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Hi everyone. I recently posted a picture of my Nurgle Sorcerer on a Bike of the Apostles of Contagion Warband. Everyone seemed to agree that it needs more contrast. First I can simply paint the bone parts with bone colors but I feel it needs a bit more. I was thinking about adding a glowing effect around the neck/head area similar to this artwork of an Apostle of Contagion:



I was wondering if someone could tell me or direct me to where I could find out how to achieve an effect like this.

I'm also hoping to add some more contrast but I'm unsure how. I'm hoping to get advice on what to add and, assuming it's complicated, how to add it. For reference, here's what I'm working with (sorry for potato quality):



Also for reference here's the picture of a Plague Marine from the 40k wikia:



As everyone can likely tell I went for a much darker scheme. Any tips and tricks are highly appreciated. Thanks!

Creating lighting and shading with a regular brush... Well you could try to zenishel highlight with rattle cans first. Using a black first coat. then using white from above to pre-shade and highlight. Then use paints as glazes (really watered down) so that you don't lose the the light and dark tones underneath.

As to OSL without at an airbrush..... I don't know how you would do that realistically.

Basic OSL without an airbrush is easy enough once you get used to it, and the theory from a technical perspective is just the same as with one; the further you are from the light source, the weaker the glow. There are two ways of going about it:

1) The simpler option is to very lightly (and I mean very) drybrush over the whole area in the glow colour, before repeating the process closer to the source to get a stronger glow the closer you get.

2) As above, but instead of drybrushing you use very thin layers of paint to glaze the area, again using multiple layers as you get closer to the source. This requires more patience and precision, but gives a smoother transition.

Here are a few examples of my own:


All of those are quite subtle/understated purely as that's how I like to paint, but there's no reason a more overt effect couldn't be achieved using the same method.