Hi y'all. With the new Chaos codex just around the bend, I'm going for a renegade legion color scheme - the Pyre, to be precise. I've tried to paint them before, but with awful results.

I've painted lots and lots and lots of red (my old army turned out to be Word Bearers with all Khorne demons...), but orange confounds me. I'd love some suggestions on how to paint this color on space marines.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Shading and highlights are key. Orange is an interesting color. I'd suggest, that if you use a black undercoat, you're prepared to apply a number of thin coats, possibly re-based with white to start, on the more prominent points.

Blend a bit of yellow, or even white into your orange to highlight, and try using BLUE, the good ol' compliment, when you want to shade. I don't mean just straight blue, but to tone down the orange itself with blue. Although, you can shade with straight blues, and than layer thin coats of orange over top of it once dry.

Hope this can help you.

I suggest the orange foundation paint... Macharius Solar Orange. It's a bit darker than the normal GW oranges But building up from an orange undercoat makes it a lot easier.

Using blue for shades eh? Wow, that sure brings me back to art school, but it sounds like a nice idea.

How about using brown? Or maybe blacklining the mini? I guess I'll have to experiment on a test mini to see what I like best. Does anyone have pics of orange models that I can use for reference? It's not a very common color, so I've had trouble finding images.

I started my Sisters of Battle with a black undercoat, and several layers of Blazing Orange. However, this was well before the Foundation Paints came out.

On my next squad of Sisters, I plan on using either Mechrite Red or Solar Orange as the base, and go up from there. Hopefully it will mean less layers of paint to get a smooth finish.

I still haven't been able to get my pics up, but I do have an older one here at LO:
http://www.librarium-online.com/showcase/showimage.php?i=2986&c=47

Might want to check out CMON (http://www.coolminiornot.com/)for other (better) examples.

Here are the colors that I'm going to try for my orange-armored Chaos marines:

Bestial Brown > Macharius Solar Orange > Blazing Orange > Fiery Orange > Sunburst Yellow > (maybe) Skull White

I'm not sure how many layers I'll do, but I'm not going to have many marines and I want them to look nice, so I'll probably build the colors up and use an orange ink to smooth them out. This process served me well on my Word Bearers, giving them a striking, glowing red color.

I'll see if I can get my hands on a digital camera so I can post pics when my test model is done.

For those of you who still might care about my orange painting escapades, I've settled on a color gradient after much trial and error.

50/50 Blood Red/Blazing Orange, Straight Blazing Orange, 50/50 Blazing Orange/Golden Yellow, Straight Golden Yellow

This really gives the mini some "pop". I should finish my test mini today, so I'll try my best to borrow a digital camera and post a pic of him.