3 step GK painting

[imzra]

before anything i am in no way a good painter. before, i used to paint my GK in chaos black and just drybrushed them boltgun metal. recently with the new release of the codex i thought it'd be nice to give my old GKs a make over but after realizing i had to repaint 40GKTs and 40PAGK i was demoralized lol. so i got down and started to think of the simplest way i could repaint my models which would also raise my painting level a bit. hence i present to you the 3 step GK painting:

 

1 - airbrush or paint the model [mithril silver]

2 - paint [blood red] [bleached bone] for purity seal and cloth and [chaos black] for the guns and weapon shaft

3 - wash [gryphon sephia] for gold areas and purity seals and [badab black] for guns and ammo clip and [asurmen blue] for the eyes

 

i know it's not awesome or anything but im kinda happy with the results in relation to the effort. some people had suggested [asurmen blue] on the recesses but im not quite sure what they meant. i've tried washing blue on the armor but it ended up very blue and kinda removed the metal-shining-effect. any help on this would be awesome as well as on easy ways to paint force weapons would be greatly appreciated. although i dont think i'll ever try a complicated process requiring mixing, blending, or God forbid; an 8 step painting just for a sword lol.

 

anyway thanks in advance and hope this helps a few new painters out there or lazy painters like me haha

 

cheers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dublindawg]

Looks great for a very simple process. Do you have plans to pain the swords and halbard blades a different color as they are force weapons?

[imzra]

thanks dublin !!

 

yea i do intend to paint the heraldry shield and force weapons a different color but so far im stumped. all of the tutorials ive found on the web are either too complex or just plain pro for me. im trying to look for maybe a 2 step painting method. so far ive tried regal blue and drybrush with white but it doesnt look that great. [man i really hate those golden deamon painters]. it would be capital if maybe you or anyone else could give me a few pointers or share some tricks up your sleeves.

 

also feel free to comment/critique on the models, am really looking forward to learn something new here.

 

thanks and cheers !!

[T3mpl@r Crusade]

They look very sharp for how simple the paint scheme is, I commend you for it. however, I believe with about an extra 10 mins per model, they can come out with much more shading, and it wouldnt be that much harder.

 

When GK came out with the demonhunters codex, I used a blue ink (discontinued) to selectively darken the recesses of the armor and it looks fantastic. ink can be a pain to use. now that washes are out I agree with the use of that. I avoided the flat raised surfaces such as the shins and other larger flat surfaces.

 

I have 16 termies total, and I never got around to painting them all. I only had 4 done. If I could upload pics from work I would, but it was alot of work. Now with the washes the gold and the armor will be so much easier to do.

 

If I were to start out with your style, I would do just the armor first, ignoring the golds and reds. I would wash the armor lightly with azurman blue. I would probably avoid the larger suface *flatter* areas since the objective is to obtain some shadows. Since grey knights are all glowy with pure energy, I would prefer the azurman over badab black. And to regain the shine you want, go back with mithril with drybrush it all over.

 

Its an extra 2 steps, but it wouldnt take that much longer to do, I still have my old school tank brush that works great for mass dry brushing. I think the extra 2 steps would take me an extra 10 mins per model (not including wash drying time).

 

Once the messy part is over, go in and do the golds and reds and purity seals.

 

Your golds look great, I wouldnt change them.

 

I would base coat the reds in scab or blood red, depending on how dark you want them to end up after a wash.

 

Then do the purity seals, I usually go in with tallern flesh foundation, then with bleached bone, leaving some of the deeper sectons in tallern.

 

Once the reds and the purity seals are done, I use an ogyrn flesh with 1/4 brown ink (depends if you have it) for all the reds and parchment. Gives it all a nice dirty aged look. It gives the workability of a wash, combined with the crack penetration of an ink. If you dont have a brown ink, the the sepia will probably do fine as youve done, but I feel like the books look amazing with a dark brown in between the pages.

 

That would probably add alot of shadows for minimal time, maybe 15 mins extra per model going slowly.

 

For me I would proceed by giving the reds 1 highlight and edging the purity seals. eyes would be done with a 3 color lense, and I would probably try to get a glowing hue around them cause that would look sweet.

[imzra]

thanks heaps t3mplar. sure sounds like a good and 'doable' way to further up my painting. few questions though

 

1. when you mentioned 'wash lightly', how does that actually work. forgive me for being naive but i just tend to dip my brush in the bottle and start washing. do i add water? and if i do how would i go about it? would dip the brush in water then quickly dip it in the bottle work?

 

2. when you mentioned recesses, where exactly does that mean? like the joints?

 

3. not really sure what inks are although i reckon its some sort of a much 'darker' or 'solid' wash?

 

btw it actually took me like hours just to complete one guy lol. slow painter here waaaargh. also i too have one of those massive drybushes lol. stole one of my wife's huge ass lo'real make-up brush. it actually worked great !!

