Starting Grey Knight Painter / Player

[Stopher]

I just started Painting Gray knights and was wondering if any one could give me constructive criticism on how to paint the grey knights more effectively.

 

http://i41.tinypic.com/20awaco.jpg

 

Thank you in advance,

Stopher

[Crynn]

Good on ya for seeking advice.

 

I think the best stratergy is to start by doing things simple and as a painter I can tell you one thing. It's all about neatness, there is no techneque you can't pait with a neat hand, everything else is jsut learning to apply the technique with your neat hand and time, lots of time.

 

So let me give you some basics. First always start with an undercoat, I think you have used white, I would suggest using GW's black spray.

 

Second paint the ENTIRE model mith mithril silver, and make sure you water down you paints before you put them on the model, you always need to do this. So you should essentially be left with an antirely silver model.

 

Next apply a light to medium coat of 'badab black wash' again to entire model and let it dry. It should do most of the shading for you! then give the model a ligh was of GWs blue wash, I forget exactely what its called, make sure it's only light and again over the whole model. When that drys you should have a shaded silver model with a slight glint of blue tones through the armour and so far all you have done is wash over 1 colour!

 

Then you need to pick out details with whatever colours you like. Make sure your paints are always watered down and take your time and be sure to be neat. Once you have applied a colour and you are happy with it, get a wash from GW in a similar colour, eg you painted bone on the skulls, so geta GW devlin mud wash and lightly wash that over the bone for instant easy shading. If you follow this method for all your colours, 1 even, neat colour followed by a wash you will get some nice looking models that arent to hard to paint!

 

Once you have mastered that we can move on to highlighting.\\If you manage to get that done post a pic of how it turned out and I will tell you where to go from here for added detail.

 

Regards,

Crynn

[Inquisitor Fox]

Crynn's advice is spot on.. however you might be like me, in that I've essentially never gotten washes to work right and look like they aught. I've managed inks a few times (usually on leather) but washes over an entire model hate me.

 

So I do it the opposite way, and I drybrush :sweat:

 

I start with white primer (I always work with white primer, personal preference) then put a layer of black paint on nearly the entire model. I then put a drybrush/light layer of boltgun metal on everything. I then go to details (gold areas are gold on the black instead of boltgun metal) like purity seals, weapons, bare heads, etc.

 

The key that I've found is to be slow and careful. Remember you can ALWAYS redo things or clean up spots where the colors went where they shouldn't. Add a little black, then fix the metal again over it. I've found being patient and striving for "neatness" looks really good from a tabletop perspective. Heck.. you can even skip shading or highlights if you're just going for tabletop simply by being neat and precise with each of the areas.

 

I tend to just do layers of two or three colors... my red areas tend to go mechrite red foundation paint/red gore/blood red. This gives the red a little more depth than just doing blood red initially. If you need to put white over black.. I've found going from black to a grey to a white works a lot better.

[Crynn]

Please don't take this the wrong way but I would highly suggest not dry brushing as it doesn't improve your painting skills and can only take your painting so far. In saying that washing doesn't improve them either but applying a watered down base coat is pivotal in learning to paint.

 

Please don't take offence i'm sure what you do works really well inquisitor, I jsut don't personally believe it's good advice for a new painter. Agin please don't take this the wrong way.

 

Regards,

Crynn

[Inquisitor Fox]

Oh no worries :sweat: I always qualify things by saying I am NOT a Golden Daemon level painter.. I get decent / relatively good looking models and there's lots of areas of painting that I stink at, so I avoid them. I learned with fantasy Warhammer Bretonnians, so for me working with black to drybrushed metallic is "home" and then the detailing goes over that. As evidence I point to my own blog here on the B&C, specifically the Grey Knight Terminators and the Exorcist Marines. I'd call that a decent / good paint job, but nothing that will win awards or competitions. There are lots of folks who do better than I do, but I've found being careful and simple often does really well compared to most folks at the game store.

 

What I do now isn't a true drybrush of spatter spatter spatter everywhere... sort of a modified light layer of metallic with controlled brush over black paint over white primer. It's merely an alternative approach in case he wanted another viewpoint. So no offence taken, I just wanted to give an alternative to washes in case they're like me and just had horrible luck with them :lol: I always prefer to build up my colors with layers and drybrushing rather than washes, simply because I've ruined too many models trying to be slick with a wash and never being satisfied with it.

[Stopher]

Wow thank you both,

 

I actually dry brushed purple on a lot of this Dread knight and the next model I paint i will try your method, Crynn.

 

Yeah this has been a while since i have painted models but now that I'm in college i need something to do in my down time other than constant studying x.x

 

I will post another model up here (most likely a space marine for my lack of money at the moment) with the new painting technique.

 

Thanks again,

Stopher

[Stopher]

What I do now isn't a true drybrush of spatter spatter spatter everywhere... sort of a modified light layer of metallic with controlled brush over black paint over white primer. It's merely an alternative approach in case he wanted another viewpoint. So no offence taken, I just wanted to give an alternative to washes in case they're like me and just had horrible luck with them :) I always prefer to build up my colors with layers and drybrushing rather than washes, simply because I've ruined too many models trying to be slick with a wash and never being satisfied with it.

