The goal of the tutorial is to take you step by step through the painting of this single paladin. I think the majority of the techniques that I use in my BA are represented here (except freehand but that’ll get its own post)
So I always start from black, but any dark colour would work, we will be preshading twice over this basecoat so the most important thing is that recesses are caught with this layer.
So the two preshades I apply are a heavy coat of Vallejo Model Colour Blue Violet (leaving only the darkest recesses black) followed by Tamiya Flat white. Generally I work quite mono directional with my lighting, meaning that there’s always a clear singular source of light that’s illuminating the miniature.
The tamiya white is best applied at a lower PSI so you can build up the intensity to a singular point but do not fret if your preshade doesn’t quite work out, we will be going back in with a brush later to push the contrast.
After the preshade we apply a couple (usually just two as long as the preshade is good enough) coats of a 50:50 mix of Vallejo Game Air Bloody Red and a red ink, at the moment I use Scale 75 Inktense Red but have used old gw red ink in the past. The trick here is to keep the transition established by the preshade but also apply enough that the red doesn’t end up dirtied by the black recesses.
At this point we trade airbrush for traditional brush and starting with Vallejo Model Colour Scarlet we start to pick out the brightest points (this is not an edge highlight, though if that’s your jam it’ll work)
Once the first highlight is complete we go back and highlight again adding Vallejo Model Colour Ice Yellow to our Scarlet, repeating this highlight until some final dots and lines of pure Ice Yellow. At this point it’ll look extreme but the next step helps with that.
A couple of coats of GW Bloodletter glaze through the airbrush and some GW Carroburg Crimson in the recesses help to both smooth those extreme highlights and deepen and enrich the shadows. At this point the scheme can come across a bit ‘pinky’ but the matt varnish at the end sorts that all out as does the Carroburg wash.
Next we move on to my simple gold recipe: A basecoat of either Retributor Gold or Scale 75 Dwarven Gold; We then wash with thinned GW Rhinox Hide focusing on replicating the light direction of the red; finally we highlight with our gold mixing in a bright silver (I use Vallejo Metal Colour Silver) until we get to pure silver. At this point you can chose to wash with sepia or not depending on how bright you like your golds.
The final details I will combine into one series of paragraphs: any cloth is basecoated black, the power weapon has a basecoat of GW Temple Guard blue, with alternating bands of Baharroth Blue and Stegadon Scale Blue (generally I keep it simple going Baharroth->Temple Guard->Stegadon->Temple Guard->Baharroth), the white wings get a coat of Valljo Game Air Wolf Grey, the Gems Vallejo Model Colour Burnt Red and the leather whichever mid brown I have lying around at the time.
The face is based with Cadian Fleshtone then washed with thinned Rhinox Hide
The cloth has a velvet style effect applied to it, so a very rough stipple of dark grey is applied to fold lines, at this point you’re just mapping out tones so don’t worry too much about clear dots. The gems get highlighted using evil suns scarlet and screamer pink with a final highlight of screamer pink and white. The Wings get a highlight of pure white, whilst the leather is washed with brown ink (I use the old GW flesh wash here) and highlighted with Skrag brown (though in this case just a lighter brown to whatever you used to base it) The power weapon has edge highlights of Baharroth blue and a final highlight of Baharroth blue mixed with white and the brightest points.
The Face is highlighted with Cadian fleshtone, followed by a secondary highlight of Fleshtone mixed with Ivory.
At this point the velvet is stippled repeatedly with a succession of lighter greys, here I mix white with black on a wet palette and work upwards 3/4 times finishing with a super fine pure white stipple just catching the edge of the folds. The Blue gems are painted using the sword recipe and the face is given some final point highlights of pure ivory.
For the weapon haft, I decided on gold veined granite, so a black basecoat was applied.
The veins on the marble and granite were painted very carefully with a thin brush, take your time with thinned paints. I used black on the marble and Vallejo Metal Colour Gold on the granite (varying the opacity of lines here helps the effect, spread some out thin and have super defined thin ones). A thin wash of nuln oil can help define the marble, with some purple ink applied at vein junctions to add interest.
Any soft armour or tubing was black highlighted with Stegadon Scale Blue mixed with Wolf Grey.
The basing is simply grey and cream drybrushing, with white, dark brown and warm brown powders and some tufts.
Hopefully I’ve explained the processes enough that you can understand, but if I’ve missed anything feel free to message me here or on insta.
All is Ash 