New Kabal/CWE color palette and Tips needed.

Hello.

I'm starting a new Kabal with eventual CWE ally force (Pawns of my Archon, but they don't need to know that). I envision a night and day or good versus evil scheme between them with a single accent color to tie them together. Currently I'm looking at white and black tied together with either purples or blues. Though, here is the good guy/bad guy part. White Dark Eldar and Black CWE. I mean the good guys always wear the white hat right?

I'm curious on thoughts on this in general. Also I have some questions about painting this system in general. I am an airbrush guy. I use it mostly for base coats, high level shading, and large wash, but I want to get into it more on finer things. I currently use an Iwata Eclipse, but have issues at smaller areas. I normally spray around 15-20psi for base coating, but doing smaller areas is there a better psi? Also, how do you control for those finer needs without overspray?

Next I use mostly GW paints and can thin those for Airbrushing. I also use VMA for some colors, can anyone recommend some good greys, to highlight black (I have some experience here as I have a large RG SM force but would like more tips) and to lightly shade white?

I was also thinking of black lining between the armor and panels of the white. IVery never tried it. How do people get such clean lines without spill over?

Thanks for the help.

I'm gonna start off by saying I don't know anything about airbrushes, so I'm sorry if it's not the valuable advice post you were hoping for

Since you already brought up about the black lining between white armour plates on your CWE (it's just practice, and retouching over and over, by the way!) why not expand that idea and have something like your Deldar armour 70/30 Black/White, with the opposite on your CWEldar? Thinking about colours of heads/hands/clothes as opposed to armour plates...

That way they're already tied together nicely by the colour scheme, and you can use spot colours to make individual units stand out/look right traditionally, like greens on the Scorpions, orange on Fire Dragons, gold bits on Trueborn, whatever.

Otherwise it might end up really clearly defining the different factions in your army but losing the individuality of units, making it look in the end like you basically have two giant squads on the table!

Hey Zhodair. Sounds like a cool idea. I've always wanted to paint a white Eldar army, and a black DE army... Anyway red would be a good tie in color as it would stand in contrast to both plus it'll give em a deadly looking edge. But if you've seen my army you'd know I'm partial to red

I use my airbrush for basecoating only so I can't help you there... but as for shading in the veins between the plating on vehicles and whatnot I use Nuln Oil from GW and just run it with a fine brush through the grooves. As long as your careful it generally stays "inside the lines" so to speak. Plus its an easy cleanup if it runs over. My vehicles are a dark red so the nuln oil reads as black really easily... on white you might need to do a second coating of it but it should be pretty easy. I would shy away from running straight black paint on the veins though its brutal to try and clean up if you get sloppy and it takes forever to actually paint all the lines. The washes apply much faster, its easier to control and touch up. Nuln Oil is the way!

Thanks for the response.

@thesaltedwound: I looked a bunch of the ratio themed armies and as nice as they look I don't think I can pull off the other needed steps. The really good ones I saw use highlighting or lining of greys. Neither of which I'm good at. I do agree though that if pulled off an inverse flip would be cool. I also plan to do as you mentioned and keep aspect warriors and DE uniques somewhat true to their background. I try a sample ratio and see if I like it at my skill level.

@Cavalier: I have seen your project log and love it. I like your red and agree is more deadly looking. I'm just not comfortable using that color yet. I have been able to nail down purples, blues and greens at this point. My nemesis seem to be yellows, reds and metallics. I'll try the wash thing. My luck with washes has all ended in pooling or sloppy brush strokes, unless I go super thin coats. I usually airbrush it now as I use it like a shade coat. I'll give it a try. Your right the clean up would be way easier. Touching up white over black is rough.

Thanks guys. I'll let you know how it goes.

I would suggest to sticking to brushes for fine detail. Airbrush is the wrong kind of machine for that IMO.