 

thanks again man

[T3mpl@r Crusade]

No prob :D

 

2. What I mean by receses are any areas that have a corner. take for instance the termy legs, they have all those reinforcement pillars on the back and some on the front. plenty of corners where we can assume a shadow would be cast. places such as the space between the foot and the bottom of the shin plate, between the toe and the bottom plate of the foot, that tiny sliver of a crack, thats a recess. My general rule is thus, "any corner that is surrounded by raised edges".

 

3. inks are a discontinued GW paint line that preceeded washes. They can almost do the same thing as washes but are much harder to use since they have a much denser pigment and they behave differently then washes in terms of hydraulic surface tension. when I use them, I target a very select area where I need them, since as in between the pages of a GK book, but I would never use them for shading a large surface area since they will stain pretty much any place they are placed, and wont flow into cracks like you want unless you force them to.

 

1. when I say wash lightly, don't heap it on (by dipping directly from the bottle with a standard brush size and painting right on the model, concentrating on a small area). If you use too much wash, too much will collect in corners, and when it dries, it will crack up and ruin the attempt. the more you use, the more "blue" your shadows will look. To put it into a good approximation in terms of quantity, take a standard GW brush, dip it into the bottle (you should have a nice blob of wash) and that should be enough to cover all the areas of the termy legs for shadows. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, try half of that blob over all of the termy leg recesses first, and see how blue it gets, if your not happy with it after it dries, do half again. Youll only have to do one trial termy, and whichever quantity gets the termy where you want it, then that sets teh standard.

 

When I paint the rest of my termies, to speed up the process, Ill take my tank brush, load it up with wash, then just cover the whole termy, to a point where I feel it will be balanced, just from experience I know how much to use and how it would look. In terms of "quantity of wash", the best way I can explain it to you is that like in point 1, the trial termy will allow you to get a feel for how much coverage youll need for when it dries to get a good look. from there, take the tank brush, and duplicate the coverage over the rest of the model. If an area gets too much, just go somewhere else on the model to get more wash off your brush, then come back to the soaked area and get the brush to absorb some. once dry, I would dry brush with the tank brush, (make sure you dry the hell out of it since it might be damp from a rinse, I use my gf's blow dryer hehehe) then go to town with dry brushing. youll need to go in at the right angle to avoid geting any mithril into the corners you just washed.

 

If I have a chance tonight, Ill do just the armor with a step by step picture tutorial to give you a good idea for quantity and resulting look.

 

I started with boltgun with my termies since I want it darker beofre I go in with the mithril drybrush. that way the corners will look darker and blue then the mithril highlight. just ads more effect to the shadows. If you desire the same result, all you have to do is badab black the mithril, itll darken enough to match around boltgun.

[T3mpl@r Crusade]

alrighty, so I did a few trials with the armor and found the optimum results.

I started with boltgun metal as mentioned, so mine will be a bit darker then how your will be. I almost recommend doing a badab black since the dry brush of mithril wont create enough contract against a basecoat of mithril. but, see how it turns out.

Step 1, boltgun metal basecoat

Step 2, azurman blue wash. I used alot more then what I explained earlier, but it isnt on there that heavy. the second pic gives you a better idea from the back

Step 3, mithril dry brush. these 2 pics show the transition

This pic shows that there is little to no difference in the way I drybrushed by using an interim chainmail dry brush before mithril

And finally, one of the end products :P this one was done with inks, no washes. Ill be updating him with washes to match the other final products if I like the result

Total time spent on the two steps, azurman wash and dry brush = 10-15 mins.

The other change I would like to mention is that I did not use my tank brush to apply either the wash or the dry brush, I used a normal sized dry brush since I found I needed the acuracy.

[imzra]

wowzers !! thanks heaps again man !! now i get what you meant by recesses. i really like your blue effect after the drybrushing. the blue looks so subtle yet manages to shade the model. now that i have a good picture where those asurmen washes should go i'm definitely gonna try it when i get back home. also your finished GK is nice man, he looks like he has this overflowing psychic force/aura thing going on. thanks again bro, really appreciate the time and effort you put in just to help a random stranger on the web lol.

 

btw would it be possible to transfer that method on to force weapons? although i reckon it wouldn't be as nice due to the lack of recesses on the blades.

 

am still figuring out an easy way to paint force/power weapons.

 

hope some others could share too :cuss

[T3mpl@r Crusade]

No, prob, always happy to help :cuss and thanks for the compliments

This thread inspired me to finally start working on my WIP GK, and this method takes way less time then the inking I did before, so I'll actually have incentive to do them now haha. the last pic took me 3 days, but that was 2 years ago without washes, so I should be able to do it very quickly this time around.

 

I pretty much put the azurman all over the armor where the mithril should go, I didnt spend time trying to pick out spaces. essentially, in an open space where there is no blue visible, that was covered up with heavy dry brushing.

