On the topic of yellow

[Marshal Vespasian]

Hi,

 

So I have1 been doing my Templars weapons in yellow for some time now and I am down with averland sunset, which I transferred to a dropper bottle for  both airbrushing and normal brush work.

What I am struggling with is my two highlight colours: I bought vallejo game coloue sun and moon yellow some while back and I can't seem to get it to work. I get spiderwebbing or terribly fluid consistency or clogging when airbrushing and when I want to do simple edgehighlighting its either globbing on in clumps or super fluid and drowns half my chainsword/gun.

So with an imperial fists army in 30k on the horizon I am looking for new Highlight colours. Does somebody have suggestions for well behaved brighter yellows?

I might just try out the warcolours yellow set.

 

Thanks guys

 

 

Edit: also, how would you presahde yellow? I was thinking of doing  dark brown - light brown - off white and then going over it with a yellow FW Daler-Rowney ink.

Wash the whole thing in AK Interactive dark brown wash, highlight, matt varnish and then paint the armour trim with vallejo metal colour magnesium, paint the other mwetal bits and do an oil wash, pin them on theirs bases, do some pigments and done.

For the charakter models I'll doa more involved process I think, but for the line troops this should be a pretty good way to do it. Or can I do yellow just as well over black/grey/white? Vince venturella did a thing where he uses a black/greay/white zenithal and then glazed it with sepia ink, before going over it with yellow ink.

[Kinstryfe]

I've actually been playing with the Daler-Rowney inks thru an airbrush so I can address that. It'll need some playing with to get used to, but my best results have been black undercoat, brown, then white ink (with possible lighter brown shades leading up to the white) in sort of an exaggerated zenithal. The yellow ink is kind of like Contrast or (as I understand it, having never used them) watercolors in that if you apply it over too dark a base you don't really get any change. So my top-down spray is usually almost pure white with the browns at the bottom angles. One other thing I've tried that also works well is a black-grey-over exaggerated white zenithal, then the yellow inks working from lightest to darkest (if you're using multiple), and then selectively shading with brown ink to darken areas you want darkened. It's definitely trickier than other colors of ink I've tried, but with my main army being Lamenters I'm really happy to have a way to get a (much) quicker uniform yellow.

[Bung]

Hi,

 

So I have1 been doing my Templars weapons in yellow for some time now and I am down with averland sunset, which I transferred to a dropper bottle for  both airbrushing and normal brush work.

What I am struggling with is my two highlight colours: I bought vallejo game coloue sun and moon yellow some while back and I can't seem to get it to work. I get spiderwebbing or terribly fluid consistency or clogging when airbrushing and when I want to do simple edgehighlighting its either globbing on in clumps or super fluid and drowns half my chainsword/gun.

So with an imperial fists army in 30k on the horizon I am looking for new Highlight colours. Does somebody have suggestions for well behaved brighter yellows?

I might just try out the warcolours yellow set.

 

Thanks guys

 

First Tip:

Buy better colors. Some Game Colors suck balls when thinning them for airbrush use, Yellows and some Reds are the worst offenders here. Either go straight to the Game Color Airbrush range or just buy into another range, Scalecolor for example are great for airbrush.

If you get spider legs / webbing you are to close, use to much pressure and / or your paint is to thin.

 

Personly i will be doing some 30k Imperial Fists with the original Forgeworld recipt with Tamiya colors.

[Marshal Vespasian]

Yeah I am pretty much comitted to echanging my yellows. Game colour so far has been good to me, okay the metals are trash and some colours seperata a bunch, but so far it has been an okay experience.

 

Do you know of a good yellow? I hear some people saying that model colour is better. Alternative I'd go for scale or warcolours. Sadly scale isnt as Readil available to me as other Brands.

 

To the topic of Inks:

Which ones are you using? I got the "normal yellow" as others seemed to bright for my taste or too Orange when Holding them in hands. I saw vince venturella did an imperial fist with light yellow ochre on his Twitter. Looks pretty good as well.

So on the topic of zenithal: which one do you prefer Black grey white or Black brown white? Would you go for a straight dark brown Primer?

I was Also thinking about using gw air clear Sigismund yellow, but daler rowney Inks come with an integrated Pipette, I love that for handling.

[Bung]

I have Scalecolor, as you are in Germany you can get them easily from onlineshops like pk-pro.de, you can even get single colors on their site.

 

For Inks, i gor for Scale Inktensity both sets are great.

Your other option could be Tamiya Clear Yellow through an airbrush.

[Marshal Vespasian]

I like to order from fantasy-welt.de as they have a flgs in my town and I can pick up my deliveries there thus doing a little bit to keep pollution by transport down.

