White Lightning

Right, I am now in possession of six of the new Reaver Jetbikes. I hadn't intended to get any but a fellow at my LGC gave me three gratis so I had to get three more to get the regulation six.

I've been struggling for colour scheme ideas, but I've hit upon something that I would like to try - as implied by the thread title, white Reavers. If you've read my Kabal entry for the Screaming Maw, I've mentioned that the Skysharks, the Reaver gang who work most frequently with the Kabal, ride "pale mounts".

So here's the basic plan:

Bike body: Skull White undercoat, layer of Dheneb Stone, drybrush Skull White, 2:1 diluted Gryphonne wash - mainly for the recesses, highlight with pure Skull White.

Pedals/Handlebars/Bike Underside "grid"/Blades/Splinter Rifle detail (ie that little strip of metal inside the rifle "housing": Drybrush Boltgun, 2:1 Devlan wash, highlight Mithril Silver. The rifle housing and barrel will be painted thusly: Scab Red basecoat, Drubrush Mechrite Red, Devlan Mud wash, highlight Blood Red.

Display/Light: basecoat Dark Angels Green, drybrush Knarloc Green, highlight Scorpion Green, Thraka Green wash, extreme drybrush 2:1 Scorpion Green/Skull White for OSL.

Freehand decals will be done in the same red as the rifle housing, and some generous blood splattering will be done with Scab Red and Blood red at selected spots on the models.

The Pilot

Wychsuit: Chaos Black basecoat, highlight Adeptus Battlegrey, extreme highlight with Codex grey.

Armour: As Bike body.

Helm: As Bike body.

Faceplate: Basecoat Scab Red, 2:1 diluted Badab Black wash for the recesses, (in smaller sections building up to a spot highlight) drybrush Mechrite Red, drybrush Blood red, drybrush 2:1 Blood Red/Skull White, drybrush 1:1 Blood Red/Skull White, spot highlight Skull White.

...gee, didn't I start by saying "basic plan"? Sorry about that.

So, obviously there won't be any pics of this in progress for a bit, but I'm giving the first one a go tonight. Don't worry, I have plenty of Dettol in case it looks bad and needs to be stripped.

So, thoughts, ideas, suggestions all welcome! I'm still trying to think of a spot colour, perhaps for the jewels on the bike, to tie them into the rest of my army. Running themes colour-wise are Christmas colours - red, white, purple, green and silver!

Thanks for your time,

Raucir

I've always loved the idea of white and DE (I just settled for white skin as I suck at doing large areas white)

I do purple gems as I like them to accent but don't want them to draw too much attention. I'd honestly vote that.
Silver gems? Can I vote that just to see you paint them?
I think red wouldn't be a good idea considering the blood spatters and glyphs. Green is probably workable if you want more of a pop than purple.

My article on painting White.

I'm really not a big fan of using Dheneb Stone for a white base. I think it misses too much of the feel of a cool crisp white.

painting White the Cool Way

Thanks Gar! If I don't have a breakdown looking at your tutorial I'm sure it'll be bloody useful.

Yes... Silver gems... Perhaps I should have thought a bit more carefully when constructing that sentence. I think it's going to be a toss-up between green and purple gems - thanks for the vote, Thor! I'll test Gar's white recipe and see how those spot colours compare.

Raucir

Actually this silver isn't that silly as it sounds.

Silver + wash + gloss laquer = instant gem.

I had tutorial somewhere....

I also wonder if You couldn't make white a little more... red-brown. That would be a little different from standard "blue" white.