The woes of yellow ink...

So for anyone in who lives in the NoVA area (specifically the 95 corridor in Prince William County), you know we have had a bad run over the past few years with gaming stores.  Recently, I discovered it is even creeping in to craft stores.  So with our GW gone for years now, Game Parlor gone for a while, and HobbyTown gone, I went to Micheal's for of all things... yellow ink.

I am painting some Cryx and I wanted to a nice orange glow from the "furnace" over a deep blue chassis (Exile Blue for the PP paint people). For what ever reason, the first attempt I used paint.  This gave me a chicken 'jack that looked like it was on fire.  Neat, but not at all what I was after.  So I decided to try and do it with ink to get a more menacing glow.  Well, okay, I can see orange ink not being that common since it can easily be made from red and yellow ink.  Given that it will take a lot of ink over an entire army of Cryx that happen to glow a lot (actually they wont, but I want the glow consistent over all my models to do and will painted at different times).  I decided to hold off making a big batch of custom orange ink, and just try out of the inking methodology on a chicken 'jack with green just like in the back of the Cryx book.  Well it turns out I didn't own yellow ink...

Yellow ink...  I tend to use calligrapher's ink for my models.  It is cheaper, comes in bulk (for my purposes bulk is those little glass jars), and is generally nice high quality stuff.  It doesn't come in yellow though.  Which when I think about it kinda makes sense. Who writes in yellow?  Well, as I mentioned above, hobby supplies are in kinda short supply in NoVA.  So Micheal's doesn't carry it (or sable brushes anymore).  GW doesn't carry ink anymore (woe to me, for I have all the other inks).  Fredericksburg is so far away that I have to plan my trips there carefully (which wasn't going to happen in the time window I wanted to start the orange glow).  So Warstore here I come...

Ah Warstore...  If I ever get married, I have a hunch my credit card will be blocked from there.   So I am snooping through the volumes of stuff on there and find Vallejo Transparent Orange.  Oh, premixed Orange?  that is exactly what I need, so I go and order it and red and yellow and wood.  Wood ink you say?  Ya, that should have tipped me off that I wasn't buying ink.  Of course, I proceed to buy tons of things that are not ink, like Heavy Gear: Blitz, ACTA: StarFleet, an extra Ashlynn to convert into a non-pumpkin head, etc..  The key is, not ink.. .  Well, Neil manages to get that box to me in less than 48 hours, pretty sweet, and everything is actually in the order!  So I run to the basement with my transparent paint in hand, excited to get my green grow trials underway.  And I was less than impressed.  Transparent paint is cool, and I can see potential for it; however not as a substitute for ink.  After all that, off to Game Vault in Fredericksburg Saturday night for yellow ink (and red, and green and blue).  Oh well, So here are some snap shots of what I have been painting.

Here are the base coated Cryx models that haven't had any attempt at lighting.

  The bugger on the left is my first attempt at OSL of an orange glow, as you can see he is on fire, which is not a sinister orange glow.  The Green glow is the attempt where I actually had yellow and green ink.  I also switched shades of green ink from Windsor Newton Green, to PP green. I am starting to get the hang of the white base for the white base. The use of the white base for green glow is giving me fits.I think the inked one looks better in person, the camera is picking up a ton of glare that wont be there on the final model (ink being shiny until sealed and all).

Here are the same models on the opposite profile.  On the right is my green glow using green ink and yellow transparent paint.  While not hideous, it was not what I was looking for.  You can also see the subtle highlighting and shading I started on the orange one.