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I'm thinking of using transparent Tamia paint for my Eldar army. I'm going to airbrush them with a base coat of silver, and then go with blue/green over the top of that. Similar to this...

https://youtu.be/OJR0lCHsvu0

Now on infantry it will be fine to simply shade it using washes etc. But on bigger things like Wraithlords/Knights and Wave serpents, I'm going to want to pre shade it.

In the HH painting guides, they pre shade their knight using transparent blue when they paint it with a transparent red colour. So what would be a good colour to use when pre shading for transparent blue/green?

Aside from that, has anyone got any general tips to give, or pitfalls to watch out for when using these transparent paints?

Transparents are about applying thin coats. Use them sparingly and build up to the tone of color you want. I have used a Leadbelcher under coat and then applied a blue transparent coat. It gave a real nice metallic blue. You could also under coat a lighter color (like white) for your highlights and a darker shade color for the shaded areas first. Then apply your main color over them.

I also suggest testing this out on a test model first. Preferably one you don't care about messing up. Practice getting the way you want it too look before you do your larger models.

Hope this helps.

Gundor2 wrote:
Transparents are about applying thin coats. Use them sparingly and build up to the tone of color you want. I have used a Leadbelcher under coat and then applied a blue transparent coat. It gave a real nice metallic blue. You could also under coat a lighter color (like white) for your highlights and a darker shade color for the shaded areas first. Then apply your main color over them.

I also suggest testing this out on a test model first. Preferably one you don't care about messing up. Practice getting the way you want it too look before you do your larger models.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, those were my thoughts too, I was thinking of getting a few of the cheap snap fit Guardians and spraying them up with silver as test pieces and trying out a few different mixes to get the colour scheme to my liking first. And then for the vehicles I can just use a piece of random plastic that's large enough or an old model car or something. It's always worth testing new schemes out on something crap before you put a good model under the airbrush imo.

You might also look at Gold, if you consider a red tint, as the gold can work nicely under a transparent red. That's how some painters do the Thousand Sons Tizcan Ruby look.

 General Kroll wrote:
In the HH painting guides, they pre shade their knight using transparent blue when they paint it with a transparent red colour. So what would be a good colour to use when pre shading for transparent blue/green?

I believe you want to use a complimentary colour, so that would be red I guess? To be honest I've never tried it with blue/green.

For blue/green stuff I've done in the past I've liked the effect of shading with either a mid blue or a mid green, as it enhances the colour shift from blue to green.

Otherwise a safe bet is often just to use a dark brown as the shade.

Pre shade purple.

 Udo wrote:
Pre shade purple.

Good call