pre shading

[henrywalker]

Beasts of war Romain uses a technique called preshading. basically when he primes the model he primes black, then grey then white, with lighter coats each time from the top showing a natural highlight where the light would hit. he then paints with thinned down paints and the shading stays, darkening where the black is and lightening where the white is.

 

i just tried this technique on a space wolf terminator. the priming looked pretty cool and i then applied shadow grey thinned significantly with lahmian medium. however in mine the shading didnt come through.

 

I tried thinning it down to wash consistency but then the color didnt show up on the black.

 

any suggestions about how to make this work?

 

i did think about starting with grey then highlighting white with my primers and then mixing some SW grey into blue wash and trying that.

[Brother Nihm]

I only skimmed his tutorial but isn't he doing it more to help his eyes recognize where to place the highlights than actually having it do the shading for him?

[henrywalker]

he says thats useful too but then he paints the model he prime in his tutorial video (the lizard man) and talks about how the shading comes through and tones the blue he is using. He does the same on his black legion guy too if memory serves

[winterdyne]

You need to be glazing, not sloshing the paint on. The application of paint over the preshade has to be very thin, very even.

[Yodhrin]

Exactly winterdyne. If the paint you're putting down is taking more than a few seconds to be touch-dry, you've put down too much. I also recommend thinning the paint with a mixture of water and acrylic medium(the ratios depend on how you want the paint to "feel" on the mini, so you'll have to arrive at a mix you like through experimentation), as that allows you to get the paint down to the right consistency without totally washing out the colour. I actually think the best video that Romaine has done to demonstrate the technique is the one where he paints the gargoyle clinging to a pillar(is it one of the old Rackham minis? I forget), you can clearly see just how thin the paint is, and how sparing he is with it.