To everyone who is still catching up, please don't feel rushed by me posting the next steps. Take your time, go through the steps at your own speed. Even after the last step has been posted, I will still be here to see you through and answer questions.
With that being said I want to proceed to the next steps: highlighting the red parts and first details.
Here is what I posted earlier about highlighting:
When highlighting I follow a similar approach (referencing shading techniques from previous post).
- Glazes: same as above, but this time pulling the paint from dark to light.
- Feathering: works here too, but I use it less frequently.
- Edge highlights: another technique I use for the final lights are edge highlights where I only paint sharp edges and the most prominent parts in a very light color to really push the contrast and make the mini stand out. For this the paint is slightly less thinned than for the other techniques, but still enough so it easily flows off the brush. The easiest and most controlled way is to apply the paint using the side of the brush rather than the tip whenever possible.
When highlighting, especially when doing the edge highlights, I don't treat every panel and edge the same. While I don't truly follow a fixed lightsource approach (one of my bigger flaws, I very roughly use a 'light from above' approach, but some more focus definitely couldn't hurt...) I try to pay more attention to the torso/head area than to the legs and feet.
Not much to add really. Except maybe to stress the importance of thinning paints. With the highlights we more than before start to work with the transparency of the paint, especially during the first highlighting stages. We will paint over large parts of the shadows again, but we do not want an opaque coat of paint over them.
Step 7: With the dark shadows we have introduced quite a lot of blue/black to areas which are maroon as per the scheme description. Time to get some of the redness back. To start the highlighting process, well, what we really do first is to reestablish the basecolor, the middle tone. Using Reaper Master Series Mahogany Brown (with a dab of GW Scab Red) I painted from the shadows to the lights. I used this mix for a couple of layers, making sure that the previous layer is dry before painting the next (to speed up the drying time I often blow on the miniature - feels strange at first, but the effect is very interesting as you can literally see paint dry). During the highlighting stages make sure that no paint gets into the panel lines.
Step 8: I didn't snap pictures of each mix I used for highlighting, but after using neat Scab Red (pictured above) I started to add Vallejo Model Color Pale Sand to really brighten the mix. I also started to concentrate on the sharp edges and corners.
Step 9: Continuing to add Pale Sand I painted only the most prominent edges and corners (and often only partly) with this mix. For these bright (edge) highlights my paint is not as thin as for previous steps. I am looking for coverage with paint that still flows easily off the brush. Here I applied the paint with the side of the brush, not the tip (whenever possible). With this step the highlighting was finished for the moment.
At this point I wasn't very happy with the Mjolnir and I was very close to giving it the Acetone treatment. The highlights on the maroon were not as soft and smooth as I intended (very obvious for example on the outsides of the lower legs where I covered too much surface with a too bright mix) them to be and the effect on the shoulders looked better in my head than on the miniature. The left shoulder (on the miniature) was giving me a particular hard time as the edges were not very sharp. Something I missed during preparation. In the end I decided to go ahead and paint the green, hoping this would help me see the maroon in a new light. This proved to be the right decision as I was likely thrown off by just one part having such a strong contrast compared to the rest of the miniature. So if you experience a similar feeling, fight through it ;)
Step 10: As a bonus I want to throw in another step which is just painting some details before we tackle the green parts. During this step I did two things: paint the grey areas and paint the cockpit.
For the grey areas I started by bringing back Vallejo Panzer Aces Dark Rubber, the basecolor (looking back at the first steps I fear I forgot to mention that not only the metallics, but also the grey areas got a simple black wash ... so if you haven't done that so far, do it now). For the highlights I just added more and more white to the basecolor. As we are only painting very small areas at this stage (vents, the fingers, ...) I didn't thin my paints down as much as for the red highlights. I'd say my paint was not thinner than the consistency of milk, rather thicker. Building a smooth gradient is not that important on those tiny areas, the overall effect is more important. If the result looks too rough, you can glaze the grey areas with the basecolor or black to smooth everything out (a glaze is paint thinned to a wash-like consistency, but applied in a very thin, controlled and even layer across the whole surface - the goal is not to darken recesses as with a wash, but to lightly tint the whole surface area).
The cockpit on the Mjolnir doesn't have enough surface for any fancy effects so I painted the cockpit quick and simple like having some sort of inner glow. Starting with a very dark blue (you guessed it - Periscopes), I added more and more Reaper Master Series Ultramarine Blue and finally white. The highlights were painted towards the upper and middle parts of the windscreen. Even though it is just a small cockpit, I tried to get a smooth gradient and often used glazes of Ultramarine Blue and Periscopes to smooth out transitions between highlights.
It would be easy to cover a couple of pages with various cockpit painting techniques, but I fear this is out of scope for this paint-along. There is a good
article on CSO about the popular 'jeweling technique', but there are other ways as well. I actually thought about doing a tutorial just about the different ways of painting cockpits and sometime I will get around to doing it. For now I have attached a few close-ups of cockpits painted not with the jeweling technique for your inspiration (see end of post). If anyone would like some advice on the cockpit of your chosen miniature, just speak up :)
I hope this gives everyone something to do over the weekend :)