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how do you do lightning effects on power weapons???

Paint and a tooth pick.

epil wrote:Paint and a tooth pick.

Meh, I used to do that and it looked sorta basic. Let me try to explain a more advanced way to do lightning effects: Paint the basic shape of the bolt in a dark color (If you wanted blue lightning use a color like Fenris Grey), then paint most of the bolt a midtone (such as Shadow Grey) but do try to leave the edges of your base color (Fenris Grey) showing, Finally highlight with a very light color (like Ice Blue) and paint Skull White on edges of the blade to show extreme highlights on the razor-sharp edges! Good luck!

Wow. That sounds complex. How wide do you paint the bands of base color? Do you have any pics of this technique? (I know I didn't ask the question originally, but I had been wondering this as well.)

cool! do you know any tutorials to show this?

To answer the both of you: No, I don't have any pics/tutorials, I more or less just learned this technique based on experience. For the base color bolt you want it about the width of teeth on a chainsword (hopefully that helps). I'll try to get around to making a tutorial on this after I'm done with my current sculpting project: Primarch Mortarion.

I did a pretty cool lightning effect on my Reaver's Laser Blasters that can be used on Power weapons too. Paint the blade Regal Blue and paint the basic lightning in Enchanted Blue. Go over it with a 1:2 mix of Skull White and Enchanted Blue. Afterwards paint the very thin lines of Skull White.

Valk

This is a tougher situation, but this is not a technique for a newer painting. This is definitely more difficult than NMM and you use the same type of techniques. If you dont do this right it wont look good. Its hard to do it in a basic standard. You should attempt this on a few models that you dont really want anymore. Considering when you paint the colors you must have the colors blended well enough so that it has a good solid transition.

Firstly, the fluff says that it covers the blade in a disruption field, not that the blade shoots lightning. It's not a Jacob's ladder throwing voltage into the air, it's a controlled electromagnetic field. As such, having lightning effects looks silly, imho.

I do mine by layering shades of blue over each other until I'm happy, at which point I apply clear fingernail polish. The end result looks like this:

never mind.

Here a power weapon i did a little while ago -

i want to do something like GrimTeef used on his dread but with power weapons

Built up over several lines of color.

Regal or Ultramarine blue, P3 Arcane Blue, white. Basecoat of the blade is Charadon Granite + black wash.

Also easy to do a red version with Red Gore + Blood Red + orange + white.

could you do simply thin, jagged lines of ice blue and/or skull white atop necron abyss? Maybe blck with blue wash or even abyss with blue wash

A quick way to do a frost style weapon is to paint the weapon regal blue. Then get some skull white, wipe the excess off thoroughly on some paper towel or something else slightly coarse, and then wipe it quickly across the blade at an angle - the bristles should have some gaps between the parts loaded with paint, causing a light effect across the blade, especially as the edge of the brush will have less paint.

This is best done on a 45 degree angle of brush to weapon.

Can post pics if requested.