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I have a howling griffons captain with a power sword and bolt pistol and I want it to be painted really well. Does anyone know any cool ways of painting power swords as I really need some good ideas! Thanks in advance!

If you have an airbrush, they can do cool effects. If not, I normally paint my power swords mithril silver, then apply blue or green ink (undiluted) to it, to tint the metal. Then I paint bright blue or bright green lighting on it, and then go over that with an even finer line of white, and then apply another wash of the blue or green ink. Looks pretty cool.

edit - you can see the effect i'm talking about on the librarian's force sword in this picture... click the link and you can zoom in.

I like to do my power weapons like this:



But without the yellow bits, those were just used to create borders.
You can apply the principle to any colour, with Howling Griffons, I would use blue, but you can do whatever colour you want really.
Finished result(little bit rushed):



Hope this helps!

Aquaterry

I don't know if this exactly what you're looking for, but this effect (achieved via wet blending - which somebody else can probably explain better) is what I use for my power weapons:


And here on another marine:


In general, power weapons tend to be depicted as either crackling with arcs of lightning-like energy, glowing/reflecting (like mine), or a combination of both of those effects. I find that all of these end up looking pretty nice on the table, particularly on prominent characters.

if you painted that, BY HAND, your a better painter than me by far xcal :(

I can do similar, but I need an airbrush lol.

Horst wrote:if you painted that, BY HAND, your a better painter than me by far xcal :(

I can do similar, but I need an airbrush lol.

While I appreciate the compliment, the technique is actually pretty easy. All you need is a steady hand, some Slo-Dri acrylic retarder, a wet palette, and some patience. I worked pretty slowly and I still managed to figure out most of the method in just a couple of afternoons browsing youtube and dakka.

You can get even better effects if you combine the style with what Horst was describing. Stuff like what's on the new 'Crons:

Obviously this isn't mine, but you get the idea:

I'm a fan of this strategy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7me7OB3XP0

fenrir1997 wrote:I'm a fan of this strategy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7me7OB3XP0

Hell thats easy if youve got an airbrush, which Im planning on converting my old air compressor into the set up I need. Thanks for sharing that

KingCracker wrote:

fenrir1997 wrote:I'm a fan of this strategy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7me7OB3XP0

Hell thats easy if youve got an airbrush, which Im planning on converting my old air compressor into the set up I need. Thanks for sharing that

You're quite welcome. Hope it turns out just as brilliantly for you as in the video.

Just a quick note: You can do this strategy with any color set. It doesn't have to be blue. I know, it seems kind of a "common sense" thing, but for some reason I see a lot on the forums asking "Can I do that with (pick a color) instead of (color used in video)?"

Yes. I would like to do some heavy duty purple as my power weapons, mixing some Liche Purple with some fluorescent blue I've got laying around, for my absolute favorite color (I call it Mazda Blue, because that's the exact shade I aim for, between purple and blue), and the fluorescent will kick it up a notch, to make it seem like it's emanating power, just like a real power weapon... ya know?

I have a White Dwarf article that does a fantastic job of the "crackling" effect. Am I *allowed* to repost that section of the tutorial here or is it considered copyrighted work?

I use the same technique as xcal except I don't go down to such a dark shade and I'm not quite as good as that lol

Here's 3 power weapons of mine all using no more than 4 colours black , darl blue , light blue and white . hope these help..???

Here's my take on Power Weapons:



No airbrush needed! Here's the steps:

Basecoat: Black. Obviously.
Draw lines with Dark Angels green. Highlight parts with Snot Green, Then highlight with Goblin Green. Extreme highlight with Sunburst Yellow.

Then was with Dark Green Ink.

Rehighlight parts with Snot Green, Goblin green and Sunburst Yellow respectively. Make sure there are still other unhighlighted parts of the ones washed with the green ink. Then use a mix of white + yellow as an extreme highlight.

Oil paint, easy smooth blends. Any color you want, and they make water soluble oil paint now so you can rinse your brush in water. It also takes forever to dry so if you mess up you can wipe the sword clean with a wet paper towel and start over. Here's an example.

Thare1774 wrote:Oil paint, easy smooth blends. Any color you want, and they make water soluble oil paint now so you can rinse your brush in water. It also takes forever to dry so if you mess up you can wipe the sword clean with a wet paper towel and start over...

Sorry, slight hijack: I've been considering trying this method, personally. Even to the extent of a complete switch from acrylics, if it works out well enough. Suggestions?

after working with it alot, mostly for power weapons, it would take alot of patience to do a small intricate model. Its good for a large monster with big open areas where you can really get some cool blends and color changes. Or on a large unit like a necron monolith or even a land raider because they both have some pretty large flat areas. Some Xenos like Carnifexes or hive tyrants chitin could be done pretty easy with good effect. It would be a more realistic look if you get the shine put in the right places on any of these models, and its easy to do with oils. The big problem with doing a whole model is that it takes a couple days to fully dry, you have to be very careful not to touch it until its dry or it will smudge and smear. I probably wont use it for anything but power weapons for now. Mess around with it though its fun