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      I have some questions about highlighting and smooth transitions to from one colour to another. I think I've pretty much gotten all I can out of drybrushing. I'm looking for ways to apply shading to smooth surfaces.

How does one blend colors for instance? Take white for example. Would I start with a basecoat of grey ( or a bluish grey of some sort ) and then apply very thin coats of white? Will this produce a sort of translucent effect? How about using a thin line of relatively thick paint to produce a sort of outline of light color on a raised area. How would using black to shade crevices work?

 

http://www.brushthralls.com/White/index.php

If your any good at learning mechanical skills by reading about them, and you live in the US, This month's white dwarf #327 has a decent tutorial on blending.

Couple things that are easy for all to apply and use in their painting regardless of skill level:

Inking. A way to build model depth the quickest and easiest. If the model is a blue ultra marine paint it the blue, then go back with blue ink that is at the very least 50% darker then the blue you just applied. Then from there just apply high lights. Depending on skill depends on how many levels of highlights you want to build up. For a beginer I would suggest 2 highlights. First highlight will be the models basic color, in this case ultra marine blue, then mix some white into the blue and hit edges.

Another point with inking. If you absolutely must dry brush learn to ink/wash the model. This helps blend out the dry brush marks that sometimes give the model a heavy chalky feel.

A method I use alot is what I call "wet work". If im applying paint and building my highlights I generaly do it wet. By this I mean I will dip my detail brush into my paint pot so I get a little bulb of paint on the tip ( no more then halfway up the brush). Then I dip this "bulb" of paint into my water glass and draw it across a paper towel i keep near me. This gets rid of the excess paint and allows me to shape my brush into sharp straight line.

Thank you very much everyone. I am scheduled to get that issue of WD any day now, so I will most certainly check that out. Ive done some inking and had some decent results with Necromunda Van Saar figures, so I might experiment further with that ( perhaps my next run of dire avengers? ).

http://www.jenova.dk/

There are some useful blending/highlighting articles on this site. Practice is the thing, take your time with some models that you aren't super attached to, and get the techniques down.

a good thing to do to add some depth to the models is to find a "lightsource" that lights the model. fill in the shadows accordingly.

as goony said. work from 2 highlights and then add more as you feel comfortable doing so. cadian guardsmen are great to practice this. you get to highlight armour, skin, and cloth. i suggest trying to learn on these guys, but anything can really work as long as you have the patience and desire to paint something =-)