Lead Figure Painting Tutorial 1: Eldar Wraithguard
This was originally posted as a thread on the RelicNews 40K: DOW forum.
Read first:
1. I often use Vallejo paints in addition to Citadel ones, these will be indicated by "V paintname". For reference: Vallejo colour chart and relation to Citadel colours, and standard Citadel colour chart.
2. I'm aiming for a good, but efficient standard, neither an army standard nor a top-notch display standard, but somewhere in between. Perhaps an army character standard or a warband member standard, or in my case, an actually-getting-damn-figures-painted standard.
3. Photos won't be as clear as usual as I've needed to use a cruder set-up for the WIP photos.
Stage 0: Plan
After thinking about people's suggestions for a Wraithguard (which I'd never thought of painting), I came up with an inspiring colour scheme - a pale, turquoisey green, like GW's old Jade Green, with a pale greyish purple head, and a bone weapon of course. This should give a vivid colour scheme without being too gaudy. Gems will be rich to contrast, piping will be a neutral colour. Jade Green isn't available any more, but thankfully Vallejo do two similar colours: Jade Green and Foul Green.
Having a good plan and inspiration is very important with painting decent figures I reckon. If you're painting it for a reason it will work a lot better than just painting for the sake of it.
Stage 1: Preparation
Cleaned up the moulding as normal, i.e. scraping the mould lines with an knife, then filing with a fine file.
Drilled out the gun barrel.
Cut off some of the gems on the spines as they clutter it up IMO.
Whilst playing around I discovered a simple and very effective conversion, rotating the WG's head so it was looking along the gun barrel. The head was cut off the collar with a fine modelling saw, this damaged the ribbing a little so I scraped some definition into that with a knife. The head was pinned into place, I made a small plastic disc with a holepunch as a spacer. I didn't need to use any filler as the few gaps on the figure were small.
To accentuate the pose, I cut the right leg off the tab and bent it backwards a bit. This also allowed it to stand naturally on the slate which I added to the base. I broke some slate (from an isolated quarry in rural Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland ;)) into thin slivers and superglued it on, and then superglued some clumps of sand on. When this was dry it was undercoated with GW's white spray primer.
Time taken: 2 1/2 hours, but that was about 45 minutes cleaning, gluing, undercoating as normal, and 1hr 45 trimming gems, reposing, converting the head and playing with the slate. So without those extra bits it would have been fairly quick, and quicker still if I'd skimped a bit on the cleaning.
Next: Base.
Stage 2: Basecoat & Base
My order of painting...
I paint all the main basecoat colours first. This is because I struggle to keep the painting neat, and basecoating is the messiest part. If I painted one colour fully first, then painted another colour's basecoat, I'd get the first colour drenched. So I paint them simultaneously, which is messy at first but makes things easier later on.
Body basecoat is V Foul Green which covered fairly well. Ribbing and pipes are thinned down Chaos Black. Gun is V Bone White. Head is a mixture of Liche Purple and V Cold Grey (this might get lightened). The sash (or whatever it's called) I've left as I don't know what to paint it.
When everything is basecoated, I paint the base. I always paint bases first as I use heavy drybrushing and this always makes a mess of the figures shoes. I'd only ever do the base last if I was just using flock.
Firstly I washed the mossy bits with green ink, just to show where they were for painting them later on.
Slates were painted with two coats of a mix of Chaos Black and Bestial Brown. They were drybrushed with two lighter mixes of CB, BB, and V Stonewall Grey, with a final brush of VSG on the edges. I then blended a little thinned CB around the moss and feet for definition.
Mosses were painted with 3 thinned coats of V Dark Green (this didn't cover very well). They proved tricky as drybrushing would just mess the slates up. So I overbrushed them with white, then V Sick Green, then V Scorpy Green, then a mixture of V Scorpy Green and white. Unfortunately this lost the definition a bit so I had to wash them with thinned Chaos Black and Green Ink, and then a final light brush of the VSG / white mix.
Finally I lined around the mosses and feet with CB and repainted the feet V Foul Green.