Make sure when you use the dry brush, rub most of the excess paint off on a paper towel, otherwise youll end up putting blotches of paint into a recess, which would suck.

Like in the codex, the models have a blue hue on the lower part of larger flatter plates of armor, I'm trying to duplicate that result by going lighter on my dry brushing in that area and gradually going heavier. You can see in the 4th picture, the middle model has a heavier coverage of azurman where I intend to duplicate this effect. It sort of worked out but its hard to tell from the pics. Ill post the finished product in my albums sometime in the future and link back to this thread.

 

I probably wouldnt use this technique on the blade since I intend on using blue blades. give it a shot and see what you get though, if it doesnt work, its only a blade you have to repaint over.

 

What I intend to do for the power weapon will be a coverage of regal blue, then take enchanted blue and do a heavy highlight across the blade edges and lightly across the center raised ridge until it has a decent covering, while avoiding filling in the gap between the sword edge and the center ridge.

Then ill wash in azurman blue, which will darken the highlight. Ill repeat the highlight to a lesser extent to create a transition. Then I'll take my calligraphy pen and do lightning across the blade in enchanted blue.

Then I will dry brush with 50/50 enchanted blue and white and use my caligraphy pen with a thinner line for the remainder of the lightning (same 50/50 color mix).

Final highlight of skull white along the very edge of the blade. Ill see if I can post a result tomorrow or the next day

[T3mpl@r Crusade]

Again, I've had the incentive to push forward, so here are my nemesis force weapon steps.

1. base coat in regal blue

2. dry brush on enchanted blue close to the hilt, then azurmen blue it to darken the whole thing

3.dry brushed again, a little farther from the hilt this time with enchanted blue again. Lighting added composing of enchanted blue with around 25% of my special caligraphy white ink

4.50/50 enchanted blue skull white dry brushing, farther from the hilt. after dry brushing, the same mix was watered down for the caligraphy pen and I selectively striped parts of the existing lightning with a narrower strip.

5.final skull white highlight and lightning completion.

final sword product :D

total time spent knowing I can be more efficient = 20 mins, most of that spent on lightning. halberds wont take me as long

[YourMumRang]

Here's how to get awesome and easy metallics with NO BLOODY DRYBRUSHING!

 

Take a model and basecoat in Boltgun or Mithril.

Make a black ink using GW black ink, Klear Floor Polish and water.

???

Profit.

 

The Klear breaks the surface tension of the ink and makes it go on REALLY well. 2/3 quick coats and a bit of optional highlighting and you have a high gaming standard model (or a high general standard with a bit of work) in no time.

 

Same for gold but using a brown ink. I can get pics.

[T3mpl@r Crusade]

please do, I would like to see that since I'm just starting again on my termies, so if I can save some time and get a better result, wahoo

[YourMumRang]

Currently looking and I have only bad pics... still looking...

 

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b388/YourMumRang/Termies.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b388/YourMumRang/STA70937.jpg

 

Neither look that good tbh. Will be posting my GK soon!

[Brother Captain Kezef]

I'm a crappy painter so I'm going for a KISS method.

 

1) Boltgun metal

2) Asurmen blue wash over all the silver areas

3) chainail

4)mithril drybrush.

 

One of the odd things I find about GK is they reward any skill level of painting. Basic skills can still get a good effect as the model has a simple paint scheme and mettalic painst can be very forgiving.

[T3mpl@r Crusade]

this topic has long been dead, and my previous posts have been far from 3 step as the original post, more like 21 (including force weapons), but as promised, finished product.

From left to right:

1. initial 3 step armor. boltgun metal base, azurmen blue wash, mithril drybrush

2 and 3 brazen bronze basecoat

4. reds and purity seals, final details such as eyes and final wash steps (outlined below)

all swords are multi step posted earlier in the post. total time to do the 3 halberds on the left took 40 mins

view 1 final product

view 2 final product

for point 4, i did the steps in the following order:

1. scab red on all purity seal waxes and books

2. black storm bolter

3. codex gray on book symbol and dry brushed onto bolter

4. tallern flesh on all paper/purity seals

5. bleach bone on all paper/ purity seals on the highest edges, ignoring corners and underneath

6. 40/60 mix of ogryn flesh and brown ink on all paper, reds and gold surfaces

7. eyes

I still have to do the shoulder heraldry, but Ill do all of those at once so I can get in a groove. still needs blood red highlight.

working solid on the 3 halberds termies hasnt taken that long. estimated time for all three is around 4 hours, could be faster if I tackled more at once for the same step, but I get a bit bored.

If i were to shorten this process, I would skip step 2,3,5, and one step eyes. For the nemesis force weapons I would do a regal, 50/50 regal enchanted, enchanted blue from hilt to tip, then dry brush 25/75 skull white and enchanted. Total steps for this would be 14 and I'd probably save around 20 mins a guy, reducing it to an hour per termy.