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I recently asked the forum why my layering might be chalky, it was suggested I shouldn't use water to dilute my paint. I've tried a few acrylic mediums, as well as a dilution agent made by Vallejo, and my result is this.





At current my basic procedure is to lay down a basecoat. Once that dries and is satisfactory, I add a drop of a lighter color, and dilute well, before going over gently, and then adding a little more lighter, more and more, building up as I'm pretty sure I should when layering. I'm keeping it thin, trying to keep things nice and transparent.

I'm using Vallejo game color paints, in this example Dark Green with Golden Yellow to lighten it up through the assorted stages, with Vallejo's liquid acrylic thinner. The first shade of green went on great over the black more or less, but it only went downhill from there, and I did add thinner as I went to dilute it up. Also should note that this isn't nearly what a finished piece is supposed to look like, this is me playing around on a test model. Thank you kindly for any advice you might half to solve this blotchy problem I'm having.


Edited to also note that I'm using a roughly 4:1 dilution to paint ratio.

The lighter your paint gets, the more thicker it needs to be to be seen, and I will go into physic's here, assuming you have some general knowledge of.

The lighter green reflects more light than the darker one's below it, but as this layer is thin, the light that is SHOULD be reflecting is still being absorbed by the darker layers below it, and as black absorbs all light it will limit the about of light refected unless that layer entirely covers the black or darker greens not letting them absorb light.

something like that anyway. haha

Well it sounds like your doing everything right...

Maybe cause this is a test model and not your finished product it does not look right to you, why dont you try painting one the way you woulld like them and see how that turns out...

Jim..

Aqua wrote:The lighter your paint gets, the more thicker it needs to be to be seen, and I will go into physic's here, assuming you have some general knowledge of.

The lighter green reflects more light than the darker one's below it, but as this layer is thin, the light that is SHOULD be reflecting is still being absorbed by the darker layers below it, and as black absorbs all light it will limit the about of light refected unless that layer entirely covers the black or darker greens not letting them absorb light.

something like that anyway. haha

I understand what you mean, but I'm also not quite sure how this would make things blotchy?

It doesn't look blotchy to me, more like you havn't quite covered enough area with the lighter colours.

I'm by no means a pro, but my setup for painting Ork skin is:

Ork Hide Shade
Ork Hide and Snot Green mix
Devlan Mud wash
Snot Green
Snot green and skull white mix
Ork Hide and lots of skull white highlight

With each layer I retreat about .5mm from the last layer, I think you've just left too much room between your lighter layers and the darker ones equalling too thick darker layers.

Seems to me that you thin down way too much ur paints. try to do a normal base coat of goblin green thing but not too much and just get everything cover after that give it either a dark green wash or brown.. i use brown on my orks and then paint over the gobling green with the same color leaving the recess dark.. then add yellow to goblin green and put it on top of what you just painted.. leaving some goblin green shown and then add more and more till you think your happy with ur result..

question.. are you using the acrylic thinner from the bottle or your mixing it with water? i use liquid tex flow aid. you mix it 10 parts water 1 part flow aid

Agrinja wrote:

Aqua wrote:The lighter your paint gets, the more thicker it needs to be to be seen, and I will go into physic's here, assuming you have some general knowledge of.

The lighter green reflects more light than the darker one's below it, but as this layer is thin, the light that is SHOULD be reflecting is still being absorbed by the darker layers below it, and as black absorbs all light it will limit the about of light refected unless that layer entirely covers the black or darker greens not letting them absorb light.

something like that anyway. haha

I understand what you mean, but I'm also not quite sure how this would make things blotchy?

It shouldnt.
First, get your black layer with 2 layers of watered down black.
drybrush your dark green on, then your lighter green and lighter always using watered down layers. Just drybrush all the layers on using a large brush. You could do 1 final top coat with slightly watered down light green. That generally works 90% of the time when I paint tyranids / space marines. Had no experience in anything else, so not sure if this WILL work for your ork arms.

I've done a few orks in my time, and find that, despite the fact that it can be hell on your brushes, if you start light, highlight lighter, and wash repeatedly, you'll actually come out with a darker product than you might expect. I use Snot Green and Goblin green, as well as the Thraka green wash, but here's my method:

Prime in black or grey
Basecoat in the darker
Highlight with the lighter
Glaze with wash
Highlight in darker
highlight in lighter
wash recesses
highlight in lighter
light drybrush in white or yellow
glaze in thraka green
highlight in lighter

But that's when I'm dumping mass amounts of effort into it. I'll usually just base, glaze, highlight, glaze, highlight and wash, but I tend to do my orks on the darker end of the spectrum.