Time taken: 1 1/2 hours. I did the main painting as quick as I could, for example, painting bits of the body while the base was drying. The base took some time but would have been quicker with a better method for the green (lighter drybrushing with brighter greens, I think). Also just lining them once with CB after everything was done. Or indeed if it was simpler in the first place ;).
Next: Repaint the body basecoat, and shade it.
Stage 3: Shading the body
With the body being all one colour, painting it takes a long time and is correspondingly a pain in the arse. Given it's almost all smooth armour, the painting needs to be correspondingly smooth. To get a good clean basecoat after the first coat was applied, I drybrushed the whole body with V Foul Green, then I touched up the bits around the piping etc that had got black paint on them. Then I painted a second thin coat of V FG all over with a Standard Brush. The drybrushing texture doesn't take much extra work and helps to give a smooth finish, shown in the first pic:
Then the shading. Due to the nature of the armour, the shading and highlighting can be kept fairly minimal BUT they need to be smooth AND keep the armour sections distinct from each other. Thus I went for a combination of a couple of blended shades and black lining.
First shade was V Jade Green, slightly thinned down, painted into the recesses and then blended out with a cleaned (in my case, just sucked the paint off) Detail brush. Second shade was Scaly Green, thinned down, painted further into the recesses and then blended out a bit less than the V JG. Both of these colours are excellent shades of V Foul Green so the result is fairly natural looking. Lining was thinned down Chaos Black, lined with a Fine Detail brush into all the recesses where seperate armour plates OR armour and something else met. A little bit of V FG was repainted to tidy up.
At the moment, with the black added, it looks pretty bollox. This is for two reasons, both of which will hopefully be rectified later on: Firstly the black is too abrupt against the green, and without the highlighting, the transition is somewhat....one directional. With highlighting added, the abrupt transitions should seem more appropriate. Secondly all the gems are still (messy) green, once these are painted and the black is just a line around them, they should look a lot better.
It takes a bit of faith to get to this stage and not worry about it, and trust that what doesn't look good now will be much improved later on.
Time taken: A few hours, didn't really count. I did this blending as fast as I could whilst keeping it reasonably neat. This could be speeded up by layering which would still require some effort to be neat but since the colours are such good matches, would work well. The lining would be speeded up if the nearly-new Fine Detail Brush I bought wasn't so fucking shit. But to get a smooth(ish) finish, you can't skimp much on these stages.
Next: Highlight the body.
Stage 4: Highlighting the body
Similarly tedious to shading the body, no shortcuts here, just two blended layers and a lining of the edges over the whole damn body.
First highlight was a mixture of V Foul Green and Skull White, blended with a Detail brush. Second highlight was a mixture of V FG and more SW, painted and blended closer to the edge. Final highlight was a line of pure SW painted along all the edges, mostly using the side of a Fine Detail brush and running it along the edges.
The Skull White highlight took a bit of bravery to trust it would all be okay, as it's a very harsh highlight. However since the previous highlights had plenty of SW in the mix, and the final one is along the edges, it works okay, especially from a distance. I will probably do a Blue+Green ink glaze, but after I've tidied up all the black piping areas.
This has set the style for the figure, with small but contrasting highlights. The rest of the figure will have to follow this style to make it look coherent. But thankfully from now on the areas are a lot smaller and easier, apart from the piping, but that will just be a black basecoat and a couple of overbrushed highlights.
Time taken: A couple of hours. Again not much that could be done about that except layering carefully instead of blending. Or possibly reducing the number of highlights.
Next: Piping.
Stage 5: Piping/ribbing
Tried to keep this pretty simple and use the sculpting with some quick overbrushing.
Basecoat Chaos Black.
Piping was overbrushed with a mixture of V Shining Gold and Mithril Silver. Highlighted by overbrushing with Mithril Silver, then given a thinned down Brown Ink wash, and finally a bit more Mithril Silver. This didn't turn out great because the molding of the pipe was uneven and the current low-quality golds are not good overbrushing colours.