 

Haha i laughed when i read this :) Yeah i am not the best painter either :cuss but i hope to soon be better

 

Thanks again,

Stopher

[henrywalker]

i won't mention much on techniques as a lot of good stuff has been said. paint scheme wise i have a few suggestions but do remember that your grey knights should look like you want.

 

from the picture i think that you've put the main colour as white. thats fine if that how you want them although grey knights are traditionally silver, i would say that it is very hard to make white look good as it is hard to paint well.

 

i also cant tell if you've used yellow or gold, whichever it is, gold and yellow are colours that really work best either as the major colour of the model or in sparing accents. then it can look very good. if you do the whole, 1 colour plus wash then i find the best for gold is gryphone sepia.

 

lastly, you've used a lot of blue, and that fine if you like it, in general the traditional colours to go with the grey knights silver are red and white, used sparingly these can look very nice. a good example of this is the landraider crusader on the GW website in the Grey knight page. the silver landraider has a broad red stripe with a thinner white stripe through it. this can look very good.

 

you also need to be careful with reds and blues that they are not too garish for the model. very bright reds and blues can often look out of place on an otherwise subdued model. this is fine for chaos or daemons but not so much for grey knights

 

hope that helps

[henrywalker]

oh and god knows painting a big ol thing like the dreadknight all silver can be a bit miserable so tips for that, use a big (not too big) brush and thin the paint, a home made wet pallete can be useful for this. also i would suggest learning how to paint grey knights by painting some terminators or power armor guys first. they are easier in general and take less time to basecoat silver. in the time it takes me to paint a dreadknight silver i can paint about 10 power armours silver.

[Crynn]

Some great advice here. thanks for taken my words int he right way inquisitor, doesn't always happen.

 

Anyway matey when your model is done chuck it up here and send me a PM letting me know its up and I'll tell you where to from there if your happy with the result thus far

 

Regards,

Crynn

[BulldogUK]

I concur with pretty much all that's been said here Stopher, black spray undercoat, try either a mithril silver or chainmail base coat (slightly thin the paint down). Let it dry thouroughly then apply a thinned black wash (everywhere). Again let this dry then if your feeling brave simply go along the edges and pick out the detail with mithril silver straight from the pot. Dont rush things and keep a steady hand mate. Try all this on an infantry figure first. Once you get the base colours sorted you can then experiment with adding blocks of your own choice of colour to personalize your army. just remember the simple rule light base, dark wash, light lines. When you have mastered this we will move on to more advance techniques my good man!

 

Look forward to seeing the results :)

[Crynn]

I concur with pretty much all that's been said here Stopher, black spray undercoat, try either a mithril silver or chainmail base coat (slightly thin the paint down). Let it dry thouroughly then apply a thinned black wash (everywhere). Again let this dry then if your feeling brave simply go along the edges and pick out the detail with mithril silver straight from the pot. Dont rush things and keep a steady hand mate. Try all this on an infantry figure first. Once you get the base colours sorted you can then experiment with adding blocks of your own choice of colour to personalize your army. just remember the simple rule light base, dark wash, light lines. When you have mastered this we will move on to more advance techniques my good man!

 

Look forward to seeing the results :)

 

Never paint out of the pots not even for highlights, always water down your paints unless you are drybrushing bro

 

Regards,

 

Crynn

[Twin .44]

Instead of taking on the long and daunting task of basecoating a large scale model, have you (just about anyone with the same painting issues as me) thought about aribrushing? I recently got back into 40K and one of the things that I always hated was basecoating and washing. Anything. It drove me nuts because it was time consuming and a royal pain in the back end. So what I do for my GK is a black undercoat, mithril silver base, thinned down Badab black (very light, just enough to darken it a little bit, in between Mithril and Boltgun), then Asurmen Blue, all through the airbrush. It takes some time to get used to thinning the paints properly for the airbrush, but after a few tries, you get used to it. And there's a wealth of tips online to help you out. Especially YouTube. That's how I learned.

 

To cover my dreadknight in mithril silver took no more than about ten minutes (plus prep time). If you check the WIP in my sig, you can see an example of it on a regular terminator. It took about fifteen minutes to coat 10 terminators, and has made my life soooooooooo much easier.

 

And on another note, I've actually learned and re-learned quite a bit about painting from this thread. Since getting back into 40K, I for some reason forgot to thin paints for my detail work ;)

 

If you get into it, let me know. Can't wait to see your results either way!!!!

[BulldogUK]

Never paint out of the pots not even for highlights, always water down your paints unless you are drybrushing bro

 

Regards,

 

Crynn

 

Thanks for the advice Crynn, I will take it under consideration. I am amazed I have got this far using only my tongue, thankfully never had any complaints from the customers or the laaydeees :D LOL

[DreadLift]

Have you looked at Army Painters coloured primers ? I use their primers all the time and to good effect. You can pick them up on eBay cheaply enough and you will get a lovely smooth finish. Their silver primer is top notch. However I still use a black undercoat 1st followed by the army painter. Just look at their website for how best to use their products. I would provide a link but on my phone atm. Just google "the army painter" hell with a can of black and a can of silver you can give yourself a great start :D.