(please delete)

[Lord Anathir]

question answered.

[Hawkoon]

If you haven't already, I suggest you take a look at Volomir's blog, http://volomir.blogspot.no/2011/07/high ... -step.html, and look at how he handles the larger areas of the models he paints. Of course having an airbrush does help with painting big surfaces this way, but it looks just soooo good I want to throw all my own stuff out the window and start collecting stamps instead if I can't have one of those toys...
Light source on spherical surfaces tend to move slightly in accordamce to the angle you look at them. Take a opaque bead and set a light on it. Move slightly around it and you'll see what I mean.

[Lord Anathir]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVqPAMuAe8I I found this myself. The second version is reasonable, I'll just have to see how I can apply it to even larger spherical surfaces.

Volomir's stuff is alright and the techniques in themselves look hard, but I'm not a huge fan of how fake everything looks. I like an old school style before air brushes were even used and nmm didn't exist.

[Aicanor]

Here you can see where the highlights on armour should go. (And I can only recommend watching more Painting Buddha videos. They are all good.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb_MSdZ ... SiXCuLp2gU

[Elessehta of Yvresse]

Large flat areas are a huge paint, zenithal highlighting or modulations can make a huge difference.

[Lord Anathir]

What I'm thinking about is the warjacks in warmachine, and the armored infantry.
https://battlecollege.wikispaces.com/fi ... anshee.png

http://privateerpress.com/files/product ... 10_WEB.jpg

I want to avoid white so I'm probably going with blue armor and grey cloth.

[jwg20]

Hey hey man!

For large flat areas, there are a few ways you can go without using an airbrush. Can you get your hands on any paint retardant? If you can, you can always wet blend it. Have 3 colors active at a time with drying retardant in each paint splotch on your pallet, then just blend away. Nice thing about using retardant is if you feel one area is too dark/bright, you can add in more of your desired color to mix it. Takes some getting used to, but it's probably fastest other than an airbrush.

If you don't want to do the way described above, I would probably just do successive layers of very thin paint. Start from what you envision being the darkest area, basecoat with that. Then add a brush load of white, paint that over slightly less area two or three times, each time covering a little less until your color comes through. Then add another brush load of white and do it again, etc all the way up to pure white. Each step thin your paint to the consistency of milk or less. The thinner the paint, the smoother the transition but also the more layers you need. Depending on how dark you want to make your shadows, you may need to do more/less steps. It's time consuming as heck but it's probably the easiest way. If its for a one-off model its probably not a big deal, but if you want to do an entire army that way I'd recommend something for your sanity.

[Lord Anathir]

Hey bud.

I take it that paint retardant would help me paint something like this? The author said he did not used normal brushes and not an air brush. He also said he did the galaxy stuff in the "better part of an evening".

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h289/ ... alcon3.jpg

After I got over how excellent it is and started breaking down the process, I definitely think something like this looks harder than it actually is. I'm just unclear on the process. Obviously I'd start with black primer but then i'm not sure what course I should take. Should I go light to dark model-wide as you would normally? With this method I could envisage paint drying on one side of the model while I work on the other. Or do you not think I could keep the entire surface wet at once. Does it even matter? The alternative is working progressively across the model from left to right and blending black to light to black however I please. I guess it depends how long paint retardant will keep it wet for. Thoughts?

I also did some google-fu and found that painters doing this on canvas use these sponges to smudge the paint, which is why everything doesnt look so sharp (especially the white, which is almost transparent in some places)

I'll pick up some retardant and maybe a jet bike on friday and try it out. I might just try to find some plastic thats similar to model texture and try it there.

[Lord Anathir]

Time/patience is never the issue for me, its simply not knowing what/how to do it.

[jwg20]

Woah that model is amazing! For that, painting designs like that, I'd probably start attacking it using the layer method and using very VERY thin paint. I am not sure how I would go about wet blending that, though I guess it would be possible. You would just need to have a large number of colors going at once. So I would do layers instead and start with purple and blue then fade to white slowly. If the person that painted that did it by wet blending, then hats off to them.

In terms of wet blending, well I am far from an expert, but what has worked for me is to first basecoat the model in your desired main color (so the tone of blue you want to be most dominant). Then get 3 colors going at once: the basecoat, the brightest highlight, and the darkest shadows. Add a drop of retardant to each splotch and thin as you normally would then work on one area at a time. The basecoat color is there to blend, it isn't there to provide the color. I normally in that case paint dark to light, painting in the recesses with my dark color and adding some more base color as I work up to pure base color, then start doing it the same with the highlight. You could also go bright to dark, but I just normally work dark to light because I prime in black. The black primer kills the color if you start with the highlights, so as I always try to achieve hyper vibrant colors on my models I like working up from dark. Just add a tiny bit as you work up and actively blend the paint with your brush on the model. It takes a lot of practice to get it right, and I am still fine-tuning my technique, but it is faster and IMO can look better. It lets you do things that are really hard to pull off with layers, and you can do much more severe transitions. But layering also has its benefits. As I said above, if I wanted to paint a design like that on a model, I'd probably go about it with layers. There are too many colors on there to reasonably wet blend.

[Lord Anathir]

Ok. Well I'm committed now. I just dropped £200 on wm/h and my full list is in the post. I'll start with the infantry first to get used to the paint scheme and stuff (blue armor, grey cloth, purple for gems and stuff like that, and leather for other details). Should be fun. Should be a fun blog, there are NO wm/h blogs here.

Model count for a full army is 47 infantry and 1 war jack. Its basically like painting a horde or two of hammer.

I also have my last warhammer models painted, some metal longbeards, which I think are the best dwarfs I've ever done. I've only done 6 of them.

[Bob of Beleriand]

I have some WM/H as a small side project Anathir, if you have any questions I'd be happy to help if I can.