Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I'm fairly new to airbrushing, and I'm getting around to painting my Imperial Knights, whose main colours are blue and yellow. For the blue I can use my usual black-white preshade colours, but for the yellow I fear that may look unnatural. My current plan is to use brown as the undercoat before adding the white highlight, but I decided to come on here and ask about it just in case someone knows what they're doing in this area.

Cheers.

Not sure what kind of yellow you're going for, but here's my Imperial Fists recipe airbrushed in Vallejo white primer and then Golden Yellow base coat with a 2:1 Flash Gitz Yellow/White Scar for the highlight:

Primed/Base-coated:



Added highlights:



And for a better yellow reference, here's the primer/basecoat on a Stormtalon to see it on a slightly larger scale:

To be honest, I never understood the meaning of pre shading when airbrush allows you to build perfect layers from darker to brighter.
Even more so, why pre shade, when you can post shade?

 CragHack wrote:
To be honest, I never understood the meaning of pre shading when airbrush allows you to build perfect layers from darker to brighter.
Even more so, why pre shade, when you can post shade?

Have you seen comparisons of the same color applied over different primer colors? A color over white usually gives a more vibrant/saturated result, and a dull/darker result over black, while keeping the same color tone. It's much harder to get similar results with post shading.
Usually the contrast isn't huge, so I find pre-shading to work best for larger surfaces, where you want more subtle transitions.

Back to the original question, I think it depends on the yellow you want to use. The darker ones like averland sunset tend to behave very differently than the lighter ones (sun yellow, flash gitz etc.).
But browns are often a good idea. Vallejo's burnt amber is great for the darker yellows (or most reds), but will be too dark if you want to put a lighter yellow.
For my light yellows, I tend to post-shade because I never found a good way to pre-shade properly. I got acceptable results with sepia colors as shades, but I'm never really happy with the result.

I've never preshaded yellow, but I have done preshading with black white grey. My suggestion would be to try a dark/medium/light brown and preshade like you would for black/grey/white using OSL or whatever pattern you are going for.

For the actual yellow I would go with the brightest/most translucent one you can find and shade darker as needed. Bad moon first, then flash gitz then yriel yellow.

Do a test model/strip of plastic sprue with the preshade on it first.