Let's start with Painting winter camo
As you can see, this is a WWII STuG. nifty yeah?

Well, with a sponge you can create the dappled look of winter camo .

First paint with a couple coats of thinned Titanium white, or zinc oxide white, maybe add a little blue to make it pop.

If you really want to make it work, paint it titanium white, then mix up the blue and white mix, apply it to a bit of the sponge, and dab it here and there to create a mottled and disrupted white and blue white appearance.

But wait, tanks and other vehicles that see the battlefield have chipped up looking paint, the white gets scratched or flakes off to reveal the undercolors.

Sponge to the rescue here too.
Take a little bit of Russian Green or similar color and lightly saturate a bit of the tip of the sponge and then wring it out a little on a paper towel, then with a downward stroke, lightly apply just the tiniest amount of pigment (No, do not thin the paint in this case, you want lots of pigment but little paint.

See pic

>So you're probably saying, "Fuck you Namefag!" (since this is 4 chan and there are sure to be some people that are immediately hostile to namefags)

Never toyou, Ifuritas, never to you.

Next you use a paint brush (clean and dry) and drag some of the clumps of paint downward slightly (there will be some)

This will create the effect of heavy chipping of paint.

But wait... how realistic is this?
Do tanks actually look like that?

Well look at this B&W from WWII.
a bunch of panzer II's in winter camo. So yeah, they do look like this.

Even better you can use sponges to create awesome paint masks.

Try this.
Take a sponge and a mini with a base coat already on it, and apply toothpaste (yes that's right, toothpaste) to the mini as shown.

Go on.

>>9942755
Too bad I have red toothpaste.

tank should look like this (oh yeah, no gel toothpastes, just plain old gritty stuff)

Next, paint a nice opaque layer of white (or whatever colors or patterns you want to use)

Let's say you do a mini with an underpaintjob you want to show under paint chipping away.

Sire, I have a question related to such.

I have Thousand Son marines and thus gave them a plain ol' sand base. Yet I wish to add some black powder for the whole ALL IS DUST look. What powder do you reccomend? Would black pepper work or would it just make my mini smell good?

Once the top paint is dried, you gently wash the mini with water and using your fingers scrub the toothpaste off. Don't rub the white off, just break the surface crust on the tooth paste bubbles under the paint, the water will wash it away and undercut the paint which will flake off.
You end up with this.
The paint chipping (after you give it an ink wash) looks awesome.

>>9942835Sire, I have a question related to such.
I have Thousand Son marines and thus gave them a plain ol' sand base. Yet I wish to add some black powder for the whole ALL IS DUST look. What powder do you reccomend? Would black pepper work or would it just make my mini smell good?

I would recommend going to a model railroad hobby store and pick up some coal dust simulation ballast.

They have this fine black powder for precisely the look you're going for. It's used to weather trains and buildings to make it look like it's had decades of coal dust built up.

>>9942933
Buggery, I'm quite low on funds at the moment, was hoping there'd be something I can steal from the spice rack. guess I'll save up. There's no model shops like that here but there's the aquarium store and they sell those for ... a bit. since it's 6 kilo bags :/

>Ifuritasfan
I'm watching you motherfucker.

>Just ordered imperial guard army
>Namefag shows up, gives advice on painting tanks
>FUCK YERR

Furitas, quick question, I'm planning on painting "rain" camo on my minis, but having some trouble thinking of what would be best to apply straight perpindicular lines. Maybe a toothpick?

Picture is rain camo.

Quick question honored namefag; these techniques look awesome on 15mm, is there anything I should look out for if I scale them up for larger miniatures?

Next up, blackening gun barrels with sponges.

Saddly I can't seem to locate the pictures I took of me blackening the barrel tips of guns with a sponge, so you'll have to use your imagination here.

First off, sponges are the IDEAL thing to use to blacken the tip of a gun barrel. Provided you don't use too fine a piece of sponge that is.

The blue sponges that come with the old GW blisters
were ideal. They were rough surfaced, unlike finer sponge rubber which produces too even a surface.

You want a highly textured sponge that only puts a little paint on the mini

To black the barrel of a gun (one that fires something with some sort of exhaust) you need three colors of paint.

First, if your barrel is painted (like on a tank) you apply a little cold steel to the center of a piece of sponge and using a brush drag a little of the paint in all directions radiating from that center where the most was put. Think of it like a star shape.

