Sunday, November 13, 2016

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!

10 comments:

  1. Look great, thanks for the tutorial.

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  2. Is it possible to do with brushes? Can you make a video to showcase it I'm trying to make the same molten effect but am struggling.Please Help. Thanks.

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    1. It's all brush actually :) Good luck staying within the lines with an airbrush...

      What are you struggling specifically? A pic or description would help a lot. A video tutorial would take a lot of time to make and I'm short on free time these days.

      Which step are you struggling with?

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    2. Thanks for you time. um how do i send you a pic?

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    3. like i struggle with the part of doing the yellows like i have a super fin brush but it really hard to get a smooth transition and stuff. Any tips for the glazes?

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    4. You can post a pic on imgur or somewhere else and post a link to it. I don't think you can attach images here.

      As for glazing:

      * Do not use a super fine brush. I cannot stress this enough. Fine brushes have no volume to keep paint, so all the paint is at the tip. That means that you'd tend to use thicker paint so that brush strokes do something, plus paint tends to dry out much faster when it's all in the tip, exposed to the air. I'd use a size 2 here. Much bigger than you might think. Even a (good) size 2 or 3 will have a tip small enough to fit entirely and easily within those channels.

      Fine brushes are good for eyeballs and eyelids, line scratches, wrinkles, that sort of thing. I use them extremely rarely.

      * Thin your paints. Yriel Yellow is a very strong paint, so if you want to create a smooth blend, you'll have to make multiple thin passes, focusing on the brightest parts.

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  3. Hi, What are the blues you use over the dawnstone? Thanks

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  4. Do you leave the black parts black from the undercoat and on some of your necrons, what paints do you use for the skulls and crowns? Like your Lychguard.

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    Replies
    1. The black part parts are described here: https://bonecron.blogspot.com/2015/01/musing-on-color-themes.html

      Just leaving something black won't look great in general. You gotta add some highs and lows, otherwise all the details get lost.

      For the Lychguard I think I used a mix of Ushabti Bone and white as the main color, with more white towards the light and less white and a bit of Zandri Dust towards the dark.

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