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All I want is the yellow base coat to go on even without any brush marks. Is that to much to ask? I have found in my 18 months in the hobby that it is really difficult to get an even yellow base coat without brush marks. If I don't thin the paint enough I seem to get a good yellow but it is so thick it obscures the detail. If I thin it to much I end up with a splotchy looking finish even after 3-5 coats. Every once an awhile it works but I will be damned if I can figure out what I did in those cases. What is the trick? Do I need to make a Gretchin offering to Gork and Mork before I start?

White or black primer?

What colour are you painting over? If you're painting over a dark colour, it will take many many coats. Try a white undercoat, you can also try a light brown undercoat which can act as a shade and then work up to the yellow.

Also give a pigment heavy paint like Averland Sunset a go. It's not as vibrant as other yellows, but it covers much better. You can either use it as an undercoat for a more vibrant yellow or if you don't mind the slightly duller look, just swap completely to Averland Sunset.

But yeah, painting yellow is a pain in the arse. If you try and paint yellow over black and don't use something like Averland Sunset, prepare to do a whole lot of coats. Even with Averland Sunset you'll probably still do 2-5 coats.

Averland sunset, even over black will be good with 2, maybe 3 coats. From there you can go to any yellow you like, I prefer Yriel (sp?) next as it's a good transition colour to Averland.

My Bad Moonz orks are Averland>>Yriel>>Sepia Wash>>Yriel>>flash gits

Take a look at this, it may help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l0k8TeHgeA

pretty easy with an airbrush.

When I paint Yellow on my Bad Moon Orks. It is very uneven. Then I wash them with Burnt Sienna and it fills in and smooths out very nicely. Primed white to start.

How do you get a gritty yellow look?

warm brown wash does the trick pretty well

Basecoating entire models with yellow (or red) without using a coloured primer or an airbrush is painful. Can highly recommend an airbrush, lacking that a coloured primer, lacking that as above make sure it's been primed white.

edit: Saw this video of a GW guy I think painting the new Ork thing with Averland Sunset over a black basecoat with a large brush, seemed to work well enough though I don't see why black would be preferable to white.

I have been using black primer with Averland Sunset. On the vehicles I prefer to have a black vehicle with yellow patches all over it. So I have been starting with the black primer then base coating the whole model in abandon black and then base coating all the patches in Averland Sunset. Maybe it would be easier to paint the black base coat over white primer than paint the yellow over black.

 Yonan wrote:
I don't see why black would be preferable to white.

It will change the vibrancy and brightness of the yellow. A black undercoat will make it a bit more muted and subdued. A white undercoat will give you a bright yellow.

Winter wrote:

 Yonan wrote:
I don't see why black would be preferable to white.

It will change the vibrancy and brightness of the yellow. A black undercoat will make it a bit more muted and subdued. A white undercoat will give you a bright yellow.

Though that doesn't really make sense because he uses a yellow glaze to bring more saturation to it anyway.

Honestly I think there was no reason for using a black undercoat, as he coated it with Averland well enough that the undercoat colour would be irrelevant.

Personally, even with Averland, I find the easiest thing is to undercoat white, do averland sunset (or just airbrush yellow if you have one) then pick out the areas that are supposed to be black or whatever afterwards. I find myself doing 3 or more coats with Averland over sprayed black which is more time consuming than do the black over sprayed yellow.

I do think the GW tutorials understate how many coats of paint it takes to do things. You can see when he's painting an area and then it skips to the "done" part, there often looks like there were 2 or 3 or even 4 coats of paint required to get the opacity he achieves on the finished product.

Several thin coats should do the trick, as someone has said, adding a wash does help.

For a gritty look, try using an oil wash.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I do think the GW tutorials understate how many coats of paint it takes to do things. You can see when he's painting an area and then it skips to the "done" part, there often looks like there were 2 or 3 or even 4 coats of paint required to get the opacity he achieves on the finished product.

I didn't want to say it, I rag on GW enough as it is... but I was thinking it ; p

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Honestly I think there was no reason for using a black undercoat, as he coated it with Averland well enough that the undercoat colour would be irrelevant.