Then blot it with a piece of paper towel to remove most of the paint.
Then put the barrel tip in the center of the star and gently squeeze the sponge around it.

the end result is that the tip is most covered with the metal color, while further down the barrel less and less metal is "showing through"

Repeat this with a different sponge, only with a tiny little amount of paint that is the same as the base coat of the barrel (paint chips that haven't been burnt off the barrel)

Now repeat the process with a matte black

this will give the illusion of a nicely blackened cannon barrel.
If you want to go a little further, use a mustard yellow on a fine sponge to add a slight chemical residue on top of the blacking.

Sponges can really create effects that brushes simply cannot replicate

>>9943122>IfuritasfanI'm watching you motherfucker

Needless to say I have some unusual habits, yet all these socially acceptable people can't wait to pick up hammers and smash their food to bits. Normal people are so hostile.

>>9943132Furitas, quick question, I'm planning on painting "rain" camo on my minis, but having some trouble thinking of what would be best to apply straight perpindicular lines. Maybe a toothpick?

Wow. That's actually got me stumped. The problem is you want to get those nice straight parallel lines but have the slight edge jitter so they disrupt the outline.

Hmmm, I'm thinking.. Tell you what, I'll get back to you on that, that's a good question.

Next up, inks for washes.

As you all probably remember, GW's washes originally started out as what they actually are "Acrylic inks"

The reason they changed the name is that people were going to art stores and discovering that other companies produce dramatically better inks, in bigger bottles, and cost a lot less than GW's line.

To the left is a perfect example. FW acrylic artists inks
Total cost for 6 bottles of lemon yellow, process magenta, cyan, sepia (sort of a chestnut brown), Emeral green, and scarlet.
$31.00 for about 5 times as much fluid ink and with glass bottles and tops with glass droppers (yeah, those tops are squeeze droppers with a glass shaft in them.)

>>9943432
Awesome paintjob did a good tut on this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEkMnP6p08I

>>9943324
Back to the rain camo look.

I'm still working on this, and will need to experiment at home... but I think that the best bet would be a long strand of hair. Harvest one off a female or a dirty hippy (Holy shit, I've found an actual use for dirty hippies)
Apply paint to it with a paint brush in spots (just a little)

Then hold the piece of hair at tension and apply the paint to the mini in little lines.

I suppose fine thread could be substituted though. This way you can just dab the paint saturated thread against the mini in spots.

Whatcha think?

>>9943510Awesome paintjob did a good tut on this

Well there you go. An excellent recommendation from a reputable source. Wasn't aware that Aewsomepaintjob.com used FW inks. Makes sense they would.

As you can see in that video those nice glass droppers make it really easy to get the ink out and keep it pure. Also the pigment they use in those inks is fantastic.

To make your own washes it's pretty straight forward.

I use the following materials

Mix 1: Golden Airbrush medium mixed with Golden flow release (10:1 ratio) or boiled distilled water with Golden flow release (again in 10:1 ratio)

Mix 2: Liquitex or golden Matte medium (DO NOT get opaque matte medium.)

Mix1 and Mix 2 in a 1:1 ratio, then add your ink to the mix, bottle and shake it.

It's pretty much the same as the mix that Awesomepaintjob uses. But that's because you use what works.

For brown wash, I mix FW inks with a special walnut ink that I've found. The ink is a natural stain that makes the brown wash much warmer and a little glossy, but I can't find anywhere other than washington state where you can get it. It's made by a local.

Anyone archive this yet?

Now comes the thing that EVERYONE forgets to tell people about washes.

How to fucking use them.

No, I don't mean how to apply them... I mean what colors of washes to apply to what color.

You see, I've seen tons of paint jobs ruined because the person applied the WRONG wash to a mini.

To start with. Let's hit the paint spectrum

Red:Wash red with Red, black or brown.

Orange:Wash orange with Yellow for a brighter orange, scarlet, brown, or black(but only in the deep shadows after another wash has been applied)

Yellow: Yellow orange, yellow-brown, chestnut, sepia, or brown(to darken existing shadows created with another wash)

Green:Yellow-green, green chestnut, chestnut, sepia, green-brown, forest green (if a lighter green already), black

Blue: darker blue, blue green, ultramarine blue, midnight blue, indigo, violet, black, superblack (black and dark blue)

Indigo: dark purple, black, superblack

Flesh: Darker flesh, chestnut, sepia

You can also use sponges to apply ink to create a mottled pattern to create what is called "tide lines"

>>9943432
I'm going to argue this one.

GW washes are good out of the bottle.

Inks require that they are watered down, and you need to add something like Future Floor Polish to help it to defeat surface tension.

However, in spite of that, my attempts to use Reaper inks to do washes using a water-ink mix with dishsoap to break surface tension led to very unpleasant results.

