# Help with paint for Necrons



## amrogers3 (Sep 20, 2010)

Good Morning all,

I am trying to figure out what colors I should buy in the Vallejo MC, GC, and P3 line for a Necron paint scheme.

I would like to go with a beat up old rusted metallic look. Something similar to the GW scheme but with rust. Also would like to do a glowing green OSL effect on the weapons. I would like to try paints from the Vallejo line and P3 line to see what I like better.

Can anyone recommend what paints I should purchase? 

Thanks!


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## aranelthemithra (Nov 1, 2011)

I would take GW's recommended painting guide and just substitute colours. 

Base in black

Start with a mid-metallic (Vallejo's Gunmetal Grey for the dark end, or Natural Steel for a more mid base layer) 

Then wash with black

Then touch up again with the same metallic you used before, then use Vallejo's Silver to do edge highlighting. 

For gold, using metallics, you would use Vallejo's Old Gold as the base layer, wash with a dark brown, and then touch up and follow with edge highlighting use Vallejo's Gold.

For glowing green, you start with a base layer of Vallejo's Flat or Deep green, and depending on how bright you wanted to go, you could finish with Yellow Green or Lime Green - mixing the paints in different ratios to create the transitional colours. 

You can wash with a dark green after the base layer to fill in the recesses if you care to, then reapply the base layer, and then gradually layer up until you have a full gradient up to the glowing final result. 

Remember that glowing stuff casts it's light on surrounding surfaces, especially metallic, so you can have fun with that. 

For rust, you will have to paint that on after the metallic surfaces are painted. Gold rarely rusts or tarnishes, so you would likely do damage there instead. However, to paint rust, it works exactly as you might expect. You take a dark brown (or, if you used Natural Steel before, you can even start with Gunmetal Grey) and paint the areas you want to be rusted (it will be a mixture of sharp lines along fault lines in the metal or organic shaped in the case of aging corrosion), then you go back and apply a rusty brown (Vallejo has several - Hull Red perhaps) - leaving the blacker colour where the rust is very old

Next up, find a deep orange (Vallejo's Clear Orange perhaps) and highlight areas of newer rust - The newer the rust, the more orange it will appear. 

Once you are done, you can wash it all with a brown wash if you wish. 

One thing you can also do here if you want is apply some texture to the model. There are a few ways to accomplish this - indeed GW's new line has some textured paints that would be ideal for this. You can use this first to apply some texture to areas of corrosion, and then paint over that. 

Hope that helps. 

I didn't go to the depths you are planning, but most of these techniques were used when I painted this model up. It only took about 3.5 hours, so it's effective, even if you aren't really going for competition quality 



















As I said, I certainly didn't spend a ton of time on this guy, and the results were still pretty good and the client was happy for what they wanted to pay.


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## amrogers3 (Sep 20, 2010)

Thanks for the great post, you included a lot of good information in there.

Are the paints you recommended VGC or VMC?


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## aranelthemithra (Nov 1, 2011)

amrogers3 said:


> Thanks for the great post, you included a lot of good information in there.
> 
> Are the paints you recommended VGC or VMC?


They should all be VMC


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## Iron Angel (Aug 2, 2009)

Ah, VMC. Thats why your color names weren't making any sense to me.

If you want to use VGC, which, its really up to you, but I find to be better for layering which is critical for OSL, then:


























I started with a black basecoat. For all the silver parts, I started with Gunmetal Metal, then did a black wash, then a light drybrush of Chainmail Silver. Extreme highlights with Silver. I imagine if you were going for a rusted look, at this stage, you would stipple edges with some Bloody Red, then over the bloody red you would lightly stipple Orange Fire. If you are wondering what stipple means, it means instead of stroking the paint on with the brush, you dry it like you would for drybrushing, then lightly stab the tip of the brush downward onto the model. This way, you don't get strokes, you get blotches, which is what you want for rust.

As for the OSL.

Do not thin paint with water for layering with OSL! Its good for washes, but water makes paint act strangely over flat surfaces and can result in lots of unwanted pooling. Instead, thin it with actual thinner medium:










One drop of paint to six drops of thinner is an excellent ratio.

I started with Dark Green, which is already pretty transparent. Slowly work back from the main highlight. Don't saturate the model with the dark green glaze. One or two glazes should be plenty, its just to add a color transition. Then I moved up to 50/50 dark green and scorpion green, moving more towards the light source. Once again, don't oversaturate. Finally, do just scorpion green, fading into the highlighted areas. Depending on how bright your light source is, add more layers until you are satisfied.

A few things to remember with OSL. Only highlight areas that can draw a clear line of sight to the light source. Shadows will make it more believable. In addition, things like brow ridges, tips of noses, points and edges of armor, and things of that nature will be brighter than their surrounding lit areas. Points and sharp edges should get more light.

Hope that helps!


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