Thank you all, I'll give it a try. Thus far I've just been applying paint with a fine brush, very carefully.

A bigger brush & drybrushing multible layers on IMO gives a better effect. But again never done orks

Follow the how to paint ork skin or how to paint gretchin skin in white dwarf articles.

I did the gretchin skin for this guy: http://onfirepainting.blogspot.com/2010/09/wounded-orc-boy.html

I would suggest not drybrushing skin as it leaves it very chalky. Try working over an undercoat too, get a black or a white primer. Use thin layers but make sure you do a few coats of each letting the previous layer dry first.

Thanks,

Tom

I personally have found that basing the skin areas in white works SO much better for the outcome. The rest of my minis I base in black. I think its mainly because I like the skin to really pop, and be bright, as the rest of the minis I do in a gritty scheme. The only problem is now I have the task of redoing about 80% of my army. Oh well, itll look so much better when they are redone.


Good luck, it looks like your on your way though. Try white, then a wash with thraka green or something dark like that, and then build the greens up. Also whoever it was that suggested finishing the mini was bang on as well. The true colors of the green highlights dont start popping until more colors are on the mini

Iv been playing with blending all year. To give you an idea, for the year I have painted 10 eldar guardians and my Warwalker is 90% done. Im no expert but I do ok.

Looking at your pic, your colours for blending are extreme. You're going from super dark green to super light. To blend this properly will take some time and more colours.

Mix a lot more colours. Something like this... (1 blob meaning squirting a blob from the paint tube)
Very dark green. Full mix.
Very dark green 2 blobs. 1 blob of dark green.
Very dark green 1 blob. 1 blob of dark green.
Dark green. Full mix.
Dark green 2 blob. 1 blob of mid green.
1 blob dark green. 1 blob mid green.
etc etc. Then would be light green. Then a much lighter green.

For this sort of blend I would have about 5 or 6 colours.

It takes a long time to get blending done properly. If I was doing orks I wouldnt have such a dark base green. Either that or I wouldnt highlight with such a bright green.

Are the Vallejo paints well mixed? I have it happen all the time where the bottle of paint is not well mixed & what winds up on the pallet is mostly the clear fluid without enough of the pigment.

Or try a different paint for the highlight. Some paints are just too thin to cover well no matter what you do.

I too think your thinning too much. I don't usually use Vallejo paints, but have a few in colours I can't get with Foundry paints.
I lot of people here are suggesting using a lot more shades, and you can do this I generally use five or six on flesh and three just about everywhere else.
I disagree with the poster above that suggested your tones were too dissimilar, I find that an over the top, almost cartoony colouring works well, especially with GW models.
The only 'problem' I can see other than the over watered paints, is that IMO you are leaving too much shade. Most of your model should be left in midtone, with the shade only in the recesses and the highlight picking out edges etc.

TP_1983 is right with that last comment, for sure. Paint the mini with your mid tone, use that dark green for the dark, shadow areas. Then highlight.

Some people like to base their model with black and build up that way. I prefer a white undercoat, then paint my mid tone colour over the top. Then shade. Then highlight. But thats me.

Just remember, the bigger change in colour, the more colours you will need to blend smoothly. Eg, black to white is very hard to blend properly.

The last couple of posts match the stuff I've seen on the miniature mentor videos. Paint a mid tone first then work your shadows and highlights from there seems to be a fairly standard way to do it.

I start with the shade tone, then build it up with mid tones and highlights, but then I don't use washes very often.
Really it's about finding a tecnique that works for you. Most people do as Natorum say use washes for shading and then add highlights, it is possible, and sometimes very effective, to only use washes over a white undercoat, but this seems a very labourious way of doing it, requiring many many very thin coats, though I might one day have a go at it when I need a more delicate looking model.

You want a thin coat that gives good coverage. Ideally, for doing layering, you want one that is thin enough that you can JUST see the coat underneath. What you don't want is it thinned so much that you can easily see the undercoat. If this is the case, simply apply two or three coats.

Looking at your picture, it looks more to me like you drybrushed rather than layered.