Advice for painting woad

[Barret]

I've been eyeing doing woad markings for my Sons of Dagda, but I've no idea how to proceed. I've heard mention of using inks or really thin paint. Anybody have any concrete advice and/or examples to go on?

 

 

Cheers,

Barret

[Marovingean]

woad? am I missing something or is Jonathan Ross typing phoenetically? (brits will get this joke and find it tasteless...)

 

M

[Squiggoth]

Woad: http://www.hippy.com/albion/woad.htm

 

I remember doing patterns like that on some Troll Slayers I painted ages ago ... the trick was to use thinned down paint and a fine brush with short hairs (for good brush control and sharp lines). Thinned paints are handy in this case because you don't want your brush to dry out when you're right in the middle of painting a perfect circle.

The amount by which you thin your paint can be used to change the appearance of your woad .... Basically, thicker paint looks more like warpaint whilst watered down paints look like (faded old) tattoos, and by mixing some flesh colour with the blue you can make very natural looking highlights for tattoos (warpaint can be highlighted with a lighter version of the basic colour).

Just try it out on a few test models ... you may hate the fiddlyness of it after the first mini, or you might want to go for fineliner instead of a brush.

The main problem I found is that such fiddly patterns often look like blue blobs when seen from tabletop distance. Keep the skin visble between the lines, and don't go overboard on the amount of lines. Things that work on six feet humans don't always work on tiny toys. :)

 

 

As a sidenote, here's a tutorial on tribal tattoos; a very good technique but it's time consuming when painting an army: http://jenova.dk/Tattoos.htm

[Barret]

Slayers! I'd totally forgotten about them. Thanks for the reminder, and the link. I'm sure there's a Slayer tut out there somewhere that talks about painting woad warpaint/tattoos.

[Growlf]

if i were to do such a thing i would use paint that has been fairly thinned down and only use a small amount on my fine detail brush at a time, so only a bit of the paint on the tip then apply like that, afterwards i would try to pickout some of the thinner parts in aslightly lighter colour where it is thick or something.

[Starks333]

its the same as doing any form of freehand...paint it on, "erase" the mistakes with the colour around it to make your shapes better/cleaner (so it would be skin colour in this case)

 

and to blend it in, glaze over it with skin colour

 

as for brush, use whichever, some people like long bristles(because they hold more paint, are more flexible etc) some like short, some like both for different situations

 

Starks

[karial]

woad? am I missing something or is Jonathan Ross typing phoenetically? (brits will get this joke and find it tasteless...)

 

M

 

 

./smirk

[Mal]

Well firstly remember woad is dark blue.

 

So go out and try to find some of the old blue ink, I have some I use for my own, it works quite well.

 

Now your going to want to water it down a bit, about 1/3 ink 2/3 water should do it.

 

Try not to get too much on the brush, only a little at a time, very carefully outline the pattern you want and fill in the spaces, don't worry about being too precise, if a little flesh shows through, well thats actually a good thing, just try not to have big patches of flesh.

 

You'll need to put 2-3 layers on to get a decent coverage. And be careful, its a bare to cover ink with flesh.