Painting purple

[Kjugen]

Hi,

I\'m about to paint up a unit of Emperors children - usually those guys are black armour with pink shoulder pads and gold trim if I remember. The problem is I don\'t like it because it looks so childish. My normal Blue chaos warriors goes from black shadows to a base of regal blue washed richly with midnight blue (GW colors) and high lights of pure regal blue again – I think this gives them a more evil look and sets the scene on what I’m after.

Here is a link to my current army colours - http://www.coolminiornot.com/127075

I was thinking of painting the new squad with a slightly darker version of the regular marines (basically black armour going to dark blue highlights) and making the shoulder pads and insignias purple. I think keeping the blue tones would make the new unit fit in even that it actually uses gold trim instead of silver and is using purple to a degree or?

The main problem is that I have never painted purple – do you have tips on how to make a properly dark and sinister purple colour that would fit a chaos squad without looking like a cartoon? What colour is best used for shadows and highlights? I love to paint but the new unit has to fit in so I can use it on the table too.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Good and complex question.

I\'ve used Citadel Liche Purple (Vallejo Game Colour Hexed Lichen) mixed with a tiny drop of black to get a really deep purple.
You can add warlock Purple (VGC Warlord Purple) as a highlight.

Start with very thin dilutions of the Liche Purple and work up a number of coats to build up a good purple tone than you can do washes of the Black/Purple Mix to increase the shadows before returning to the Liche Purple to reinforce the Basecoat.
Add the Warlock(Warlord) purple in tiny amounts and apply in very thin diluted coats to built up the highlights.

Hope that this helps.

 

[MPJ]

Yeah, what Dragonsreach said with one addition:

Depending on how extreme you like your highlights (many GW painters like their extremes) You can add some pink to the final highlight color to push it up a notch. I\'ve done it before and it looks good if extreme is your desire if not then don\'t.

 

[airhead]

I used these:
http://hmgs-south.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=42