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I consider myself a pretty good painter however I am having an absolute nightmare with painting vehicles... Any large flat surface just ends up looking streaky however I try to do it.

I usually water my paint down to thickish milk but it makes no difference...

Do I just need to add a ton more coats? Am I doing something wrong? Please help out as it's a nightmare at the moment; with both paints and washes all I get is streaky rubbish.

I never get this on normal models but the area is just so much smaller... Any help greatly, greatly appreciated!

Can't say, I haven't painted many vehicles. Bumping you up though.

It took me abooout 3-4 coats before it wasnt streaky so just do a few more and it should fill in

make sure your paint is watered down and just keep adding thin coats

Get yourself an airbrush, there is nothing better for getting nice smooth and even paint on a vehicle. Granted it will take a bit of practice to get the hang of it.

Make sure you start from a solid base.

Start with foundation paints, and do 2+ light layers of foundation paints before you attempt to use your base colour.

For my Land Raider done 1/2 bone 1/2 red, I used dheneb stone for the bone base, and Mechrite Red for the red base.

Bleached bone over the dheneb and blood red over the mechrite. No streaks for me

are you using a smaller brush? I had that problem when I first painted a vehicle but then I bought a tank paint brush and it helped ALOT. You still need to do a few more coats because of the massive flat spots. good luck man. Or you can just spray paint/air brush. both of those work perfectly

Pictures might help.

Are you working your way up? Streaks aren't as big of a problem when you progressively add on lighter paints. It takes a while, but definetly helps more than trying to paint a light color onto a significantly darker color.

Also, use a bigger brush, if you haven't tried that yet.

Cheers for all the info guys. Just about got the paint non-streaky with lots of thin coats...

I am still having problems with the GW washes though - however I try to use them I am still getting a slight streaky effect when dry and viewed from a certain angle.... Will gloss then clear varnishing sort this maybe? I primarily use quite a muted red for my Khorne army and I am struggling to get it right.

This is a perfect example of the type of finish I am looking for:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280306580341

I'm so tempted to get an airbrush... I have 2 more LRs to do, 3 brass scorps, 2 rhinos, 1 vindicator and 2 Baneblade variants.
Cost and the worry that I'd get a sucky one are bothering me about this though.

Either that, or spray on red and wash with the silly citadel spraygun

I suggest that if you use washes for vehicles, definetly go back over almost everything with the basecoat. Makes for a much more refined look, and you don't have to worry about the wash pooling or streaking (washes and inks are very terrible about this when you use them on large flat surfaces, like tanks).

Unless you're really going for an effect that requires the exact color you get from washing the tank, then that'd be the best solution.

Don't kow what you might be missing, so here's a list.

Prime with a good undercoat.

Large decent quality brush

Stir the paint well to have a good smooth consistency with absolutly no lumps. It's tempting to leave lumps at the bottom of the jar, but lumps means the paint isn't mixed so the rest of the liquid has too much solvent.

Thin the paint

Cover quickly in several thin coats

Don't brush over the same spot several times, many paints are self levelling as they dry and brush marks disappear. Brush over them while they are still wet disrupts the surface and you won't get an even coat.


For vehicles I use Vallejo paints and thin them to remove brush marks. Because it's so thin I can paint a coat on quickly but I will do half a dozen coats to get it just nice.

Just use vellejo paints , like i always say, both companies paint can achieve same finish, but why spend 3x the amount of time .

What colour are you trying to get down?

Thanks again for the info everyone.

I am trying to get quite a deep red eventually for my World Eater tanks.

An example is this:




I can't really see how the painter has achieved this rich red without glazes/inks etc... Any suggestions?

Also, would spraying on the inks with the new silly spray gun thing work better?

yeah,
I used the spary gun and found it to be excellent, it uses up paint fast and inks even faster, but i base coated and inked 6 tanks in a hour or so...
the actual spraying is about halfway through this blog... http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/219887.page

Panic...

Yup - looking good and I lub your Nurgleyness tanks!

Gonna srpay ink i think

Cheers

try using terracotta undercoat from halfords over a black undercoat before adding the mechanirite red

multiple THIN layers is the key to victory.

I had a lot of problems like this for my imperial fists vehicles, but then I got an airbrush and it is definitely worth it.

Thin layers. Nothing can substitute for it, unless you want to buy an airbrush like some are saying. Large brushes make all the difference. For the base coats you can get a really smooth effect by using a stippling brush.

That effect might come from a progressive drybrushing. It's very smooth and gradual in some places, so it might be a wet blend, but I don't know that the overall paint standard of the model is good enough that I'd suspect that advanced of a technique.

Bottom line, consider getting a tank brush, and dry brushing on progressively lighter red. Once you've got a decent base tone, use a smaller dry brush and apply even lighter red, roughly in the pattern you see in the picture and like.

It looks like that tank also has some washes and some edge highlights. You might add some washes in between the tank brush and the smaller drybrush. Once it looks pretty good, pick out the edges with a light red.

I paint most of my tanks pretty simply. Basecoat, tank brush, edge highlights (one or two levels). If you were to do some progressive drybrushing, and layered edge highlights, you'll get some good depth.

I second/third using a dark brown basecoat instead of going straight to the red. This should help give you the richness. I would use Scorched Brown instead of Terracotta, but whatever looks best to you. If you have the time, you might even want to do a step in between with a 1:1 mix of whatever red and whatever brown you're using. I do this sort of transitional brown before a lot of reds and yellows to get that warmth you might otherwise lose from a black undercoat.

Inks and washes won't hurt, but probably won't help you much. I find that they don't do much for a large, flat surface. Their unevenness is kind of by design. They're a bit better for organic, textured surfaces. If you do wash or ink that, you'd probably want to go back over most of it with the basecoat color, and then.....why would you even bother?

Sorry for basically just repeating the past 20 comments.

It really depends on the colour you're using.I tend to find the
lighter the colour,the harder it is to cover.
I've 2 suggestions
1)A colour basecoat.This needs to be very opaque.If you are
painting red I use a colour in the same spectrum.Either a good
yellow (Sand by Gamecraft)orTerracotta(gamecraft)which is reddish.
Depending on the final colour use a colour you know that covers well
as a basecoat.This does not have to be darker.
2)Try mixing in foundation paint (just a small amount)to the final
colour,this will give it better coverage.My pot of black was a bit
watery so I added some Necron abyss to thicken it up,but not
enough to change the colour.