Browsing Tag

shading

Technique

Wet Palettes, and more.

Posted on May 19, 2013

A couple changes to my process tonight.

Like most hobby desks, mine is in serious need of cleaning.

I’ve only ever used a wet palette at painting classes. It seemed like something people did when they were taking a class. The other day I was in Michaels and picked up some parchment paper (baking section) and made it happen.You need:

A plastic lid, or styrofoam plate.
A piece of paper towel and get it moist (but not soaked).
Parchment paper and place it on top of the moist towel.

I’ve had that dark grey, and the lighter grey next to it, wet all night long. I’ve been painting for 2 hours, judging by the episode of Chumphammer I’m listening to. The big bonus of this is that I can go back and forth with my colours. If the dark got too dark, do a layer of the light, and vice versa. And this is how you do glazing! I’ve been doing it with a dry palette for a few years, and mixing new paints/water when I needed them, but this…this is way better. Highly recommended.

The other new thing on my desk is a dedicated clean water bottle. For years I’ve been using water out of my cleaning pot to water down my paints. The other day, I noticed that my grey was red. >.< You’d think I would notice that sooner (there’s a good story from my GW days, working with Owen, here), but my eyes have a very hard time discerning the difference between similar shades. (And don’t even get me started on navy blue/purple). Clean water bottle, also a total win.

I like having a back-log of posts lined up, and I don’t want to post spam, so we’ll get into the actual end result of the glazing…tomorrow.

Featured Images

Lizardmen Blood Bowl – Pahaux Flamewalkers

Posted on April 8, 2013

I’m pleased to present the Pahaux Flamewalkers! Hailing from the City of Ash, this team has been sent to win at Blood Bowl by their Slann Relic Priest, for reasons that no one really understands. He mumbled a bunch and the head skink pointed at a few guys and off they went.

The painting of these guys followed a similar pattern to the Krox. After the dark wash, grab the colour that started underneath (or a similarly bright colour). Mix a bit of water and a lot of acrylic medium with it and apply gently to the affected areas to create a soft and sloping highlight.

I’m officially a big fan of the acrylic medium.

Looking back now, I wish I had taken the time to assemble the models better. These are some of the best models I’ve painted in years, and they suffer from rushing through the assembly, as you may be able to see with some of the photos below. However, Adepticon is in 11 days (holy hell) and I’m playing in a Saturday/Sunday tournament with these guys, and they needed to be finished!

Ready to beat people up and think about scoring goals.

I used GW ‘ardcoat on the helmets, finally finding a situation where I needed a glossy coat.

This guy has frenzy, rawr!

Work-in-progress

Lizardmen Blood Bowl – Shading

Posted on March 6, 2013

I tried something new today. I’ve been reading about glazing more. The idea is that you put down a basic colour, and then shade, highlight and tone it with transparently coloured pigments. This post isn’t about that, but we’ll get to it.

My last attempt at glazing on the Dreadball team failed miserably – the pigment clumped in the water so that when it dried, it created patchy dark sections. It was pretty ugly, and only saved by “liquid talent”. I did some research and found that people use dish soap as a mix instead of water, which has the properties that it still dilutes the pigments, but that the pigments (apparently) don’t “float” on the surface, but instead spread out better.

Dish soap sounded like a home-made hack, so I looked further and found that another solution was to get acrylic medium and use that. I did, and my next post will be more glazing related.

But to start, and get a handle on how this stuff handles, I mixed the acrylic medium with some black and a bunch of water to try to recreate a wash.

There were some not-great spots on the Krox shoulders where it sat wrong, but overall I think it was a success! I haven’t done anything more here than mix my own Badab Black, and even then it doesn’t have the “fall into the crevasses” property that the GW stuff has, but I think it was a good step towards using it.

The medium has an almost glue-like consistency. When I mixed it with the paint, it didn’t seem to get any more diluted, like when I use water. To be safe, I added some water to get the very runny consistency that I’m used to working with. I think that this might be a necessary mix, since the goal is thin layers, and this stuff is thick like paint out-of-the-pot, although with less pigment density.

Next post is the finished Krox!

Work-in-progress

Dreadball Human Shading

Posted on January 8, 2013

I wanted to do these guys relatively quickly, and I started the project with no idea what colours to use, so I really can’t be to weirded out that I still have no idea what colours to use, and that they aren’t “the best models I’ve ever painted”. 😛

The shading technique requires some care to be used, which I did not use. I slapped paint on all over the place!

After the Goblin Green incident of last post, I took Dark Angels Green and watered the hell out of it and applied a layer. Then, feeling whimsical, I took Lich Purple and watered the hell out of it and applied a layer. That was weird. Then, feeling less whimsical, I did the Dark Angels layer again, which removed all traces of the Purple. I was kind of hoping that they would blend in some way, but I guess that’s not what I did. I had a fever. Paint happened.

After that, I took my newly purchased Caliban Green (my DA was pretty dry…) and mixed it with a more water and Rhinox Hide to shade down in the crevasses. Lastly, I mixed the Caliban with some Ushabti Bone and shaded up a bit.

I think these last two were an attempt at solving the problem I’d constructed with my slap-dash – somewhat blotchy paint. It didn’t work out great, but you live and learn. I think after the bases dry, I’m going to dullcoat these bad-boys and see if it solves some of the problems, and creates new problems. Worked out fine for the vehicle weathering…

Secondary-freaking-colour

So now I need a secondary colour. TO MUCH GREEN. I was hoping to copy the green dudes from the book, but that’s to much green too. I’m going to paint some Ushabti stripes on them in places, but I feel like they need a big solid chest-piece-changing colour on them.

I was also thinking of painting their helmets.

Chest? Helmets? I don’t think I can pick two more colours, so just one. And putting the same colour on the chest and helmets is overkill. So maybe just the chests. Maybe just Ushapti. And some stripes.

When you really need a black…

Don’t call P3. They have a colour called Thamar Black. They should have called it “when you need a shade that’s close to black, but still has streaks of the underlying colour after 2 coats”, but I guess they didn’t have room on the bottle. Base black provided by GW and 1 coat. BOOM.

Later!