color is "olive drab" it's a standard -matte- military green. Try some Testors model plane green, they have that exact shade.

I also use a variety of greens, it being my favorite color, and I found that military model paints work fantastically well (over gw foundation) I.e I use a cool (color temp cool, not "cool") green that is a WWII German Panzer highlight green as my low-light and it gives it a nice neutral color.

Or, like everyone else said, mix some tan in there. Or go for military colors.
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Offline Cptn. Palladorus

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Re: Desaturated Green
« Reply #13 on: April 11, 2011, 01:55:50 AM »
Look at how people paint Imperial Guard.  The same tutorials should apply if you don't want to step outside of the GW paint range.
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