Painting Vehicles advice

[crimsonsphinx]

Hi All,

 

This might be a stupid question, it certainly feels it as I have been painting some 20 years, but I am flummoxed on how I can do the following.

 

My Dark Angels are spray painted Angel green, then washed with black wash (the old GW one, not current)

 

How do I acheive the same green colour on my tanks without the tanks looking streaky?  I have seen others paint with wash on their tanks and they don't look very well painted.  I can't not wash the tanks as the green is considerably lighter than my painted marines. 

 

I need a way to shade and paint the tanks to the same colour, without them looking like they had a really dodgy coat of paint.  Any advice appreciated!

[Prot]

Hmm, I personally have this issue as well but with my Ultramarines. I found that by putting a slightly watered down coat and then applying Testor's matt finish that it blended very nicely. Sometimes the problem is hard water edges, I strongly recommend a few drops of a 'retarder' in the amount of Ink you wish to apply.

WARNING: Do NOT put the retarder directly into your ink pot. It will have a long term chemical effect that will degrade the ink.

The retarder stops the hard water stain effect. For the record, Nuln oil is far superior to the old GW black ink. So while the retarder will help prevent hard water stains, the other issue is the 'blotchy' look. That's why I say you need to dilute the black ink, and you're better going for 2 think coats.

That being said I came up with a technique for my Crimson Slaughter I should show you... let me dig that up....

Okay this is the biggest picture I can find of my Landraider. Now this is the current method I use to achieve this.... Mix your base colour (in your case Green) and water it down substantially. Then take nuln oil (or your ink of choice) and add a few drops into it. What happens is you get this nice, thin paint/ink wash that is almost identical to your desired finish colour on your foot troops.

Just a warning though, it looks different wet than dry. So you MUST try a test model. Something like an old crappy rhino. Once you have the recipe figured out in your head, you can achieve this MUCH easier IMHO than trying to do a pure wash over a finished model with large flat surfaces.

So the above model was done with this method. The base red is far brighter that I prefer, so I go back over my Crimson Slaughter vehicles with this trick to deepen/bloody the reds with a Khornate red watered down, and I add Agrax Earthshade (brown ink) and I'm essentially doing the exact same thing you're wanting to achieve. This big picture of the LR shows very little colour discrepancy.

I hope that makes sense. Good luck.

(P.S. personally I bought army painter Dark Angels spray paint for my greenwing vehicles. :) )

[crimsonsphinx]

Thanks Prot. 

 

What retarder would you suggest?  I have never used any of those, I am far too used to just adding water to paint.  By hard water, are you referring to living in a hard water area or something else?

 

Ill leave testing it on any of my three landraiders then.  They are all sprayed green, which is annoying with the deathwing vehicle thing, but I plan on doing something to paint on some bone in places. 

 

I do have a spare AOBR dreadnaught that will never be used I can test on, and I do have nuln oil, I just haven't used it on my dark angels.  I have tried to be consistent in the colours that I use.

 

Thats the spray I bought for my dark angels too, its brilliant.  But I used black wash on the infantry to tone it down.

[Prot]

Well by hardwater stains what I mean is it is the drying effect of inks on larger surfaces. You can't see it on infantry because of the curves/sizes of the pieces. But what can happen is on larger surfaces the ink dries and leaves stains where the edges of the 'pools' are, this is where you get obvious concentrations of ink that you can't really get rid of once it dries.

 

A retarder helps prevent that by breaking up the water/ink so it doesn't form hard edges as much. It only takes 2 drops. Any brand will do I've used MIcroset in the past, but lately I buy any brand and they all pretty much work the same.

 

Honestly, I would just try the second method. The Dark Angel spray is very close to Caliban green. So I would buy a pot of Caliban green, take some for mixing purposes, add drops of water, then when it is the consistency of milk, add some of your black ink to that. (Not too much you can always add more later).

 

Try that recipe on your dreadnaught. Let it try. Is it the same shade as your infantry? Is it close enough? Maybe you need a bit more ink, maybe it'll be perfect in one go.

 

If you look at the way GW do ultra's it's similar. You can actually see a shade difference in some of their new vehicles. Like I said, it works for my Crimson Slaughter without having to worry about water stains.

[crimsonsphinx]

I may have caliban green, cant be sure without checking my paint pots.  if not I definitely have dark angels green, which I used to paint my Azrael and hes indistinguishable from those painted with Angel green. 

 

Thanks for the advice.  Not sure when I will get chance, but I will try this out :)

[Lucien Eilam]

Well by hardwater stains what I mean is it is the drying effect of inks on larger surfaces. You can't see it on infantry because of the curves/sizes of the pieces. But what can happen is on larger surfaces the ink dries and leaves stains where the edges of the 'pools' are, this is where you get obvious concentrations of ink that you can't really get rid of once it dries.

 

They're commonly referred to as tide marks. You'll find a lot of advice searching for that term.

[elmo]

I have a method where I do not use a wash all over the armour...

Spray in matt black then using your green spray (I use Army Painter Angel Green) angle the can to leave shadows by applying the paint at a diagonal to the model. This naturally leaves shadow in panel lines and you can direct the spray directly on to larger panels to give a brighter green towards the centre. This takes a little practice to get right.

Then highlight the DA green (I use Warpstone) using a very dry drybrush and use black ink in the panel lines to add starker shadows.

Works for me

http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2014/031/7/0/4th_company_command_razorback__dark_angels_by_elmo9141-d74hrwq.jpg

Edited for poor spooking

[crimsonsphinx]

I think the problem with me using your method Elmo is that your painting skills vastly outstrip mine! 

 

As a rule, I have not highlighted the green on my dark angels (although I do highlight the rest of the model), simply because I wanted it as dark as possible, I was trying to achieve a look where the light was being absorbed by the green paint. 

 

I figure the approach Prot has advised, about mixing a paint with a wash, is a easier thing for me to try.  With my guard, I have some fifteen or more fully painted and washed tanks, but the accumulation of wash looks very good as a dirt/grime covered tank.  I didn't want the same on my dark angels tanks.

[Gillyfish]

I tried the wash route on a vehicle... once. After that I actually found it was quicker and more effective to simply mix the green and black paints and use that as the basecoat. Black line with either a wash or with straight black the details you want to add depth to once you have highlighted (I drybrush and then fill in gaps with the basecoat again). Then you can weather to your heart's content!