Solo Quins, 1500 point list log

I've decided to take the plunge into Harlequins, I know a lot of people are down about the possibilities of the new minidex, but it really appeals to me as a fun army for tuesday night gaming at my flgs. I like the new vehicles, but I'm not entirely sold on the poses for the new quin infantry (I didn't much care for the old ones either). Instead I'm going with converted infantry using Sisters of Slaughter and a bunch of green stuff.

I'm going to try and get this army together fairly quickly. As points-expensive models the actual model count is going to be fairly small to get to my 1500pt goal. I'll do my best to document it as it goes here.

Here's a couple of pics of the early stages and a test of a colour scheme. C&C welcome.

Looking at your stuff, I can't believe I never considered the sisters of slaughter for harlequins Too late now I guess but hey it will be cool to see how yours turn out! Judging by the colour test this log is gonna be good, keep it up

Thanks, there's just something a bit more fluid about the dark elf poses. I'll be using shadowblade as my solitaire as well. I'm still not totally sure about the colours. I like the basic idea of it, but it needs a bit of refinement. If anyone has any ideas they'd be very appreciated. Still, I want to get all of the models together before I start painting, so theres some time for tests..

I think the scheme is a nice idea, but for me, personally, it seems a bit off ... The combination doesn't apeal to me . But as I mentioned above, that's my individual colour preference.

The mask is really good, I think, so I see you can wield a brush

Some things, that I noticed:
There are no real sharp seperations between the different colours on the details. I know, some schemes work well with a very small palette of colours, but then they mostly don't mix them. Try to do sharper "lines" between the colours: on the colar, the belt and the torso (do you want the torso to be blue or orange?).
A few general tips: If you spend more time on the pre-painting step, especially the cleaning up, the finished model looks way better! For example, I'd go over the kneecap, shoulder and the ribbons.

May I ask, what effect you wanted to achieve with the blue/orange dusting?

Hmm ... Maybe a bit more contrast would help, as you painted the model, the motley on his leg seems to disappear, which is a shame, as to paint it, is really time-consuming and sometimes frustrating (yeah, I have a bit experience myself)

I hope I didn't sound rude, just trying to help you and share a few things I've learnt over time

ps: Cudos on the conversions! I wanted to try them too, but as wyches ... before they went from "situational" to " unuseable" ... looking forward to see them painted!

Not rude at all, I appreciate the feedback.

Blue and Orange has always been one of those colour palettes that I love on paper but have always found a bit daunting when it comes to modeling. For me it's a combination of colours that really represents twilight (in England at least we have sodium street lamps that give off a very orange light that contrasts against the early evening darkening summer sky). In the past I've tended to pick one key colour and then use small amounts of complementary and contrasting colours for details, but for the harlequins I wanted them to look a bit more vibrant, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to break out the blue/orange combo. Two vibrant colours to form the base with a tertiary for major details.

I haven't really added anything much to highlight the minor details yet, but I'm playing around with some neutral metallic to pick out toggles, edges and the like. Hopefully this will improve things.

I think the aim of the pseudo zenithal spray effect (orange sprayed from the top, blue from the bottom) was to break up the model into more abstract shapes while giving it a sense of shading. Its a technique that I know works well with shades, but this is the first time I've tried it with such contrasting colours. The idea of the effect is that the colours merge around the parts of the model that would be in partial light and partial dark, hence the blending. I like it in parts, in particular I like the way the boots blend from top to bottom, but parts of it are less successful (the torso and arms).

I did kinda rush the clean up on the model, it's a spare from a voidweaver kit that I won't be using, so just wanted to slap some paint on it to see how it looked, but you're right, it does distract from analyzing the paintwork.

There are elements I haven't decided on yet, particularly the diamond patterning, which will cover more of the models in the final job, but which I need to practice quite a lot before then.. marking them out evenly is a massive pain.

Thanks for the encouragement, I'll keep at it!

I like the conversions, and the idea of sunset colours, but the green doesn't fit in my opinion.
(And that must mean something when it comes from someone like me)
For your theme, i'd maybe use a mix of sunset colours (blue, purple and reddish orange) for the main cloth, make the metals look like the metals from your street lamps, and use a very yellowish orange for the spot colour. Or maybe red, like cars driving under the street lamps.

I hope that helps, you should definately keep it up, looking forward for more!

Ah, now I see what you want to achieve

Great idea, love it!

Hmm ... maybe try to do it with 3 colours, as you use an airbrush anyway (I assume): blue base coat, purple from the top and a light dusting with orange. I think the transition doesn't comes out as good as you'd want on that test model.

If you want to stick with the blue/orange theme, maybe use a bit darker/more reddish orange for your base scheme and use a bright orange as spot colour? Could work I think ... or bright orange/rich red (old Scab Red springs to my mind) for the diamond pattern?
As Marrath said, the green doesn't work that well with the colours you've chosen.

Oh, and personally, I'd stay away from OSL like colouring when no real/visible light source is around, as it seems to be on the backpack. If you want to get a "shiny at the top" effect on metallics, I'd just go with a silver highlight.

But with all WIP things, nothings set for now, right?

Cheers guys, thanks for the suggestions.

I think I'll try a couple of other tests and post them up in a day or so. I quite like the idea of a darker red base that underpins both the blue and the orange. I tried a blue base briefly, but the orange doesn't take too well to being painted on top of it, purple could be a good intermediary (but I'll have to go shopping).

I'll have a play about and get back to you all, Thanks again!

Nice idea using the sisters of slaughter as more Harlies - I might have to steal that in due course

Looking forward to seeing how they look when all painted.

Ok, something of an update, slow progress as I don't tend to have a huge amount of free time, but I've got a couple of pics of the base colouring for the vehicles and a revised colour scheme for the infantry.





No major detailing yet. I'm doing my best not to rush them.

As a bonus side project; unrelated ork:

Awesome looking colour mix!
Combined with detailing shown on the Ork, i'm sure this is going to be a great project!