Modelling

Welcome to the modelling pages of the Lounge. Here I've tried to collect the basics of Epic painting and modelling along with a few tips and tricks I've found usefull over the years.

Basic painting techniques:

Step 1 - The Undercoat
To get the best result with your miniatures it is a good idea to undercoat your models. Undercoat give the subsequent layers of paint something to attatch to and can help tone your colour for a specific result. The two most common colours for Undercoating are black and white though some people also use grey. You can undercoat your models with a brush but the best result (and also the easiest) is to use spray paint. The Citadel range is perfectly suited for the job but you can also find other cheaper substitutes. However you should make sure that the paint isn't oil based otherwise your acrylic paints will peel right off like water off a duck's back.

White undercoat should be used when you want a bright finish. I allways use white when I want a miniature which is predominantly yellow or red. This is because yellow and red pigments are weaker and doesn't cover as well as other colours.
White undercoat is also great when you paint with inks and washes. -I'll describe this in more detail later.

Black is quickly becoming my prefered colour of basecoat. Black gives an overall darker tone to the model and it is an excellent base for drybrushing. This also means that it is great for painting miniatures quicker. Black has the advantage that it also helps to cover up mistakes - if you forget to paint a patch somewhere it isn't as easily noticable as a white patch. The black will more often look like a natural shadow.

Step 2 - Basecoat
Here you paint the basic colours of the model. You really shouldn't use more than 2 or 3 colours here. Less is more I think. Paint over or arround detail - you will get back to that later. At this stage it is important to get a nice even coat of paint.
When doing camouflage on tanks the easiest is to only choose one of the colours (choose the lightest: it is easier to paint dark over light -not the other way arround!). Paint that all over the model and do proper shading and highlighting. Then you can paint the camo pattern on afterwards.
Remember that your paint should be sufficiently thin. If it is too thick it will obscure the detail. If it is too thin you can allways paint another coat.

Step 3 - Shading
Shading is a technique which adds artificial shadows to the model. You should allways shade as it helps bring out the detail and define the shape of your model. There are several good shading techniques which can be used in different situations.

"Classic" shading or blending:
Here you mix your base colour with a darker tone of paint and produce a gradient to the deepest recess of the model. This technique is very time consuming and the best result is achieved if you have a steady hand. Do two or three layers of shade for the best effect.

Blacklining This technique is actually achieved during the "basecoat" stage. When applying your basecoat over a black undercoat you leave fine lines of black at the bottom of recesses to produce a natural shadow. You can also apply the black lines later with a brush or a fine pen if you prefer. Again a steady hand is crucial for a good result. Blacklining is particulary suitable for shading planels and other large flat surfaces such as armour on tanks and titans.

Washes and inks A wash is a thinned down paint which is applied to your model. The consistency of the wash means that the colour pigment runs down into the recesses of the miniature and settles at the bottom producing a nice and even shade. Washing is the easiest and quickest way of producing a nice looking shading on your miniatures. However the paint can sometimes produce a slightly gritty result. Great for Orks but not so good for Eldar where you'd want more smooth gradients. If you use a white undercoat you can paint with washes: The wash will produce instant basecoating, shading and highlighting as the paint settles at the recesses, leaves some paint in the middle areas and only is applied very thin over the raised areas. However this is only useable for monochrome (single coloured) models.

Inks are thin flowing colours with a very high pigment concentration. They have a number of uses both in shading and highlighting but frankly I don't use them very much as they can produce a slightly glossy finish. To counter that you can thin down your ink with water and a bit of dish washing liquid.

Step 4 - Highlighting
Highlighting means applying a lighter shade of the base colour to the raised areas of the model. Just as shading, highlighting helps define the shape of the model and can bring out tiny details which is particularly improtant at Epic scale. Some people prefer very sharp highlights which are almost white. While they are great from technical point of view I don't think they look very realistic so I prefer a slightly more subtle highlight. Of course all this is simply a matter of taste.
Like shading there's a number of techniques which can be used to produce highlights.

"Classic" blending. This is the same technique as with shading. Mix in lighter tones of the colour to build up a gradient to the top highlights of the model. Classic highlighting looks best on large flat surfaces such as panels and also Eldar stuff which is supposed to have a very smooth finish.

Drybrushing.

To get the best results I reccoment that you use a fairly large brush. The ones I use are about 1.5cm/3/4" wide with very stiff but thin bristles. I think it is called a laquer or varnish brush in english. The basic technique means that you load some paint into your brush and wipe most of it off on some tissue untill the brush is almost completely dry. Then you gently brush over the area you want to paint. The paint will only be left on the raised areas producing a very effective shading. The result is a bit rough and gritty which will look good on furrs, camo netting, metals and most military colours.
There's a few tricks though.

1: Thin paint: Some of the new Citadel paints are very thin when you use them to begin with. I suggest that you load paint onto the brush and then just leave it to dry for acouple of minutes. You don't really want the paint to dry but just to have some of the water evaporize giving you a higher concentration of colour pigment in the brush.

2: Use more colours. Then you drubrush on a black base make sure you use several layers of drybrushing. On the Shadowsword this means a heavy drybrush of Catachan Green followed byy a lighter brush of Catachan Green/Camo Green mix followed by a very light brush of pure Camo Green. This helps to produce smoother gradient and brings out detail much better than simply a single coat of Camo Green. If you don't do this you get a very gritty surface which looks alright on larger scale models but on Epic model you just obscure the contours of the model and disguise the detail.

Mix and match. When you paint your models you'll quickly begin to realize which painting techniques are most suited to achieve the result you are aiming for. Often you'll be using several different painting techniques on the same model. The Baneblade on the left was first spray undercoated white. Then I added a coat of Bubonic Brown basecoat. For shading I first applied a wash of Snakebite Leather followed by a slightly thinner wash of Graveyard Earth. Once this was completely dry I drybrushed the model with various mixes of Desert Yellow and white. Next step was painting on the camo pattern. I chose Dark Angles Green I didn't shade this as thhe coluur is pretty dark to begin with. Instead I used classig blending technique by mixing in Goblin Green to highlight the raised areas. Finally the details were painted on. The stowage was painted using washes and the metals and blacks with classic blending. The driver was undercoated black and using Blacklining technique shaded for maximum contrast from the vehicle.

Step 5 - Details

Well this is pretty much just repeating the previous steps but at a smaller scale. With tiny detail it is a good idea to give a dark basecoat and then paint he actual detail very light. As an example: Painting aa Bolter on a tank: 1: Paint the bolter black or Gunmetal. 2: go over the raised areas with chainmail or mithril silver.. If you'd simply painted the weapon silver it wouldn''t have stood out from the rest of the model very well. Likewise if you'd simply painted it black it could easily dissapear among the rest of the shading.
Try to paint your details in a nice contrasting colour. I'm not saying that you should go for bright details of a model with otherwise dull colours though. Simply pick something contrasting within the same tone of colour: Army greenish - Terracotta reddish and so forth.

I've tried to write more specific tips for each model in my galleries. If there's a particular technique or tip for painting a specific model, try to find it in the galleries and hopefully there should be a few hints along with it. If not try looking somewhere else in the gallery under similar types of models.

Next Page - Modelling and converting