highlights for newbs

[FallenLion]

hi i'm a poor painter :(

can some1 give me a very very very basic tutorial on highlights :D

 

any help greatly appreciated

[pingo]

Number one tip: practice! :) I wasn't great at first. Still not perfect, but getting there.

 

Other than that (assuming you are talking about edge highlighting rather than blending):

 

- Keep your paints thin

- Take care of your brush so it maintains a nice fine point

- Sharper edges can be very easily highlighted using the edge of your brush rather than the point, drawing the edge of the brush along the edge that is to be highlighted

- The more stages the highlight, the smoother it will look. Make each lighter shade finer and it looks more natural.

- Make sure that you're not just adding white to every colour to produce lighter shades. So, if you were painting an Ultramarine, don't add white to the Ultramarine blue, add Space Wolves Grey (i.e., a pale blue colour).

- When you load your brush with paint, dab it on something absorbent as an overloaded brush will be messy to work with

- Clean your brush often: if paint starts to dry in the bristles, the brush will get too firm to work well with

 

The real secret is just learning how the brush works and learning how to apply the paint where you want it. And don't worry if it's not perfect! It will get better, just give it time. Be as neat as possible and your model will look just fine. We're not going for Golden Demons, and most of the time your model will be viewed from at least arm's length, so if a highlight is a bit squiggly, it doesn't matter. The next time you do it, it'll be less squiggly. And then again, even less squiggly.

 

Just keep it up and you'll get there :)

[glayvin34]

Learning how to highlight has been the steepest learning curve for me, freehanding, drybrushing, washes, color palettes, and everything else seemed pretty intuitive, it's highlighting that's hard.

 

Pingo has great pointers if you want to place your highlights with wet paint, but I prefer drybrushing. Drybrushing will give you a different feel than wet paint, it looks dustier and dirtier, so even skilled drybrushing doesn't look as good as skilled wet paint. But IMO unskilled drybrushing looks better than unskilled wet paint, and I'm unskilled, so I drybrush.

 

-Cut the end of the bristles off your brush, shorter, stiffer bristles tend to make less of a mess. I prefer a brush tip that is about twice as long as it is wide, but it depends on the starting stiffness of the bristles.

-Use unwatered down paint

-After you dip your brush, remove most of the paint.

-Carefully rub the edge of the tip on protruding edges. If you need a guide, look at the plethora of Space Marines at Cool Mini or Not.

-If you're like me and you suck at painting, then you will get paint where you don't want it. I find that the thin layer of paint that drybrushing lays down is easy to cover. So after your first highlight, go back and drybrush your base color just below the highlight, effectively making the highlight narrower and closer to the edge. Something like this:

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c118/HaldaneKing/DryHighlight.jpg

-If the transition is still to rough, you can give it a wash to smooth things out, in the above example I would use Baal Red.

 

Of course, I use the above technique as practice, some day I'll get the stones to try it with wet paint.