While GW washes are comparatively overpriced, you can at least rest assured that you're not going to end up with results like I did during my experimentation with inks.

>>9943515
Sounds good, I'll have to try it, although it'd probably only good for larger minis like tanks and aircraft, since infantry have all sorts of crazy nooks and crannies that are difficult. A vise grip with a towel around the clamps might work well to eliminate the shake lines, however, this is what I've used with other camos.

As you might note, further down the thread it described precisely what you need to use (matte medium, flow release (the surface tension breaker), and a thinning agent (water or airbrush medium))

the upside of this is that you can, with the steps I provided not just provide yourself a lifetime supply of washes for the cost of 1 set of citadel washes, but you could supply extra washes to friends and other gamers, the end result is that if you have a group, everyone can chip in and buy enough wash materials to provide the whole group with washes for a fraction of the cost.

And you'd have a better product also.

>>9943977While GW washes are comparatively overpriced, you can at least rest assured that you're not going to end up with results like I did during my experimentation with inks.

Actually, tell us more.

One thing that I keep running into is that people have a tendency to make the same mistakes.

Tell us about the mistakes you encountered, that way others can learn what not to do. Even negative experiences are learning experiences.

>>9943936
no no no just use Devlan mod on everything. Its talent in a bottle.

>>9944152

>>9944152
You'll notice that brown or a color close to brown is used for nearly every color I mentioned.

The reason is, brown works with nearly everything because it's what you get if you mix every color of paint together.

So, while you're actually trollin' you have inadvertantly come close to the truth. Brown and chestnut ink washes as what you'll end up using a lot of the time.

>>9944215

bumping for informative excellence

>>9944268
Agreed. This is fantastic.

What are some tips for painting CSM troops, and such? I haven't come up with a paint scheme or anything yet. Trying to think of what would look cool.

I'm thinking Black and Yellow, or Black and Green, with highlights.

Pic chosen at random.

>>9944318

>>9944331
>>9944318
Holy shit.

Now if only I could get solid, un-blotchy colors...

>>9944318
>>9944331
Brool story co. That looks really good.

>>9944341
Future floor wax. Use it to Pin your thaints. It'll make a nice smooth color.

Next up, Mudding.

One of the things that people most want to apply to their tanks is mud. It's also next to impossible to do GOOD mud on a tank using brushes.

Again, this is where a sponge is a fucking lifesaver.

Take a look at this chimera and look at the mud that has covered part of the unit insignia on the left and right tread wells.

>>9944365
I love how you assume I have money. And that Future floor wax is even available in my area.

>>9944401
It's about $4 at Wal-mart. It's actually joined with a bigger brand. I don't remember which one. It'll last you forever though.

>>9944425
>dollars
>Wal-Mart

>>9944381
Now, first off before going any further, the work shown here is Undead air's Imperial guard units. I'm simply using them here because of the quality of the job done and because he's a master of mud.

See the mud on the bases. I'll include his recipe for that... after I talk about how you can create awesome mud stains using sponges.

Ifurita, you're back!

/tg/ seems like a nice, helpful place once again.

When painting details, I like to work in layers.

The secret is to not buy just cheap minis to practice on, Buy good minis that come in sets. The more the Better. Guardsmen and Bretonians are the best in my opinion to practice eyes and faces.

>>9944441
Look for any floor wax that is Acrylic based. Same as the paints.

>>9944401I love how you assume I have money. And that Future floor wax is even available in my area.

A valid point. Which is part of why I choose to only list art supplies rather than floor polish (yeah I know the trick with using low gloss future floor polish, but not everyone in the world has Future available) Art store stuff is universal.

That said, if you don't have some cash, you can't actually get into the hobby, yeah?

>>9944453
Yeah, I've been mucho busy with work lately. Had no time to post or even run a game... sigh.

>>9944501
Good thing you're back eh?

>>9944488
These are the kinds of brushes you should be using to practice eyes on. They come in even smaller sizes too.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UMJLJY/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-
top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B0027BVZX6&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0CMNMEPTV6
S1DZJCCWA9

How would I do this with Scorpion Green, and still make it look good?

>>9944635
You have to find the right amount of bleached bone and water to blend it so it flows with minimal surface tension.

You'll also want to keep it very thin and layer it on until it's just right.

>>9944130
Well, when I started with washes, I'd first heard how to do so through the back of Battletech's core book. They recommended Water, Future Floor Polish, and Ink to do so. It said the future was to help break up surface tension, so that the ink settled into the crevices.