Also I'd like to order the redgrass gaming evelasting wet palette and pk-pro doesn't have that sadly. But I can go for battlefield berlin. They have both scale and the redgrass palette.

But I wrote to Fantasy welts customer support to ask wether they could order that to me as I'd like to support them. Inks I have some from daler rowney which are brilliant and some from Vallejo which are good. I'll propably order inktense wood this go around when I order scale stuff. 

So I had a look at their colour palette online and I am thinking sol yellow and marduk yellow. I think the really light yellow they have (forgot the name, sorry) I'd replace with an off white for the most extreme highlights. On the other hand I might just get it because why not.

[Bung]

Well, my go to Nerdthore would order anything i want to, but i would still need to drive 50 km to get it. So not much difference when i order myself stuff from different places but i try to make a big order as possible.

Personly i ordeted the Redgrass palette directfrom their website, as they are in France its rather close to me.

But for the Scalecolors they are rather matt in the finish even with white primer.

But you could preshade, airbrush Yellow, go for highlights with a transparent white and then airbrush a Yellow ink to unify the shading.

[Marshal Vespasian]

Having looked at yellow I got initially. It might actually be a bit bright. But then again it might be good for fades on vehicles. Maybe I will get one of the more ornageish yellow options to airbrush. Or spray it in the shadows.

Got to do a test Model or two anyways.

[Son of Sacrifice]

I use citadel yellows for my Imperial Fists. Averland Sunset is my midtone, then I highlight with yriel yellow and then up to flash gitz yellow. I spray shadows with vallejo model air burnt umber. I do edge highlights with screaming skull, because like you, I can't get yellows to behave on the brush.

[Kinstryfe]

Just remembered to check which inks I've been using. Daler-Rowney FW Brilliant Yellow for the brightest, Indian Yellow for some shading.

[Evil Eye]

I've found Averland Sunset is one of the nicest yellow paints I've ever used myself, and makes a great basecoat/underlayer for brighter yellows too.

 

Iyanden Yellow from the Contrast range also gets a really nice finish, especially over white. It's a rare example of the translucency of yellow actually working to your advantage due to the way Contrast works.

[Marshal Vespasian]

Just remembered to check which inks I've been using. Daler-Rowney FW Brilliant Yellow for the brightest, Indian Yellow for some shading.

I get the feeling that I should propably get another, darker fw ink for this. I do have a rather darkish colour scheme for the bases planned, but I dont want them to be too bright.

 

Which preshading did you find works best? Black grey white or brown to off white? I'll propably compare both on two testmodels.

[Kinstryfe]

The best I've found (though I'm still experimenting) was basically a zenithal of a few shades going from brown to tan to pure white. I've also considered mixing up a darker yellow by adding some brown ink to the yellow and trying shading with that, but haven't quite gotten that far because I paint Lamenters and they're a fairly bright yellow. It's still kind of an ongoing experiment to figure out what looks the best while still being reasonably quick.

[Imren]

If you airbrush then Tamiya flat yellow is the answer.

 

 

Try this scheme for fists:

1. Prime white.
2. Airbrush vallejo burnt umber in the recesses.
3. Airbrush tamiya flat yellow thinned 1:1 all over in several thin coats (don't forget that Tamiya paints thins only with Tamiya X20A thinner, or they get goopy).
4. Refine the recess shade by gently airbrushing seraphim sepia thinned 1:1 into the recesses.
5. Airbrush a slight highlight with Scale75 sol yellow (or any flat yellow) mixed with a bone colour (Scel 75 ivory or vallejo buff) mixed 1:1 ratio on the most protruding armour panels where you want the light ti hit.
6. Airbrush gloss varnish over the whole model.
7. Do you decals with decal fixer (I recommend Micro sol and Micro set)
8. Do you details (armour joints, vents, eye lenses, wargear etc.
9. Do your scratches with two shades of yellow, use S75 sol yellow or any other flat yellow and a lighter yellow such as the highlight mix in point 5 above. This will give the scratches a 3d effect.
10. Do some neat pitting sparingly with a sponge dipped in skavenblight dinge or black.
11. Using a dark oilpaint (burnt umber or van dyke brown) diluted in white spirit (or better artist's odourless spirit) to a wash consistency do a pin wash (for this you should use a synthetic round size 0-ish brush as the thinner and oils will ruin your nice sable hair brushes).
12. Wait a few hours for the wash to dry off and using the same synthetic brush wetted with spirits clean of any excess pooling of the dried up pin wash
13. Lock in the model with gloss varnish and matt varnish mixed 1:3 ratio and the mixture thinned 1:1, do tow thin coats to lock in the model. This will be matt enough for the flat colour scheme t look good but not so matt to dull down the metallic details (wargear etc).

