For today’s How to Paint Everything, we will be covering Darkstar, the psionic mutant member of Russia’s Winter Guard. She, along with her brother the Red Guardian were members of the Soviet Super Soldiers; she also defected at one point and joined the Champions.
We’re going to start with a white primer coat and then spray her again with yellow before continuing on to the black suit and painting her magical effects. I decided to go this route to make it easier to keep the yellow bright, rather than starting with black and having to worry about getting coverage when painting the yellow areas.
Here’s the colors I used in each section. Let’s get to it!
Painting the Yellow
I’ve been cheating a bit with yellow lately and using Army Painters Daemonic Yellow spray primer for the basecoat of my yellows whenever possible. We’re going to do the same here with Darkstar’s yellow bits and then shade and highlight it with Flash Gitz Yellow and White. We’ll bring is a tiny amount of Genestealer Purple for some color theory shenanigans in the shadows too.
- Basecoat: Army Painter Daemonic Yellow Spray Primer
- Shadow: Citadel Flash Gitz Yellow: Citadel Genestealer Purple
- Layer: Citadel Flash Gitz Yellow
- Highlight: Citadel Flash Gitz Yellow: Vallejo Model Color White
Painting the Black Suit
Once again we will be leaning into Incubi Darkness and Black for the black sections of her suit. We’ll start with a mixture of the two and then use Incubi Darkness, Phalanx Yellow and Ulthuan Grey for the highlighting.
- Basecoat: Vallejo Model Color Black: Citadel Incubi Darkness
- Layer: Citadel Incubi Darkness
- Highlight: Citadel Incubi Darkness: Citadel Phalanx Yellow
- Highlight: Previous Mix: Ulthuan Grey
Painting Her Face
There’s not much in the way of flesh showing on Darkstar, which means we get to do some fairly easy skintone painting on her face. I decided to go with Reaper’s Fair Skin colors for this one. We will mix in a bit of Altdorf Blue and Bugman’s Glow to add cool and warm undertones to her and reinforce some recesses with a mix of Agrax Earthshade and Fair Shadow.
- Basecoats: Reaper Master Series Fair Shadow: Citadel Altdorf Blue & Reaper
- Highlight: Previous Mixes: Reaper Master Series Fair Shadow
- Wash: Reaper Master Series Fair Shadow: Citadel Agrax Earthshade
- Highlight: Reaper Master Series Fair Skin
Painting Her Hair
For her hair we are aiming for a blonde color, so we are going to start with a basecoat of Zandri Dust, from there I’ll mix in Ushabti Bone and White to add some quick and easy highlights to it.
- Basecoat: Citadel Zandri Dust
- Layer: Citadel Zandri Dust: Citadel Ushabti Bone
- Layer: Previous Mix: Vallejo Model Color White
Painting the Magic Effect
For the Darkforce magic effect, I wanted to try something a little different. I decided to try out painting a Kirby Krackle effect on it to make it different than any of the other spell effects I’ve done so far. For this I started with Naggaroth Night and Fluorescent Magenta as a base and then highlighted it with more Fluorescent Magenta. From there I painted a bunch of small dots all over the spell effect using Naggaroth Night again and Black.
- Basecoat: Citadel Naggaroth Night: AK Interactive Fluorescent Magenta
- Layer: AK Interactive Fluorescent Magenta
- Stipple: Citadel Naggaroth Night
- Stipple: Vallejo Model Color Black
That’s it for Darkstar, I feel like I should have used a different color for the purple stippling, since Naggaroth Night and Black seem to blend together a bit and the effect gets lost at a distance, but thats ok. Have you painted up Darkstar for your collection? If you have, find me on social media, hit me up on Twitter/X (@brushwizard), Instagram (@brushwizardry), or Goonhammer’s own Crisis Protocol channel on the Discord server and share your work! I’m always interested to see what the MCP community has been working on.
We’re almost done with the Winter Guard, next time I’ll cover their final member – the big bear man, Ursa Major!
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