For the painting scheme I wanted to go with the classic, basically green plants and red spikes. For the most part, I will be using the airbrush.
First, I primed the models in Molotow black (#180 signalschwarz), a color I have seen recently quite a lot with different YouToubers, especially MarcoFrisoni NJM. As I always suspect the quality of my output would be much better with tools I don't yet have (which rarely turns out to be true… don't tell my wife… that is my main argument for why I need to spend more money on the hobby), I bought a bottle of the black. The application through the airbrush really went well, great consistency, so far I like it very much.
Next came a zenithal with white ink.
This was followed by spraying large areas with yellow ink. This will be the highlight color for the green in the final result, as well as provide me with different greens. As the inks are only half opaque, spraying the green over white compared to over yellow will produce slightly different greens.
Next I used ochre, mainly to create some deeper yellow where two yellow balls met; and again as a base for different shades of green.
Then came the green. Everything that was still white or ochre over white was sprayed green, where there was already yellow I tried to create some gradients towards the yellow as lightest highlight. Some parts I also left mostly yellow, to be greened in a later stage with washes.
Next came terracotta wich I used as a shadow color for all areas to be red, as well as a shadow color for green areas where the plants meet the ground.
Finally came the red. Although not fully opague, the red is quite strong. I produced quite some overspray, need to work on my airbrush control, but I had to at least airbrush all the static grass, painting that by brush won't go very well.
Had to do some yellow and green correctio… As intended from the beginning, I absolutely intentionally applied the red quite liberally, in order to go over it again with red and green, therefore creating even more interesting shades and transitions. Nature, you know.
All the cocktail stick spikes I painted by brush. The red was not intense enough everywhere for my liking, so I came in with some white acrylic paint and quickly brushed over the outward ends of the cocktail sticks. Re-applying the red over these areas provided me with a more dull red at the base of the stick, and a bright red towards the tips.
All the colors used:
The result is quite bright at the moment. On the one hand I tend towards leaving it as is, in my mind this is the classical retro-90's vibe. On the other hand I had planned from the beginning to use some oil washes, and generelly tend more towards a more realistic (as realistic as it gets with alien plants…), toned down finish. I will see how heavy I apply the oil washes, and if I go more with browns (muddying the overall effect), or green and yellows to keep the general vibe… Not finally decided yet.