Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I'm helping a friend paint an eldar army and he wants to go with an orange theme.

We started with a white base and put on two coats of orange. Then we did a sepia wash. However, when we tried to clean the model up after the wash, the orange paint was too thin to cover up the stains. It looked great in the recesses, but we couldn't clean it up. So, we stripped them and started anew.

We've primed them white. How can we paint them orange and still get some depth? We were thinking about basing orange and then just adding progressively lighter shades on the armor, but I wonder if that'll add the same level of depth as the wash did.

Advice and pictures would be awesome.

Try Liquitex Brown Umber (or Van Dyke Red Hue), water it down, and use it as a wash. If it's too dark, you could add it to the orange to bring it up a bit and then use it as a wash.

I use Liquitex Raw Umber and Burnt Umber. If you add some Glaze Medium to it, it'll stain the orange less and concentrate in the folds. I actually washed over some pre-painted Orks in the same way with Liquitex Paynes Grey and the teeth still look great.

Ifurita wrote:I use Liquitex Raw Umber and Burnt Umber. If you add some Glaze Medium to it, it'll stain the orange less and concentrate in the folds. I actually washed over some pre-painted Orks in the same way with Liquitex Paynes Grey and the teeth still look great.

Very interesting suggestion, I haven't used glaze medium before. It sounds like a way to make better washes out of acrylics. I also tried Payne's Grey per your suggestion in another thread, it is an excellent shadow, and I've found the most use of it (so far) in painting the recessed areas of white-primed models. (lifeater sorry for the hijack)

it's fine, I think the glaze medium sounds like an interesting suggestion. I'll try it out.

Please post an update on how it works out with the glaze medium

A suggestion.

Do what you did before. When you go to clean it up however, use the Orange foundation paint to clean the stains up.

After the stains are cleaner up (and the foundation paint will work wonders on it I swear) go over it with the fiery orange for a highlight

Prime white.

Base coat skull white (remember primer is not paint.) Go slowly, use thin layers or your orange will look grainy.

Next I used Red Ink and Yellow ink to make Orange Ink. You just have to do it drop by drop until you get an orange that you like. It doesn't hurt to put a TINY bit of brown in there. "Tiny" means a pinhead sized drop at a time.

After applying the orange ink to the model you can highlight the raised areas with skull white. Alternatively you can apply a broad white highlight and hit it with a diluted orange ink and then do a white highlight if you want to build to the white gradually.

You get something like this:



Mine's a little grainy because I applied the base coat a little too thick. I'm not super-picky and I paint quickly to a high tabletop standard so I just let it go.

This model was an experiment and turned out OK, mainly due to the fire effects on the cloth. I think a true "fire" orange should always build to a white highlight and I was having trouble achieving it using just paint.

I used to paint it red, then Blazing Orange then Fiery Orange. It works pretty well but GW doesn't make Fiery anymore.