Tag: reference

avalu40k:

Not so quick, but still dirty nebula painting based on @kaijuslayer‘s q&d nebula tutorial. (Which you should read before reading this).

In essence, this is the same process, except that it is a mix of my three attempts at learning Jake’s technique. Which brought a few tweaks

All three attempts were slightly different.

• The first was a “I’ll follow the manual” thing :

• The second was a variation with another colour than black as a background, or more accurately, making a nebula without any background colour. This used a drybrush technique :

• The third came back to the text book, albeit with a desire to have colours blend more. To that end it used a wetting-the-paint-on-the-model method.

Flyers are great, they have a lot of surface to play with to really give this wet technique the room to shine. On smaller models though, the results do not achieve the impression of deepness of this Voidraven, but it is still worth the effort, at least if you look at the model from a playing distance.

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The models I’m painting at the moment do not leave any black deep-space areas. They were undercoated with Mephiston Red spray paint, which I still deeply regret.

I would like to emphasis the fact that these techniques will crush your spirit until the last phase, where everything comes together and no matter how shitty it looked during the process, it will in fact, turn out great. I remember almost crying out of frustration on my first attempt.

STEP 1 : Getting started and doubting

Like with Jake’s tutorial, haphazardly paint your models with two base colours. Deposit the paint on a palette, take a lot of water on the brush, drop it on the palette, mix a little, put the blob of paint on the model. Really wet it, but not as much as it would immediately run. Aim for that “round drop of water on a surface” as a limit, running is desired, but not just yet.

Switch to colour 2, do the same, you might not need as much water this time, you’ll have to be the judge of that. Here your bubbles will connect and the paint from blob one will move around, dilute, blend a little but never really mix into another colour.

You don’t want them to become another colour, at least not too much, here a little bit of purple-ish blue or red in a very limited area can be acceptable, but if it turns outright purple, just wipe it away from the brush/model.

Play with the water : go take some with your brush and drop it on the model if it doesn’t feel like fun/risky to do. Let it go where it wants, or not, try turning the model around or up/down to achieve desired effects.

Let dry thoroughly before next step.

STEP 2 : feels like you did nothing of importance

Same than step one, but with layer colours, be a bit more precise with what you do, but you still have room for happy mistakes. As explained in Jake’s tutorial, you do not want to just paint over the deep blue, you want it to overlap a bit, be a bit smaller as to give the paint the idea of gradient, definitely use less water, but still, have a really wet brush.

You should totally have a nebula image from nasa or w/e as a model while doing this when you first try it out, it helps a lot. At least until you become familiar with nebula techniques.

STEP 3 : feels like improvement, or ruining the model?

Keep at it, go for even more lighter colours. In my case I didn’t use more than two red colours (Khorne and Evil Suns) but did use 3 or 4 colours for the blue (Kantor, Caledor, Lothern, and White if you want to count that in)

Keep going smaller (or not actually, in some places it can achieve nice effects) if you are perfectionist to the point of painting a replica of a nebula picture to the letter, these aren’t considerations that will bother you.

(sorry no picture)

STEP 4 : feels like it might come together eventually.

Fun part, take a bit of one of your base colours in a small recipient (I use icecube-making moulds) with the brush add a lot of water. Mix and apply all over the area. See Jake’s tutorial for an image and explanation it’s the exact same step.

STEP 5 : stars and shit

I’ve gotten lazy (that’s my trait in painting because I really don’t enjoy painting, if I could get to my end result without having to pick up a brush, I’d be so happy).

On the voidraven, I did every star one by one. It was okay, its a big model it needs to look good. On my bikes and this batch, I’ve used a destroyed brush to do like ten little spots at once, but they of course don’t look as good if your aim is to have nice round and small stars. What I did looks different, but not necessarily bad.

I added little parts where I almost dried-brush the lighter blue, other parts I used a wet brush, you have to test it out to see what works best for you. Most of the time I don’t know what I am doing and hope it’ll come out okay.

STEP 6 : INK/SHADE THE SHIT OUT OF IT.

By now the model looks okay, but it can look even better if you just use a big brush containing a lot of ink (shade) in it. It will give the whole thing deepness and brilliance, as well as a certain fading, as if it was a real paintjob made by the space elves, rather than feeling like it’s a paintjob from a hobbyist nerdzor. 

I used an ink coulour that is not of the same hue as the earlier wash. In this case, I had washed with Khorne Red, so I opted for Drakenhof Nightshade as a finishing touch.

A lot of variations of these techniques will work. It is fun to try different things everytime or to have to find ways to adapt what you did on a 10cm x 5cm flyer hull to a 1,5cm x 1cm cape.

Just go for it 😀 get dirty!