Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Painting Power Weapons

So a couple of days ago someone asked me if I could do a tutorial on how I do my blue power weapons. Well I guess it could be any color but I tend to do blue because it "pops" to the viewers eye very easily. Plus the fact that blue is easier to paint and blend together.

Here are the steps that I used:

Primed.

Base coated Enchanted Blue.

First highlight and shadow. Highlight: Base color + Teclis Blue. Shadow: Base Color + Regal Blue.

(Sorry I missed a step here) Highlight: Teclis Blue + Ice Blue. Shadow: Regal Blue + Abaddon Black (ran out of Midnight Blue but sometimes I find it easier to do this step with the paints used rather than using Midnight Blue).

Highlight: Ice Blue + a hint of Skull White. Shadow: Regal Blue + Abaddon Black (a bit more black in this stage than last to make it slightly darker)

Highlight: Skull White just on the edges. Shadow: Abaddon Black for creating darkest area. 

Before the Skull White edge highlight I sometimes like to go over the entire area with a very diluted Regal Blue/Black mix to unify the piece leaving no hard edges, but soft transitions between the stages. Afterwards I do the final stage shadow and highlight.

Hope you guys enjoy and happy painting!

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Starting from the beginning

So having posted for the first time a few weeks ago, after what seems like ages,  I'm all fired up the post new content. So I figured the best way would be to start from the beginning... with priming.

So the first thing a lot of you would do when your prepare a model would be to grab the black primer or the white primer. Some of you would use grey primer. In my opinion black primer creates an overall dark model and dreary looking model. Whereas white primer creates a much more lighter and color vibrant model. Grey primer is neutral so it could portray both vibrate and dark and dreary models. This of course doesn't mean that you can't create a lighter and vibrant looking model using black primer or vice versa. This is just my opinion.

Reasonings this is based on (again my own opinion):
1. Black primer tends to absorb the light.
2. White primer tends to reflect the light.
3. Grey primer tends to be balanced because it neither absorbs or reflects the light.

Now let's talk about the different ways of priming. The most common way of priming would be to use primer from an aerosol can or primer could be applied using an airbrush. I guess an airbrush would be the most controllable as you can prime the model exactly where you would like. But for some strange reason I prefer using the aerosol can instead. Maybe it's because I just started with it and am just used to using it. I do however use an airbrush once in awhile but not often. Anyway, depending on how you want the final look of the model will determine what color primer you use to prime the model.

I tend to use only pure black primer for tabletop gaming models. This is because I'm not too worried about spending countless hours on shading and highlighting. If I miss a couple of areas with the shading steps, the black primer tends to cover up the shading since it is dark. Also just like mentioned above the black primer will absorb the light through the painted layers can create an overall dark miniature. I rarely use pure white primer but there is the occasion that I will paint miniatures that will not have very dark shading. (No dark browns or blacks but just a darker shade color of the base paint used). But since I'm not a huge gamer and I don't paint a lot of miniatures to create armies and I tend to just paint models for showcase, i use a combination of both black and white primer.

The reasoning for using a combination of both the black and white primer instead of pure grey is this..... I need the primers to do both absorbing and reflecting at the same time. By only using grey primer,  the overall color with be balanced and I would have to use alot of steps to create those darks and lights. This means more highlighting and shadowing with white and black paint mixed into whatever color you are using. But rather than do that I let natural light do the work for me. Since the paints we use tend to dry translucent, we are able to see the lays below. Well if WE can see the difference than so can the light hitting the object. And based on the theory of what light does when it hits dark and light.... you see where I'm going with this.

So as I mentioned I use both black and white primer. What I do first is prime the model using black primer. Mostly from the bottom of a miniature where all the shadows would be, but you can prime the entire model if you like. Next I use the white primer and hold the miniature roughly 12 inches away from the nozzle and spray very gently. Don't go too heavy on the white primer, just a light dusting will do. This will create both your light and dark areas, but plus as a bonus, will create the grey area in between where the black and white primers blend together. In my opinion this method allows you to get the advantages of all three without penalty of using only one primer. Please see the attached image.

Please comment and let me know what you guys think and if you disagree also please comment as to why you disagree. There is no wrong and right way but what works for us as individuals. Give my method a try and see if you like it. I know I do :)

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and happy painting!

Been ages since last post!

It's been ages since my last post!  Truly I'm not a great blogger. It's tough to find the motivation to post up on my blog when there isn't enough material I can get done due to lack of time and motivation to paint things. I even took a break from painting and set aside all my tools and brushes for what feels like ages.

But this past weekend I went to Games Day 2013 and I hung out with John Steining from 40K Hobby blog. Talking with John over the weekend and discussing the many opportunities of painting really cool models got me really excited. We even started discussing about a small bet on entering some minis for next year's golden demon competition.

Having said that I decided that I'm going to try really hard to show my progress throughout the next upcoming year with different painting styles that I will experiment with. My biggest fear is losing that motivation to continue to paint and post on my blog to share with you all. But I will try my hardest to post at least one post every other week just as a start.

I hope that through my journey for the next year that you guys will keep me motivated and get on my case if I don't post.

With all the above mentioned I would like to inform you guys about a recent project that I've been involved in which includes painting some minis for the Redemption of the Fallen charity army project. This army is being painted by a handful of painters around the US and will be raffled off at this years Nova. Currently I'm working on the Dark Angels chapter master Azrael. I will post up some work in progress pics as soon as I get some pictures.

Last but not least it feels good to be back blogging. Thanks John for motivating me to get back into blogging.