Ribbing was painted with Chainmail carefully painted onto the ribs, then Mithril Silver to highlight. Then a thin Black Ink was, and finally neated up with Chaos Black. This worked better as the silvers are cleaner colours.
Speed: Fairly quick overall but some time was wasted on the piping trying to improve it. Just doing the whole lot in silver would have been better. Some superfluous washing too.
Next: Gun.
Stage 6: Gun
Quite a prominent feature and has to be Wraithbone of course =). I tried to go for a bone that was both rich and quite bright.
Basecoat with a couple of thin coats of V Bone.
First shading of V Plague Brown blended into the recesses. This was far too fiddly around the front gems so for those I painted the whole area V PB and blended V Bone back in between them - a good example of adapting to different methods when one method is ineffective.
Second shading of V Cobra Leather blended into the larger recesses, and simple painted into the others. Again this was too fiddly on the front gems so I put a blob of very thinned V CL on each gem.
Any areas where the gun met the body, or where there was a gem, were lined with Chaos Black. The deepest recesses on the gun itself were lined with Scorched Brown as CB would be too harsh.
First highlighting was simple repainting some V Bone back over the scruffy bits to make sure it was a clean coat.
Second highlight was a mixture of V Bone and White blended onto the edges and raised areas.
Final highlight was pure White lined along all the raised areas, making sure to get a strong line as the bone is quite pale anyway so a strong highlight is needed to define it.
Further, the metal detail was painted in Mithril Silver, washed in thinned Chaos Black, shaded with Boltgun metal, lined with CB, and neated with Mithril Silver.
On the spur of the moments I painted the back vents as Wraithbone too: I painted a dot of black in each hole first, then two basecoats of V Bone, a little V Plague Brown the V Cobra Leather blended onto the bottom, a little of the left-over V Bone / White mix blended onto the top and lining the bottom holes, and then a little white lining the top holes.
I was pleased with the way the bone turned out. Painting around the front gems was tedious and annoying, but the highlight was very quick and effective. The back vents were even better, they took less than 5 minutes - probably the first time I've felt I've painted quickly enough during this figure.
Speed: Reasonably quick given the gun is fairly ornate. The shading was a bit slow and could have been made quicker by washing and/or simpler shading in the middle recesses. Highlighting was quick though - the natural colour transition from bone to white helps.
Next: Sash or head, dunno which.
Stage 6: Sash
Pale grey-ish purple colour that will vaguely coordinate with the head. Less need for sharp contrasts as it's soft material.
Basecoated with two coats of V Stonewall Grey.
First shading with a mix of V SG and Liche Purple layered into the recesses, with only a little blending as the colour is subtle. I also tried a very thin was of LP first but it didn't do much.
Second shading with a thinned mix of V Cold Grey and Liche Purple blended into the recesses, this took a couple of coats as the mix was kept thin to avoid a harsh colour change.
Final shading by lining the deepest recesses with a mix of LP and Chaos Black, and lining where the sash meets the armour with pure CB.
First highlight with a mixture of V Stonewall Grey and white, blended onto the raised areas. I tried with pure white first but it didn't blend so well.
Second and final highlight of pure white blended onto the edges and raised areas.
I had to add a symbol really. Sorry no stage-by-stage pics for this but it was fairly reasonable to do:
- Sketched a few designs and found one I liked.
- Tested painting it once onto my painting board.
- Drew some positioning lines onto the sash with a pencil.
- Painted over the lines with thinned Chaos Black and a Fine Detail brush, painting thin lines and gradually building them up to full thickness, this allows one to get the position and proportions of the lines right.
- Tidy up the edges with V Stonewall Grey and a spot of Liche Purple.
- Painted a fine line of Blood Red as a first highlight, then Fiery Orange, then Sunburst Yellow, making the top of the symbol more yellow. Since the colours don't fully cover the black, the highlights end up reasonably subtle (although it does make the symbol a bit less striking on the sash).
- Tidy up with Chaos Black and V SG.
Speed: This too was satisfactorily quick - using a looser style on the sash enabled quicker shading and highlighting, and the symbol turned out to be easier than expected (building up the lines may seem slower but it avoids wasting time repairing the design later).
