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zenithal lighting for tanks?


Ashdown

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I am going to be using an airbrush for my tanks that I will be painting up soon. I have been trying to step up my game in the painting deparment and have been reading on zenithal lighting. How should one approach this painting up tanks like an LRC? I will be painting them up as a Black Templar colors. I was going to do what I normally would do with fading from the center out and highlighting the edges of the tank, possiblly using an extremly dark blue or purple, not sure yet. Any tips would be appriciated. THanks
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For white areas, where possible paint separately. You want a medium grey base colour for these, which you bring up to white. For the black, a black undercoat brought up with a dark grey (VMC black grey) will work well.

 

The general technique is to spray downward (relative to the model) at an angle of about 45 degrees. Steeper gives harder highlights. Blush up the centres of large panels. It's tempting to run with the technique and go too light, but this will make your black look too grey. With the white areas, having them separate saves a lot of effort in masking. If you have to mask, paint the black first and make screens out of paper to cover where you don't want white. Attach these with a decent (Tamiya ftw) modelling tape to have clean edges. Do NOT expect decorators' masking tape to work well. Then first airbrush a good opaque coat of grey. When spraying, you want the paint to go on and look glossy for a few seconds before drying in the airstream. This indicates that the medium is hitting the model (not just paint particles) which means your paint will level out, and not go dusty and easily rubbed off. Be careful not to spray too wet, or you'll end up with paint going under the mask, which is not good news.

 

After airbrushing up I'd edge highlight up to a medium grey (codex grey) and tight extremes of a light grey (fortress grey) on the black, and erm, white on the white.

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