Your palette and you... being best buddies

I bet you all thought you were going to see another Bilbo's bash battle report, didn't you?  Well, you will be seeing one soon, but before that, I thought you might have some fun with this.

We start with a basic sort of base, using cork, some textured plasticard, oxide paste, and even some junk resin sprues.  The base size  is 80mm, by the way.

Many people ask about what my palette is like.  I try to show that more and more in my "how to" posts, such as the Great Eagle from CMON.

This is very typical of how I lay out my colors.  I don't think in terms of "space Wolves Grey" or "Blood Red", etc.  I am just interested in setting up a typical set of colors that I can mix and match where needed.

That means covering the essentials, yellow red and blue.  I will sometimes include other colors, but you can see how they are arranged from the warmest to the coolest.  I also like to have a dark to light set up as well.

Putting the colors in that semi circle, lets me pull from each one and mix in the open area.

Since I am using a bigger brush, as usual, it allows me to mix more efficiently.

Sometimes I like to 'pre mix' a set of dark to light colors, as you see with the blueish grey strip on the palette,  Note, it is very helpful to mix in glaze medium and/or cover your palette to keep colors wet.  I am not doing that here for obvious reasons.

You can see how I used that strip of color to paint the deck plating.

I am trying to get some contrasting warmer colors around the deck plating, so the blueish greys are more unique, hopefully emphasizing the metallic nature of that material.

I use the yellowish colors to further lighten the rocks and the concrete chunks.  I also add some rust at this point.

I continue to develop the lighter colors, but now I spread a little green/grey color onto the rocks on the back sections of the base.

More highlights on the deck plating, and I try to spread out the rust stains on other surfaces.

As I lighten the concrete chunks, I try to maintain some dark stains on the pieces, but I continue to lighten it on other places.

This view shows you that back section of the base, with the highlights.

I went back in with a small brush to pick out more highlights in various areas, such as the deck plating.

I go back into this with a few darker glazes, and it is just about ready to go!

And here it is.  I hope this demonstrates clearly the way I use my palette!