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I'm working on my Eldar army at the moment and my seer council in particular and running into issues blending gray. I'm building layers from Codex Gray up to Fortress Gray mixed with Skull White. I started with a basecoat of the Codex and used a greatly diluted black inkwash for my initial shading, then began blending the Codex and Fortress to build layers. I'm at the point where I'll be adding the Skull White building to highlights of the white alone. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a wash/glaze color to blend my layers of gray and make the transition more smooth. Any recommendations?

No one here has any advice? C'mon guys, give a noob some sagely wisdom...

Have you tried galzing with very diluted (with wash mix) codex or fortress? I use that on transitions with other colors sometimes.

I tried glazing a 50/50 mix of Codex and Fortress diluted with acrylic medium, but it looked a bit funky - hrm, chalky? - over the shading. Maybe I need to mix it darker or use the Codex Gray alone...?

It seems that these shades don't glaze well for me, but perhaps I'm not diluting them enough. I was thinking of using Payne's Gray, but I don't know how dark it is...

A 20-0 brush, a steady hand and 8-9 layers of blending from codex grey to skull white, via fortress grey.

If you want really good blending you have to do many layers.
No washes.




If you want to keep your sanity and get an army out you should be doing:
Codex grey undercoat for 'blacklining'
Fortress grey as your primary colour.
Fortress grey + white highlight
White edge highlight

W_G, I think you're on the right track... but I've done *many* layers already - around 14 so far, building up from Codex. I'll admit that my basecoat was a bit too dark with the inkwash and probably would have worked fine by itself.

However, even the subtle lines of demarcation between layers look too cartoony for my tastes and I prefer to blend them with a few very pale washes. That's a pretty common technique to "meld" the layers; it consolidates them into a cohesive blend before applying the lightest of the highlights. I'm looking for a wash/glaze product/shade recommendation that's not going to go chalky or muddy if I do.

I've read some threads concerning Payne's Gray from Liquitex, but that looks pretty dark. Anyone know what kind of a tone the Payne's Gray has?