Painting Tutorial

In this post I want to show you how I make my color scheme happen, undercoat to finish. Many people asked for this one, and while it doesn't answer all questions, I hope it will answer some of them! I am yet to do a tutorial on my Gauss weapons but I will try to do that when I get around to painting my Destroyers. But enough yapping!

I undercoat my units black, then paint them Eshin Grey (or at least all the dark parts), drybrush Dawnstone, and was in Nuln Oil. This is a deep, dark grey that I build up from.

The first thing I do is paint all areas that will end up being blue in Dawnstone. This is a light, warm Grey that will look alien when drybrushed with an only slightly lighter but much colder blue. As for the yellow bits, I first paint them white (Ceramite White), then red (Wild Rider Red), then orange (Troll Slayer Orange). These are all thin layers but I'm going for solid coverage:

Once that is done, I start building yellows up from orange. I use Yriel Yellow. I usually also use a 50/50 mix of Yriel Yellow and Troll Slayer Orange as an intermediate step. On large surfaces where the color transition needs to look smooth I introduce more stages. If I were a better painter I'd do proper wet blending, but I'm not, so I don't. Considering that these are usually small surfaces, it works out.

Once I've finished applying yellows, I clean up the mess I made using Eshin Grey. On the picture below, the first model is plan orange, the second has all the yellow transitions done, and the third is post-cleanup. It looks much crisper.

Now I kinda screwed up here, because I usually clean up after the following step: drybrushing blues onto grays. It's hard to see on the picture below, but the left side of the model below and the left model have had their blue treatment. The right side of the middle model and the model to the right are still gray:

Once that is done (and post cleanup, as some of that blue inevitably reaches dark grey portions of the model), I drybrush Troll Slayer Orange on areas that are supposed to look hot. Depending on the model I might do proper OSL, but not on these guys. On the picture below, only the right side of the model has been drybrushed orange. You can tell by the glow that's lacking on the left side, both around the big three things on its spine and those little balls to the side.

And finally, with that all done, I draw white lines on the blue parts. You could call that edge highlighting, except I deliberately do not only highlight corners that would attract light the most. Instead, I follow the contours in a way that I find aesthetically pleasing but makes no sense otherwise. I'd like to think that this helps the material look alien, but in truth, I think it looks nice.

And finally, if I care about the model, I edge highlight dark greys with light grey, or do more OSL, but it depends on the model and my mood.

But that's it! It looks pretty good and is not too much work. There's lots of steps but most are pretty easy and don't require active thought or attention.

Thanks for looking!