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Hi guys n Gals,

I usually use quite a few layers to fade my power armour up from black to whatever colour I desire. However, I am painting some berserkers slightly differently at the moment and will be painted a big marine army next.

I have tried to edge/extreme highlight the power armour but the edging just looks too thick and blotchy. It is not ridiculously thick but, even after cleaning up , it still doesn't look as crisp as some I have seen. The main colours I want to do are: Red, Black, Green, Yellow but I can work out the recipes easily enough!


Is there a specific technique for doing this?
How many layers would people use to , say, highlight black PA?
What size brush do people use?
Do paints need to be thinned? if so, roughly how much? (IE milk/water etc?)

Any other tips for this also greatly appreciated

Cheers

WW

Someone compared the consistency of paint to coffee creamer a while back... that's a good consistency. You need good flow, without being too watery - too watery means it'll be blotchy rather than crisp and bold.

Try looking up a video for this technique - I know what I mean when I say 'using the side of the brush', but I've seen enough people misunderstand me to know it's not an obvious technique.

When highlighting black, one or at most two grey highlight shades are sufficient. Moreso than most colors, black and white are very easy to mess up with sloppy highlighting

Make sure you highlight red with bright yellow tones rather than white... if you like that GW look - green highlights up through yellow work as well. Mixing white with these colours makes a positively hideous highlight in many cases, but with blue it's fine. Purple shaded to blue and highlighted to red isn't anywhere as effective as green shaded to blue/highlight yellow, or the orange equivalent.

Uh... that last paragraph was a bit of a mess. Hope any of it helps.

Try using coloured pencils. Sounds odd, but it works.

Great - some good ideas, thanks.

Me actually needs to water stuff down and stop being lazy I think... Even with Val paints it is too much effort!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Steelmage99 wrote:Try using coloured pencils. Sounds odd, but it works.

Hmms - Really?? Interesting...

Will varnish keep it on?

It's have to be fairly soft so it didn't take off the basecoat... good artists pencils might do tat well, I'd never thought of it. Dunno how well it'd stay on.

Pencils work well from the pics I've seen of it.

You must seal it in varnish, however, as pencil lines are essentially powder on top of the paint, it doesn't dry onto the model.

I have seen a few people use brush pens for Ultra Fine lines in Power armor and banners inc.. the tips differ from as small as 0.1 to 1.0 just a idea I use them to do the eyes and some smaller things eyes,teeth inc..

I hope I helped.

YAY colored pencils! I had the same problem with fat hard lines when painting. I found that it was best NOT to dilute the paint and to wipe most of it off of the brush and keep going over and over the same spot till uniform. And to prevent the drastic color change you can feather out the edge using a separate damp brush.