I didn't have either ink or Future Floor polish, so I looked at an older edition of the core book from 1990, which said to make a wash with just water and acrylic paint. I tried that, and it worked sort-of-kind-of well, though it was really drab, not vibrant, and stained the color of the miniature too much.

"Alright", I thought, "I'll pick up some reaper inks and future floor polish".

But Future was nowhere to be seen. I looked everywhere I was told to, and only spotted some pledge "with future floor polish" (It turns out that FFP changed their label over the years. Same formula, this new bottle). So I tried using an Ink-Water-Dishsoap concoction to paint the miniatures.

While wet, it looked like it was going to work perfectly. It filled the crevices, I drained the pooling areas on the panels, everything.

When I came back to my miniature five minutes later, I found that when the water evaporated, the soap had no effect at eliminiting the surface tension, causing the ink to form the equivalent of "bathtub rings" around the crevices, so rather than put a dark layer inside them, I just highlighted the crevices by outlining them.

I had to repaint them from scratch after that incident, but you can see the differences from using the ink with soapy water before, and the GW washes with some highlighting in the image.

Also note that some of the miniatures here used my old acrylic applebarrel + Soapwater. Those that were are the Grasshopper (Blue), Zeus (LtGreen DkGreen fade), Trebuchet (palegreen base with MdGreen Camo, and Spider (Green-to-blue fade with brown tiger-stripes and red-orange torso lining)

Okay, so mud. Seems like a pretty easy thing to apply, yeah?

Well, it is with a sponge. But in what order do you apply colors?

Normally when you paint you paint a base coat and then darker colors and lighter colors are applied to create shadows and highlights.

Well in the case of mud, it's always Darkest to lightest.
You sponge on your darkest mud color, let it dry, sponge on your lighter color (less of it) and let it dry, and then your lightest color on the highest points and in the centers of the medium color blobs, and then let it dry.

The thing is, mud drys with the lightest colors in the centers and on the edges. So to create a realistic effect, you need to know how mud dries and just apply three shades of the same color, dark, medium, and light and you're golden.

The sponge creates the random textures that mud splatter creates

If you really want to add TEXTURE to your mud though... buy two pots of dry pigment from an art store. (one for wet mud, one for dry mud)

Then use a sponge to apply a mix of white glue, tap water, and matte varnish.

Once you apply the glue mixture, you use the brush you apply the glue with to apply first the dark pigment and then the light pigment.

End effect is even better than painting on mud

Here's a video that's very similar to what I do
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx1e6ooh8PA

>>9944699
Can you elaborate on how to do this? Total noob here.

>>9944729
Have a pic of how that looks on a 40k-sized tank. Will generally need to use a old crappy paintbrush for track mud though.

>>9944770
I'm a potter, I just recently started getting into Warhammer, so I'm used to dealing with glaze, an entirely different kind of painting technique so what I do might be different than others and less effective.

Basically blend your paints to where it's the right shade, keep track of the rations BTW.

Then thin your paint to the point where it goes on transparent. Keep layering it on and eventually you get a nice blended surface. Then highlight with a fine detail brush.

So, there's three techniques using the sponges that you've probably been throwing away... and a quick primer on washes, and which ones to use when applying them to various colors of paint.

Gonna take a break for a bit, if you have questions, feel free to throw them at me. I'll try to help.

>>9944871
I'd post some videos of what I'm doing but the last time I did I was lampooned by trolls because of my psoriasis and stubby fingers.

>>9944901
Ignore the trolls. We need info.

>>9944871
YE Gods!

A potter. Okay, you have my immediate respect.
As to why... potters basically paint with invisible paint that only colors up AFTER it's been through the kiln.

Imagine painting minis with invisible paint that you only know if you've got it right when the paint dried.

When painting military vehicles it's important to remember that real world military paintjobs are always matte primer. Usually a tank or Jeep is simply primered with camouflage colored paints.

>>Have a pic of how that looks on a 40k-sized tank. Will generally need to use a old crappy paintbrush for track mud though.

Most 40k painters don't mine the skills of model builders.

Watch this video to see how mud is supposed to be done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx1e6ooh8PA
The level of realism and worksmanship is heads and shoulders above that.

>Will generally need to use a old crappy paintbrush for track mud though.

NON! NON! NON!

You need to have a good, brush dedicated for mud.

