Painting Help

[Lord Tharand]

All -

 

I have a serious problem. I can't paint decent looking robes or deathwing white to save my life! Everytime I visit this forum and I see some beautiful looking robes or deathwing I get inspired again and break out my paints. However, my results are not to my liking and they make me want to cry!

 

If any Dark Angel Vets could offer up some tips/painting recipes/whatever I would truly appreciate it. I have a FW dread, loads of vets, and a land raider all waiting for some color and at the moment I'm a bit afraid to try!

 

Below is a pic of a typical robe for me.

 

http://i719.photobucket.com/albums/ww199/Olaf_Tharand/Dark%20Angels/DSC01827.jpg

[Bryan Blaire]

Lord Tharand: There are several ways you could add some depth.

 

Since you've already gotten that robe painted up, my suggestion would be to do a bit of washing, likely with Devlan Mud. Just like paint, in this situation, I would likely thin the wash some before using it, because you don't want to end up with dark lines where you start applying the wash. How I've taken care of this in the past has actually been with two brushes: use one to apply the washes and another that is completely dry. Apply the wash a little bit up from the point you want to darken and drag the brush down into the deep point you want the wash in. Then quickly behind that wipe the dark line that tends to form where you start the wash away with the dry brush. Rinse both brushes, wait for the wash to dry (I prefer to move to another crease/recess while this happens) and repeat the process. If you do this progressively out away from the deepest points, you should get some gradual change up to the higher points on the model (this is effectively reverse feathering/blending/layering-not something I'm good at either direction).

 

OR

 

You can wash the entire robe as you have it right now, then when it dries, go back over it with your base robe color and then re-highlight.

 

OR

 

When you start a new robe, use two brushes: one with some thinned darker recess color you've chosen, one with your thinned base robe color. Paint down the recess and then quickly switch to your base robe color brush and start at the high point and drag the color down into the recess area, allowing the paint to subtly mix along the edges of the previously applied paint. You can do this somewhat repeatedly until you get the blend the way you want it, and then to highlight, you do the same thing, but apply the base robe color, then use the highlight color at the highlight point you want and drag down into the base robe color to mix. (I'm not good at this either, but it is a technique to use).

 

OR

 

Pick your darkest recess color. Paint that on the robe. Make a mix of your darkest recess color 2:1 with your base robe color (or the next color up you want to blend to, depending on how many layers you want to paint). Paint that down and leave about 10% or so of the darkest color showing. Next, mix up 1:1 darkest:base color and paint that, again, leaving about 10% showing again. Next layer 1:2 darkest: base color and paint, leave about same % showing. Layer on your pure base color, reduce coverage another 10% again. At this point, make a mix 2:1 of your base color to your highlight color, but this time, reduce your coverage to only cover about 25-30% of the area (ie, you should have more base robe color showing). Mix 1:1 base:highlight, reduce 10% coverage. Mix 1:2 base:highlight reduce 10% coverage. Paint pure highlight, which should now only cover about 5% or so of the area you have been painting. As a final touch, if you have a "brightest" spot highlight color, you can paint this as a very thin/faint edge line or point highlight. You can up the complexity of this process by using a darkest, mid-dark, base, mid-highlight, and highlight colors, with a bright spot highlight with approximately the same color mixing schemes, but you are probably only leaving about 5% of the previous color showing each time with this set up. You may have to play with the percentages and just paint to taste to get the color interchanges you want, but if you aren't careful (or don't care), you will get more stark color changes along the edges of colors this way, and you can mitigate this some by swiping along the edge of the color change with a slightly wet second brush along the edge when you lay down new paint.

 

Hope this helps, or at least gives you some idea.

 

Good luck and let us see your results!

[Interrogator Stobz]

Bryans' advice is sterling, one thing I would add is if you use washes hold the model upside down until it is mostly dry, that way the darkest bits are where they should be.

 

I use three different washes and three different 'overcoats', depth is created using DEPTH, remember that acrylic paint is slightly transparent and what's underneath affects the top coat.

 

2c

 

Stobz

[Lord Tharand]

Thanks for the advice Bryan and Stobz! It's been a busy week with work but I'll sit down this weekend and see what kind of progress I can make and post some pics for you. I appreciate the help!