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I am talking about the red that fades from red to black-ish. How is this technique called and are there tutorials?
Whenever I try this by adding colors it looks blotchy and not right at all..

Start with a black primed surface.

Apply a milky red wash over the area.

Apply another milky layer but stay slightly away from the edges.

The top third of the surface can have a wetted down pure red.

To be extra fancy take a brownish wash along the edges, extra heavy on the bottom leading edges.

A wash of red over the mainly red areas will help blend.

Note: in the most red areas a pure brighter red is used (you can see it does not quite blend/grade.

For extreme highlights a little bit of wetted red/orange is used.

At least... that is how I would do it as long as I am not doing 30 more of those...

In this video I go from black to red up to orange but it's the same technique you can use, here's a tutorial I made: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/578162.page

I'd go from Red mid tone down to black. I prefer that way because going from black to red is a lot more work.

Wet blending will also do the job just fine. On larger surfaces it is quite fun as soon as you get the hand of it. I am painting Draigo's cloak red right now with wet blending and it is coming along nice .

Blending is usually done with successively lighter shades of the base color that are thinned down as you go up into lighter areas. The final highlight can also be a lightly applied dry brush of the lightest color.

The white on that model most likely started with a base of bone colored paint and then applied the same paint mixed with increasing amounts of white as it got shaded, and ended with a straight white highlight.


Make sure you are using watered down paint to do the blending. that is the only way to get a smooth transition.

Wet blending, feathering and glazing will get the job done. There are plenty of tutorials online that will show you how to do it but I'll give you a general breakdown of each technique.

Wet blending: Apply a highlight colour and a lowlight colour while they are both still wet and gently blend the parts they meet up

Feathering: Applying highlights in successive layers, starting further and further away from the previous layer, gradually building up to the final highlight.

Glazing: Sort of like feathering but using heavily watered down paint or even better a glaze medium with paint to create a very smooth gradient.