Oh yes, before I forget, Undeadair's How to make mud tutorial
http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/projects/91355-undeadairs-imperial-guard-wip-3.html

it's on post #21

But to recap
Materials:
1) Minwax Stainable Wood Filler (Tube)
2) Black craft paint
3) GW Graveyard Earth
4) GW Bleached Bone
5) a handful of crappy, destroyed brushes
6) Paper Towels
The Steps:

1) Squeeze a liberal amount of Wood Filler onto a small stack of paper towels. Use an old brush to smear it onto your base. Repeat this procees until the base is completely covered. Since it takes an hour or more (depending on how much you use) to completely cure, you have a lot of time to gouge, poke, prod and otherwise "sculpt" the materal onto your base to make it look as "mud like" as possible. The best part is, you certainly don't have to do much. It's very muddy in its consistency and
is perfect for this job. Feel free to add in any bits and debris you'd like at this point.

Ok, I suppose that was a few steps all in one. Now, after the filler has set:

>>9945080 cont

2) Use your Black craft paint and basecoat the entire area. There's absolutely no point in wasting your precious (and EXPENSIVE) GW paints here. Just slather it on, making sure to get into any nooks and crannies. I do this all while the model is on the base. If you get some paint (or Wood Filler) onto the model's feet, it's ok. You can make it look like mud later!

2) Mix a bit of Graveyard Earth into your black paint (For this step I use Reaper Master Series "Dark Shadow") and HEAVILY drybrush it onto the base. Make sure the deepest cracks remain black, to create an additional layer of depth. Also, since the center of the base is more difficult to reach, the darker the better as this is where the model would be casting a shadow if the light source is at "high noon".

Around the edges of the base is where the mud would be "brighter" so feel free to drybrush a little extra onto these parts.

3) Continue the process using progressively lighter shades, and decreasing the amount of pressure on the brush. Go from Black/Graveyard Earth mix to plain Graveyard Earth, then start mixing in Bleached Bone and eventually lightly dust the very edge with plain Bleached Bone. The point of all this is to make the middle of the base darker and the edges lighter.

Ifuritasfan, I picked up those forgeworld weathering powders. I"ve never used weathering powders before. In the literature I could find I kept hearing reference to 'white spirits'. Could you explain what that is, as well as explain how to use powders? I tried using some isopropyl alchohol, but it just felt like I was painting with the stuff.

>>9943029
You could also get some charcoal pencils from an art store and grind those up. Actually, vine charcoal might work better. I haven't tried this, so I'm not sure how well the charcoal would mix with the glue.

>>9945078
Okay, who let the troll in?

Do we need a thread on how to select the right brush for the right job?

>>9945121
If you have a bad brush bristles stick out and bend too easy. You need control over application otherwise it gets places where it shouldn't be or you might slip.

Properly painting mud splatter should NOT be done haphazardly and random. It should be done logically and deliberately. Mud does not simply splash on stuff.

Look at a real car and notice the patterns in the mud.

>>9945096
Actually I'd direct you to this review of them first.
http://lostinthewarp.com/wordpress/2009/09/29/product-review-forgeworld-weathering-powders/

weathering pigment or powders are used in a variety of ways.

That said, I've not used their product, so I'm not sure if it has a fixing agent in it or not. (Sort of like gum arabic or similar is used to fix dry pigment in painting)

White spirit however is simply Stoddard Solvent, or as it's more commonly known name "Mineral Spirits" which you can get at any hardware store for 4 or 5 dollars for a metal can of it.


Me, I use other fixing adhesives. There's an adhesive that I bought at a model train store in Bellevue Washington (Plains, trains and automobiles) that is used for this purpose. The reason being is mineral spirits can cause paint to peal if you use too much. Like a paint remover.

>>9945204
Absolutely true. I'm assuming that people will make that logical step first. That they'll know where the mud will go. But that said, mud gets applied in an almost fractal manner. Trying to simulate that with brush painting would take huge amounts of time. A sponge can speed that along dramatically.

The purpose of painting military vehicles is mostly to prevent rusting.

The most area where scratches on a vehicle is located is going to be where debris hits most. The front, the wheel wells and around the tracks accumulate scratches from rocks and pebbles being thrown around.

Bullets will leave dents and holes where paint is chipped off in the impact, but high explosives that do not penetrate the metal do no usually strip off paint. However they do burn it and eventually it chips off at a much faster rate than the est of the paint.

Rust occurs in areas of high precipitation. That 's why nobody has nice cars in Boston. Rust tends to spread and and most commonly starts on large, flat panels like the roof or hood and in scratches.

>>9943881Anyone archive this yet?

Nope, feel free if you want to though.

I tend not to archive my own threads, it's generally bad form and people would accuse me of being a typical tripfag if I went around archiving my own thread.

>>9945433
I'm gonna. This is useful shit.

Necroing this thread. Where can we make sure this gets archived?