Black Reach Painting - Day 4/5

Spent the last few days researching better techniques for my gun painting such as wearing, rust and chipped paint.  This led me to a number of new tutorials and the find of a couple of great sites The Painting Corps (TPC) and From The Warp (FTW) which both have extensive list of tutorials for particular techniques.  FTW quick and easy soot effect for guns is proving useful for my Orks Boyz guns, as now starting to apply a spent ammo wear to the end of the barrels.  TPC have a number of good tutorials for weathering and battle damage of which I found the Rust in Two Colors and Painting Battle Damage for tanks.

I also spent some time learning about highlighting and come across FTW tutorial for teaching how to complete Line Highlighting which is something I have yet to master, but slowly improving on.  TPC have a nice simple technique for Eldar Tank Armour Lining for creating clean lines in those armour plate creases.

Beginners Day 4

Attended our 4th beginners day today, with only daughter son illness.  I took the opportunity to discuss some techniques with Dean the store manager, covering brushes and why Citadel range are not numbered like other art brushes. I also asked Dean to confirm I was not getting confused with fantasy Orks with Space Orks gear, such as the Azhag the Slaughterer which Dean confirmed I was and it from the fantasy gear.  The Space Orks boss like vehicles are such items as the Ork Trukk and the Ork Battlewagon.  What was also interesting was our discussion around the ForgeWorld Orks gear which is made with Game-Workshop approval but only certain items have the seal of having valid attributes for use in the table top games.
As for painting I managed to complete my next pair of Ork Boyz and also finally took the risk of adding battle damage I learnt from Girl Paintings tutorial video at 4m 49s by use of three simple colours.  Base of the highlight colour, Undercoat Black inner leaving thin outline of the highlight colour and finally a Chainmail inner leaving thin outline of the black.

Black Reach Painting - Day 3

Today I spent few hours reading and watching videos on blending techniques.  Wet blending seems to be one of the easier, but advanced techniques as you apply unwatered paint on the area in question with at least two shades.  Then carefully use a wet brush to gently blend one colour into another as shown in this Thunder Hammer tutorial.  I will try this technique when I have more experience, but for now the simpler technique of blending a colour by starting at a single point and then thinning it to the area you wish it to fade too.  A good example tutorial of this is shown in this Blending Blood Angels video.
I also worked on the next pair of Ork Boyz by completing their base coat layer and first wash of Devlun Mud.  Finishing off tonight with some touching up of the edges where paint has overlapped due to my not so still hands during painting with the base colours.  The trickiest part of this is the new helmet not seen until now which has a fur edge and proving a required skill to make it look good.

Beginners Day 3

Attended our 3rd beginners day at Games Workshop in Northampton and continued to paint up our Black Reach models.  Completed my first couple of Ork Meks which I learnt a lot in regard of shading/blending (see Thrushbralls Blog for great tips) and how I might improve on the next couple.  One of my key learnings from the first painting experience was to use a simple layering technique of primer, base coat, midtone and highlight layers.  This allowed me to realise the need when mixing of colour to create the correct shades for the layers you really need to have the right colour shades to mix with.  This led to me purchase 3 more paints Golden Yellow, Bleached Bone and Blood Red.
Son has also completed his first 2 Space Marines and 1 Terminator which have turned out great for his first attempt.  He has gone for a similar scheme of Salamanders but added a blue camo to the mix which looks pretty good.  He will look at using more layers in his next couple of paint jobs.

Now I have the images taken and up I have noticed numerous painting over spills need tidying up, missed the metal teeth of orks boots.  Something for son and I to work on over the next set of models and go back to these with those refinements in the detail.

Black Reach Painting - Day 2

Another late night this time learning another important lesson - paint all your base colours before applying your first wash.  Luckily I learnt this from watching another Ork painting tutorial video of GirlPainting and proceeded to paint my base colours on the rest of the miniature.  I then proceeded with a Develun Mud Wash being careful to remove  from the open areas and ensure all shadow areas contained the main wash.
Once the the wash had dried I proceeded to work through each colour for its mid tone painting.  I found the following a good strategy to follow as my first experience in producing a matching mid tone of the same colour:

• Mid-tone of Knarlock Green/Snot Green/Water 3:1:2 on Knarlock Green base/wash
• Mid-tone of Mechrite Red/Iyaden Darksun/Water 3:1:2 on Mechrite Red base/wash
• Mid-tone of Iyaden Darksun/Skull White/Water 4:1:2 on Iyaden Darksun base/wash
• Mid-tone of Calthan Brown/Tallarn Flesh/Water 3:2:2 on  Calthan Brown base/wash

I applied the mid-tone for each area by focusing rough painting on the main non-shadow areas, the final result was the images below, just pending the final highlight layer and tidying up the detail edges. After taking the images its highlighted to me how messy the painting job is and under the spot lights in the kitchen they don't highlight the miniatures detail when painting. I'm now seriously looking at a descent Daylight Table Lamp to help show better definition of the miniature during painting.