40k Imperial Guard Blog

Found this really useful link which allows you to find the equivalent colour for different brands of paint, meaning you can match up what Games Workshop Scorched Brown acrylic paint is in (for example) Vallejo model colour (Flat Brown,Cavalry Brown,Mahogany Brown).

I’ve not used it yet as i’ve only just found it but not only can it tell you what the equivalent colour is from another brand, you can also match the same brand against itself and find out what the lighter shade is, that matches the original colour – e.g. Scorched Brown, highligh colour – Dark Flesh

check it out here.

dead easy to do, so no video, basically get an old paint brush, put a small amount of paint on it and paint onto a scrap of paper until the paint looks really dry and there’s not much paint on the brush, then LIGHTLY brush over the area on the mini you want to cover, and gradually the layers of semi-dry paint will stick to the raised parts of the mini, after a few ‘layers’ you’ll get a grainy looking result which highlights the raised parts, its quick and very easy but looks very beginner-ish

this video is one i literally stumbled on surfing the web, but what it clearly demonstrates is what he calls layering, i’d argue its more glazing given the thinness of the paint, its more like an ink than a paint. but i think you’ll agree, whilst time consuming, the effect is pretty impressive. as such i think this is a strong example of the glazing technique.

found this awesome video and forum thread about blending.

what i find interesting is what is termed as blending here is really a hybrid of wet blending, layering, and feathering. if you watch you’ll note the paint is put on as a strong alternate colour, then whilst wet, feathered into the lighter colour layer which is kind of what wet blending is, but the fact that the colour is quite a clear difference makes it layering as well… regardless of what you call it, the results are pretty awesome, but obviously very time consuming too!

So given that i’m more of a painter than a gamer i figured i’d start keeping a log of tips and techniques i’ve come accross to start building some sort of archive of information.

so for my first painting tips post, lets cover some basic ground with the different types of painting techniques i’ve come accross, now obviously each one if these is a subject and art in of itself, but i’m going to briefly explain each one below.

1. Dry brushing – very simple technique, often used by beginners once they have mastered the art of painting a mini with flat colours, basically this involves going over the mini with a lighter shade of the same colour, with a very dry brush, i.e. where most of the paint has been wiped off, the resultant effect is a very grainy look to the mini with the most raised areas being lightest, its a quick and easy way of bringing out the depth on a mini and works particularly well with fur and other highly detailed areas.

2. layering – this is a shading technique, often used by traditional gamers to bulk paint armies without resorting to drybrushing (which is really bad for brushes), effectively you block out areas and paint gradually lighter shades in blocks as layers, the next step of this makes layering look more like blending, where the edges of each layer are blended and thinned, so that you get a more gradiated transition between the lighter layers and darker layers, if done well this is a really strong technique, but its quite hard to master. Put simply all other painting techniques evolve out of layering. Layering can then be split into shading (using darker colours to enhance the shadows and dark areas) and highlighting (using lighter colours to bring out the lighter areas), by doing shading and highlighting you’re exaggerating the dark and light areas and giving the mini a more 3D feel

3. washes – this is basically the use of an ink wash, or a thinned down paint, you cover the entire mini and the pigment sinks to the deeper groves in the mini, resulting in strong shading. some gamers use this technique as its one of the fastest to acheive reasonable looking minis, you paint the base colour on to the mini and paint a wash over the mini, wait to dry and the mini is now ready. the problem of course is that the mini is only washed in 1 pigment so it can ‘flatten’ the mini because all colours get ‘drawn together’ by the pigments own colour. a variation of using washes is ‘dipping’ which comes from pigment within a varnish, like army painter, you literally plunge the mini into the varnish, then flick off the excess, the result is a mini that is ‘shaded’ AND varnished.

4. blending – blending and layering tend to have a strong overlap, whilst there’s no rule and the term seem to be interchanged frequently, i’d argue that whilst layering is about blocking out areas, blending is about very smooth gradiated lightening of shades, so the edges are softer between layers of paint, its also known as feathering. another point to mention is that blending of layers can be interepreted as ‘better’ layering, but the other part of blending as a technique is to do with both the highlighting and shading at a point where two different colours meet, in this instance blending is about ensuring a smooth and gradiated transition between the two colours so that there isn’t a hard ‘boarder’ between the two colours, this gives a more organic and ‘smoother’ feel.

5. glazing – this is like layering, however the key difference is in the consistancy of the paints, with glazing the paints are thinned to a wash, and in this sense it is like using washes, however main difference between glazing and using washes is control, with glazing you are highlighting and shading the figure using paint washes in a deliberate way on certain parts of the mini, this gives a very smooth, controlled, crisp finish and is by far the most difficult technique to master, the results of this look stunning, and are essentially governed by brush control and the thickness of the glaze used. the thicker the glaze the more viscus the paint the harder it is to get a nice gradiated shade going on the mini.

6. wet blending – this technique is one i’ve hardly seen used, but essentially you’re taking two colours applying them to the mini, wet, then whilst the paint is still wet, you mix the two colour on the mini before letting it dry, i’ve not seen it used before so i’m not sure how good it is, in theory it makes sense and would give really nice gradiated shading, but in practice i can’t see how you could do that on a normal mini given the size of a mini, i suspect you could only really do this with large minis.

7. air brushing – not really a technique as and airbrush is basically a tool, but there are techniques used by ppl who use an airbrush, more importantly the ‘look’ of an airbrushed mini is very distinct and produces wonderful shading due to the way an airbrush applies paint, this is really difficult to master and for minis i’ve only seen it done on larger minis/vehicles or as a base layer.

whilst each of these painting techniques is quite distinct, what i would say is that they can be used in combination, and there’s a lot of overlap between the different techniques, so for example you could start by doing layering, and end up actually doing glazing, then rounding off the whole mini with a wash and a final coat of dry brushing.

hope you enjoyed this post, feel free to add your own opinions or correct anything you don’t agree with