Advice for painting runes on TS weapons

[Galloway]

Quick question for those who've painted up rubrics and/or scarab occult.  On most of their weapons, theres an area with very fine runes engraved on the sides (painted glowing bluish-green on the GW website). Does anyone have advice for non-Duncan level painters on the best way to paint these? I've tried a bit of painting the base color, then tracing over the runes with a light blue, but I'm not wild about the results. Maybe I just need a super steady hand and finer brush, but was wondering if there was a trick to use, or tutorial people would recommend.

 

FWIW, here's my rubric squad now (sans transfers). I'm rather happy with the rest of the scheme, and feel like not doing the runes leaves them incomplete.

 

 

Thanks for any advice.

 

Mods- wasn't sure if this was better here or over in the painting sections. Sorry if I picked the wrong place.

[Zodd1888]

Cheater way is use Nihilakh Oxide then brush the next layer up with a dark color combo for it to pop. I'm terrible at painting but this type of stuff makes it easy.

[Raven1]

I use ulthuan grey and go over it in waystone green, and very carefully drybush/paint black over top.  It is very easy to use too much and fill them in and ruin it with whichever method you choose so be careful.  I do the same thing for lens and with gemstones or use like a stormhost silver to make gemstones more shiny.  The waystone green is great because its like a gel and very easy to use.

[Skerr]

I am using the red and blue technical gem paints on my rubrics right now and really liking the results.

 

The above are great tips for the runes and i am going to try the Oxide route as i have been looking for a reason outside tiny details on promethium relay pipes to buy it , thanks guys!

[Zodd1888]

@Skerr if you want to try to add some more depth to the effect you can try to line the runes with Moot Green or something striking. It looks neat with the pale of the oxide.

 

I think I like pastels too much now that I look at my schemes lol

[Raven1]

Technical paints are great especially the gemstone ones. So easy. Nihilakh Oxide is great too i use it like is shown on Duncan's youtube videos for Spirit hosts. It looks great for fire or "warp energy" like on Ahriman.

[MillionsSons]

I struggled for this as well and found the formula that works for me when painting the last rubric of my first squad:

 

- directly on top of the black primer,  I use a very thin brush (the length of the hair is like 2 mm and extremely sharp) to apply a layer of Gauss Blaster Green (edge). This is a light greenish color.

I water the paint a lot so its a bit liquidy and easily goes with the brush and fill the rune. A second layer is required sometines when the black can be seen through after the first layer.

Then I fix errors with the same brush, where the green went beyond the rune print.

[Galloway]

Thanks all for the tips and suggestions. I ended up going with something similar to MillionsSons suggestion, primarily because I didn't have any Nihilakh Oxide, and had already used the green technical paint for significant elements elsewhere on the figures. Instead of green I did a very light blue with my finest brush on top of a black/silver mix basecoat, and then we back afterwards and fixed up best I can. As much as anything I think it was just a mental step of committing to taking the time needed to do it slowly and carefully.  Sample results:

 

 

Overall fairly happy with results. If anyone has pictures of using the other approaches, would love to see them. Thanks again all.

Edited December 20, 2017 by Galloway

[MillionsSons]

Look nice :)

I have my pictures on my instagram (I don’t seem to figure out how to post pic here from my mobile) IG: painting_in_hk

The last rubric on which I use that technic is the one with the icon of flames. On others I used diverses technics such I brushing black on top of a green layer.

Nice conversions for your sorcerers btw. I like the color scheme of their hats too!

[Skerr]

Thanks for the tip Zodd. i picked up some Oxide today at GW and also noticed the Gauss green and thought it would make great runes also though went with the more bluish hued oxide.

 

Thanks for the pics Galloway, this thread has inspired me to give the runes another go.

Edited December 21, 2017 by Skerr

[Zodd1888]

Thanks for the tip Zodd. i picked up some Oxide today at GW and also noticed the Gauss green and thought it would make great runes also though with the more bluish hued oxide.

 

Thanks for the pics Galloway, this thread has inspired me to give the runes another go.

Funny you did that. I recently bought some of that very same edge paint to use for that reason. I'm thinking of mixing a very small amount of Guilliman Glaze to see how that may work.

 

Anyone try that before?

 

Edge: Baharoth Blue isn't too bad.

Edited December 21, 2017 by Zodd1888

[Skerr]

Meant to say."went" with more bluish oxide.

 

I havr used the guiliman glaze over silver and have better results with smaller surface areas. The bigger the surface the muddier it seemed to turn out though probably my technique plus probably better suited to go over blue.

 

With rune reccesses being a tiny channel it might work well. Great idea.

 

Though i am now thinking white with warm effects like yellow, orange and red more heat and fire.

[Zodd1888]

A lot of my flames are black, greens, blues, and whites on my daemons to match my TSons armory.