You can't get enough coats of a yellow or red to make the primer color irrelevant. The primer coat will always affect the final result.

Doing it as a wash can pretty much completely remove the brush stroke effect; you just have to do multiple layers.

helotaxi wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Honestly I think there was no reason for using a black undercoat, as he coated it with Averland well enough that the undercoat colour would be irrelevant.

You can't get enough coats of a yellow or red to make the primer color irrelevant. The primer coat will always affect the final result.

After a few coats of Averaland sunset (maybe 3-5) and I really doubt you could tell the difference as to what undercoat you used. Base paints cover a hell of a lot better than most other yellows and reds, that's why I like them.

I've bought 3 GW paints in the last few years - Averland Sunset, Ceramite White and ahh... the red one. They have very good coverage compared to my usual Vallejo (even heavies/opaques) ones yeah.

helotaxi wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Honestly I think there was no reason for using a black undercoat, as he coated it with Averland well enough that the undercoat colour would be irrelevant.

You can't get enough coats of a yellow or red to make the primer color irrelevant. The primer coat will always affect the final result.

What? You can do it with one layer. One reallyyyyy thick layer. Not ideal, but you can totally cover the primer coat to the point of irrelevancy.

I was trying to get some bright orange Dark Eldar, and tried using orange for the basecoat, failed miserably.

I tried on some dreamforge WWII models using a white basecoat, then a layer of orange, and black shade (nuln oil) over the finished orange.

The difference is night and day. The Dark Eldar look terrible, the WWII models look perfect. The white basecoat gave much more texture and a deeper color to the orange. The shade gave more depth to the models.

I used Basics acrylics for the white and orange. GW's Nuln Oil for the shade.

I have yellow marines and bad moons. Painted plenty of yellow, while i am not the best painter in the world, I've learned some things.

black undercoat in my opinion is only for vehicles, when I'm going to have a model with lots of metal, then black, mostly vehicles.

I do this in thin layers:
white undercoat
yellow/brown (GW averland or the like)
Sepia wash
50/50 mix of averland and yriel yellow
yriel yellow
then highlight with a lighter yellow
maybe a glaze after that

Remember to thin out your layers, more coats is a pain, but will stop those brush strokes. Yellow requires patience and a lot of layers. You can't skip a few and get a good result. It is difficult but you can do it.

This yellow was achieved using gw base coat then golden yellow washed with sepia then highlighted golden and white mix . hope it helps

Airbrush. I do black, brown, yellow, light yellow, then go in with brushes for edging and airbrushed inks for tonal range.

I wouldn't paint yellow any other way.

This is Vallejo white primer followed by Vallejo Model Air Medium Yellow airbrushed on.

I still struggle with adding shading, but as Oddworx said, easy to slap on with an airbrush.
Preshading on the white risks the yellow flipping to green, so it's adding shade after the yellow.

To get an even yellow I do the following:-

Spray white undercoat
Wash with casandora yellow
2 thin layers of Yriel yellow

Worked really well for me so far.

I find Using Vallejo Yellow Ink over Bronze Fleshtone Gives a Vibrant Yellow with little effort, followed by a wash of thinned ink mix of Yellow with the tiniest amount of brown ink. (About 25-1)

Using this method you can hard edge in white before applying Inks.

Yellow is indeed one of those hard colors to get even without a spraybrush. I get around this by using a yellow primer on models that are going to have yellow armor (usually orks) from Armypainter (do the same thing for my tau's purple armor actually). You can use the primer as the yellow if you do it right, usually pre-assembled to get it right, but the reason it is great is because since its already yellow any yellow you put over it wont have color bleeding, forcing you to paint many many layers and have that thick or uneven look you are fearing.

White is the other hard one, only reason i get away with that on my tau is because its small patches thank god lol.

It's not easy. Believe me, as an imperial fists player I know. However it can be achieved using a white primer, wash with a majorly thinned agrax earthshade. Now paint many successive layers of very thin yellow of your choice. Edge highlight two shades brighter than you desire. Sepia wash. Good to go.