Next: Gems (already undercoated white).
Stage 8: Gems
I had this "genius" idea that painting the gems in a fiery sequence from bottom to top would look good (that's why the sash symbol is highlighted thus). However when I painted the base colours on...
...it looked like the model was covered in Skittles, ARGH. Colours are from bottom to top: Scab Red, Red Gore, Blood Red, Blazing Orange, Firey Orange, Golden Yellow, Bad Moon Yellow. But I figured that shading and highlighting the gems might fix them up...
...and it did. GW often say "don't shade with black, don't highlight with white - it dulls the colours down". But sometimes that's exactly what's needed, and I do it quite often.
There's no stage-by-stage for the gems since there's so bloody many of them (43 on the body :argh:) I had to get an assembly line process going. They were painted the standard method: Highlight the bottom, shade the top, add a white dot. Highlighting was two layers of the base colour with white added (no need for blending this small). Shading was two vaguely blended layers of the base color with either black or a dark brown added, this needed to be blended sometimes as it looked patchy over the base colour. Neatened with black lining, then the white dot dotted.
The gun gems will be painted purple in the same way.
You'll also notice that all the paint is worn off the top fin and top of the head - that's because I pinch the model between base and top, and have annoyingly sweaty hands so the paint wears off. Thus I leave those bits until last.
Speed: 1 1/2 hours to do the gems. I did them as quick as possible but there's so damn many. Using all one colour would be a bit quicker but the main time-drain is painting each one. I notice on the GW ones all the gems are painted like simple pods of the body colour, which would be a damn sight quicker.
Next: Gun gems and head.
Stage 9: Head
Purple dome hur hur hur
Basecoat of two thin coats of V Stonewall Grey / Liche Purple mix.
First shading of V Cold Grey / Liche Purple mix blended around the gems.
*NOTE* - all of the blending on the head had to be done a couple of times as the colours were quite harsh and needed to be smoothed out a lot - a couple of thinned blended coats helped that.
Second shading of V CG / LP / Chaos Black mix blended closer to the gems.
Lining with Chaos Black now there's a radical break from tradition eh ;)
First highlight with a V Stonewall Grey / Liche Purple (more V SG this time) mix blended around the edges.
Second highlight with a White / Liche Purple mix blended around the edges.
Final highlight of pure White lined along the edges now there's a surprise ;)
The blending at the front was a little patchy, so I very carefully drybrushed a V SG / White / LP mix over the front with a very dry brush. Then the gems, I painted them white intending to paint them some other colour, and thought the white might look nice as it was. So I shaded them as gems with V SG and V Cold Grey and put the dot on.
Speed: Not bad but that's how it should be given the head is small and simple! The shading/highlighting took a bit more blending but each bit was done reasonably quickly. Gems were quick too.
Next: Tidying up and then it's done!
Finished figure:
Well...
I'm happy with the result, but I'm not happy with the time taken. It still felt damn slow, even when I was cutting corners and painting as quick as I could whilst keeping it neat, a lot of it just took time. I think as a demonstration of efficient painting technique it mostly failed.
However, there were a few areas where simple techniques proved effective - highlighting the gun, painting the sash, doing the gems individually (although they took a long time together). Also, there were a few pointers to speeding up painting, for example avoiding gems altogether, painting simple colours, layering where possible, etc.
Most prominent things I learnt / noted during this:
- Good colours are important - particularly having the most natural shades/highlights makes shading/highlighting easier.
- Don't do any extra work that's not needed, including places that are hard to see, bits that will be painted over later.
- Keep it simple. If you're not sure what colour to paint something, choose the simplest one that looks right.
- Thinned down paint for smoothing blending can be useful and cuts down on blending stages.
- Avoid blending on anything small enough not to need it.
- Using good quality brushes is crucial for neatness esp. with lining.
- Some pre-planning and knowing where you're going with the colour scheme is useful.
Next time I hope to improve on the speed and efficiency as well as doing a different style of figure - it will be something vaguely topical.
......
