Any tips on painting Wyches?

Painting my Raider was fine, painting my Kabalite warriors was fine, painting my reavers was really fun. I just do NOT like painting my wyches. I keep putting it off later and later. Starting to think I'll just leave them primed. Are there any good techniques to painting wyches efficiently, with some detail? I've just been starting with the armor, moving on to metals, then doing the wychsuit, then skin, then little details. It just takes so long to do, and they don't even come out looking that great.

I really enjoy painting wyches. In my mind, they are painted like warriors with more skin exposed. I always paint them in order-skin/armor/ bodysuit/hair and accent color cloth/weapons. There is a little more detail, but it really pays off when you finish units.

What color scheme are you using? Pics?

It would help if you had some pictures of your color scheme to use as a starting place.

However, in general, I am equally fond of the wyches and the warriors. My color scheme is desert themed. My Warriors and wyches share the same color armor, and the body suit is the difference. My warriors body suit is dark brown, a mix of dark flesh and scorched brown.

My wyches body suit is a a bit more red, a mix of Dark flesh, scorched brown and Blood red.

My highlights are done by adding more and more blood red.

Its a subtle difference, but I like the look and the army still looks coherent.

Also, my wyches have more emphasis on the skin and faces so there is a focal point to catch the eye.

Hope this helps

IMHO Wyches are indeed a lot more time consuming. Warriors have just armour, but Wyches have skin and leather. A little like Ork Boyz (compare that with "1 coloured" Marines).



Try to organise Your work, so You paint "like on assembly line". For example if You have Wracks and Warriors, paint Wych skin along with first group (unless it really differ) and Armour/equipement with latter. Leather go as final phase, then base everything etc.

No camera with me right now, but my scheme is sorta a take on the Cult of Red Grief. I am using mechrite red armor, blood red/orange highlights on that, just some codex grey and chaos black for the suit, and dheneb stone flesh as per all my dark space elves. Just went to a hobby store today and picked up some leviathan purple wash, eager to try it out as I saw in a BOLS tutorial for dark eldar skin.

Seems that skin>armor>suit>details is the order most agreed upon so I'll try that.

Quote :

Try to organise Your work, so You paint "like on assembly line". For example if You have Wracks and Warriors, paint Wych skin along with first group (unless it really differ) and Armour/equipement with latter. Leather go as final phase, then base everything etc.

I tried this, but I felt really constricted, and it was just really annoying getting all the little bits of armor covered. I'm thinking I might change the bodysuits to a shade of red and just keep the armor brighter. This might be a bit too monochromatic though.

Try doing the assembly line method starting with 3 models at a time. Work up to 5 or as many as you can stomach at a time. With models like DE that have a lot of detail I tend to paint three at a time. Things like Space Marines/Terminators that have less detail I paint 5 at a time. Works for me, see what works for you.

Just remember: they look great when you're done.

Hmm... You know, I just thought about another thing.

I've painted my (old) Warriors (two colours, Red and silver that changed into brass-gold), Ork Gretchins (green, black, red, brown, 2 shades of silver, white) and some Boyz (as gretchins plus blue, tho it needed repainting because "hot" colour of stain make it look greyish.) using technique called dipping. Basically this works like wash, except using thinned wood stain (brown in my case) or "special products" (like Quick Shade. However they don't make them in wide range of colours so most time Wood Stain is only way). Next move was matt spray and... Orks Orks Orks Orks Orks Orks Orks Orks Orks Orks ...

*khem* Sorry for "Waaaaagh mode".

How about painting base colour of leather, then base colour of armour/equipment and wash everything in "one" (or more) wash (like brown or black or red or mix of washes)? Next thing is skin and...

from this


to something like this (except GW washes aren't so glossy)

...

Wow.

...

I think the Haemonculi might let you out of the torture chambers for a day Mister Ork.

That is quite smart, I'll have to try that if I find some reddish stain, or could I just use wash?




BTW I lied about the Haemonculi letting you out. I'm sure there is still plenty of pain to be gotten from you.

The quickshades work WELL. A friend of mine has cranked out several armies that way that look tabletop good in a VERY short amount of time. No experience with it myself, but he told me that it works better than a wash and takes less time.

Paaaaaaaaain :3

I guess best advice I can give is:

Experiment. [thunder]

I don't have red wash, nor can say how it would work with Your desired colours. Sorry. Also, Wash can be mixed with normal paints to create really "juicy" wash.

Wyches are not meant to be easy to paint, they're extremely detailed and respond to careful, precise highlighting. I don't consider them my favorites to paint either because of how time consuming they are, and there really aren't any satisfactory short cuts. If you wanna cheat on a few models, I suggest using the ol' COBRA Viper helmets though.