[Son of Sacrifice]

Imren that sounds impressive, do you have any pictures of your work? It sounds like you know your way around an airbrush.

[Kinstryfe]

Imren sounds like he's got it going on. After working on it, if you're going to use the DR inks, my best results have been a grey to white undercoat, a mix of 3:1 Indian Yellow to Sepia for the shadow/recesses, then pure Indian Yellow for mid tones and Brilliant Yellow for the lightest areas. Or that but in reverse, depending on whether you do better shading down first or last.

[Marshal Vespasian]

Thank you guys those are some good Tips, that Match with my plan.

 

I see myself having to try some yellow though as I am not sure how the brown undercoat will influence the very light yellow ink.

 

I got Sol and Marduk yellow for the Highlights now, sadly the really light yellow were all sold out, but I got bone/off white colours for highlighting here.

 

Imrens process pretty much fits what I had planned to do. I'll just habe to look for which yellow I want to use. I am really not sure wether I want them to be more ornageish dark yellow or more light.

You do not do any edge Highlights with your Method, Imren, am I correct in that?

I am super excited to try painted on chipping, as I never got that to work with grey Tones on my templars.

[Imren]

I would not recommend you to do a general edge highlighting on all edges like GW does. The oil paint pin wash will show the shape and contour enough of the armour panels and  I find it to look weird to highlight every edge regardless of whether they protrude or not.

 

I'm painting an alpha legion army and because the paint scheme is metallic I don't do edge highlighting at all (I don't find it to look good on metallics). But for non-metallic paint schemes I'd do some edge highlighting on the most protruding edges were you placed your highlight.

 

So if you go for edge highlighting on specific edges only, you might ask yourself which ones? The answer depends on your general highlight placement and your skills in doing so.

 

If you are about to airbrush a whole space marine army, I suggest the following exercise to learn highlight placement (this is a general suggestion to everybody that are getting into airbrushing and want to learn airbrush skills in general and pre-highlighting in particular):

 

1. Get a pack (comes in three) of those push fit cheap tactical marines (https://www.games-workshop.com/en-SE/Space-Marines).
2. Prime them black.
3. Now you have two options:
   • If you go with zenithal highlighting: place the model on the table and under a strong lamp right above it and photograph it from different angles.
   • If you go for a more interesting highlighting from an angle: Place the model on the table with the face towards you, but adjust the desk lamp so the light comes from your right side above at an angle. So it lights up the models front left side. Take the photograph. No turn the model so its back is facing you and take another picture with the same lamp angle, this time the light will hit the models back right.
4. Load the photographs on your computer and pull them up on the screen. Study the highlight areas on the armour panels where you have reflection from the light.
5. Load your airbrush with a dark paint and put a sheet of paper in front of you, warm up your trigger control and exercise your airbrushing muscles by writing your signature twenty times with the airbrush on the paper until you can airbrush your name as smooth and with as narrow lines as you do when writing your signature with a pen.
6. Clean out the airbrush and load it with slightly thinned Medea Com-art opaque white (I highly recommend this particular white paint because it is the least grainy and smoothest acrylic white airbrush paint on the market).
7. Now by looking at the photographs on your screen, try to replicate the highlight placement in the photographs of the natural light on the model with your airbrush on the actual model. You will have very dark scheme with stark contrast if you leave the recesses black. So if you don't want that, you can VERY gently with enough distance place some white paint the recesses, and increase the paint amount as you approach the very apex of the surface that was hit by the lamp as per the photographs.

 

This exercise will not only improve your trigger control and your understanding of how the tip distance to model and paint intensity and the air pressure affects your paint placement but also improve your understanding of how light is placed naturally and soon enough you can just pick up a model that is primed and just have the feel and understanding on how to place the shades and highlights and still have it look good even if you don't choose the standard zenithal highliting.

 

Many of us have seen the theoretical videos on youtube of the spheres and the cylinders and the light blends on them to learn NMM, but the above exercise will train your paint muscles in practice to produce those good looking highlight placement. And since train this on cheap push fit marines, you don't risk ruining your models you actually care about.

 

This response got diverged a bit, the short answer is: I suggest you to edge highlight sparingly on specific protruding light-hit edges and not all of the edges.

[Marshal Vespasian]

Wow Thank you for that incredibly indepth answer.

 

I think that exercise will help me a lot, since I am still new at airbrushing and I feel that especiall, when I want to do blends and put some more work in, I dont even know where to begin. My test models will be a great place to try this I think.