Painting - Final decision

All right, you know I've been undecided on the final colour scheme, time to decide once and for all.
Now I'm down to two options:

The light option

Shade: VGC Dark Prussian Blue
Midtone: Royal Blue
Highlight: Enchanted blue
Extreme highlight: VGC Pastel Blue

The darker option

Shade: Black primer
Base colour: VGC Dark Prussian Blue
Highlight: 33% Enchanted Blue, 66% Royal Blue
Extreme highlight: Enchanted Blue

I love both versions but it is time for the right choice. Please spare a minute to comment!

See them face to face:

Painting - First go on the Sentinels

Tonight I managed to finish my first test paint of the Sentinels. It is a five marine combat squad and a lone assault marine. They are still wearing the original paint scheme, I'm still not decided weather to go for the darker scheme or stick to this one. I fear that this is a bit ultramarie-ish, but apart from that I'm pretty satisfied. The guys are purists, no extra purity seals, tabards, squad numbers, the regular ones will have all of this, but modestly.
Instead the new converted backpacks they are wearing old style ones, because I'm running low on backpacks and I'm going to give these first ones to friends anyway.
For the bases I had some arid, rocky steppe in mind.
So here you go:

Earlier:
Painting - Quest for the perfect highlights

Subject for tutorial wanted

Hi Folks,

I promised you to make a new tutorial on two piece mould resin casting. And I ask for your help to make it happen.

Since I don't want to mess with GW, or promote the unproper use of intellectual property, to make a tutorial with a GW model as a subject is out of question. This leaves me without a proper master.

I built a mini or two before, but they were all given away when I switched to different armies. It would take me weeks to put together something decent, but I don't really have the time and motivation for that. 

Now this is where you can help. 

If you have a scratch built mini, a small vehicle, a special bit, a weapon or something interesting that you would donate for  educational purposes, I'd be happy to use it as a subject of the tutorial.

The subject 

• Should not contain any copyrighted device or material, or should not be derivative of anything that is somebody else's intellectual property
• Should be relatively small, fit in a 5cm side cube
• Can be multipart, but ideally no more than 3 pieces
• Should not be extremely 3d. You all saw GW sprues or metal minies; the more complex ones must be cast multipart. Working with green stuff is one thing, but casting it is something different.

In exchange for the master I can offer a few copies of the original or perhaps the finished mould if that is more desirable. I will never sell copies of the subject of course

If you are interested, drop me an email and send a picture of the proposed master.

Of course all credit and gratitude is granted :-)

Earlier on resin casting:

Designing a chapter Part 4. - Resin cast custom shoulderpads

Designing a chapter Part 3. - Resin casting your insignia

Designing a chapter Part 5. - Custom backpacks

Last time I manufactured my own chapter shoulderpads, hope you liked it. This time I continue working on the special flavour I wish to create for the Sentinels. Custom backpacks will give a small, but smart enhancement to the brew.
This is quite an easy conversion. I chose symbols of the right size from the resin cast pieces of insignia I made in an earlier post, sanded their backs to make them thinner and glued them on standard GW backpacks. Of course  the plain ones are the best, but also the other types once you get rid of the original symbol with a sharp knife. Depending on your insignia you may have to remove rivet heads or trim the upper part.
Anyway, here is what I achieved

Primer and paint them the usual way:

Slowly the visual chapter design is taking shape and I'm quite happy with it. Of course not all of the marines will have these converted backpacks, I keep the standard ones too for variety. Hopefully these little things will help to make my boys unique and professional looking (after I learned to paint properly of course).

See also

Designing a chapter Part 4. - Resin cast custom shoulderpads

Painting - Quest for the perfect highlights

Finding the perfect colours for the Sentinels proved rather difficult. Since there is an army to be painted I had a few principles in mind before I started to select:

1. A shade a base colour, a highlight and an extreme colour must do, there will be no more levels
2. No drybrush on the armour - on smooth surfaces I never seem to get it right...
3. Layering is preferable - Because that's the way I like it
4. No full-body washes

I had dark blue in mind, and since I'm a great fan of Regal Blue, originally chose the following colours on my trial marines:

0th variant - Original
Shade - VMC Dark Prussian Blue
Base - Regal Blue
Highlight - Enchanted Blue
Extreme highlight - 50% Regal Blue- 50% Ice Blue
I thought that it was going to be fine, but it turned out rather lame. The highlights were too crude, and I didn't like the result at all. So I went to the bits box for my leftover metal torsoes and I knew I have some serious testing to do.
Please note that I did not aim even at TTQ on the samples below, only wanted to find the most suitable colours using minimum time and effort. Here are the results

1st variant
Shade - VMC Dark Prussian Blue
Base - 50% VMC Dark Prussian Blue - 50% Regal Blue
Highlight - Regal Blue
Extreme highlight - Enchanted Blue

Actually I liked this variant, it had contrast without too extreme highlights

2nd variant
Shade - VMC Dark Prussian Blue
Base - Regal Blue
Highlight - 50% Regal Blue - 50% Enchanted Blue
Extreme highlight - Enchanted Blue

A little disappointment. While I like regal blue, this combination was a bit too low contrast.

3rd variant
Shade - VMC Dark Prussian Blue
Base - Regal Blue
Highlight - Enchanted Blue
Extreme highlight - VMC Pastel Blue

.... as this one is too much. Pastel Blue is a tad darker that the Regal Blue -Ice Blue combo I used earlier, but still too light.. At this point my wife being the one person jury chose the first variant for further improvement.

4th variant
Shade - none
Base - VMC Dark Prussian Blue
Highlight - 66% Regal Blue 33% Enchanted Blue
Extreme highlight - Enchanted Blue

5th variant
Shade - none
Base - VMC Dark Prussian Blue
Highlight - 50% Regal Blue 50% Enchanted Blue
Extreme highlight - Enchanted Blue

Since the base colour is very dark as it is, I dropped shades, and used only the highlights, which is good since it will speed up painting a bit. Perhaps I will use black liner or Badab Black ink, we shall see.
To cut a long story short Patricia and I agreed that the 4th variant looked best. Not too harsh highlights but exciting. a bit crimson fist-like look. Or Dark Angels in blue.

Do you have any tips on how could I further improve this scheme before I start painting my first tactical squad?