Basic shading

Shading
This is the first step I take
after applying the base colour. What shading does is adds to the look of
depth to your miniatures. As the word suggests, shading adds darker areas
to your model, in places that would seem to have shadows or darkened areas.
Such places might be folds in skin or joins between armour plates. There
are many places to apply shading on models, each with their own individuality.
Here I will explain how I apply shading, but I will go into further information
as I get race specific.
Rather
than paint the shades on with solid colours, I prefer to use GW's wide
range of washes. A wash is simply a colour that has been watered down,
so that it runs into the cracks and crevices of your figure easily.
If we look back
at the Space Marine that we painted back in The
Basics article, we will see that we have a helmet to work on, which
I would give a shade of Blue Wash. Washes should be applied evenly, and
the miniature should not be 'drowned' in it. After a bit of practice you
will soon find how much wash you will need to put on certain sized areas.
But remember that washes are watered down paint, so as soon as it is applied
to a miniature, it is going to run, and you don't want it to run on parts
of a miniature that you don't want it to.
For practice
sake, I would start with a minimal amount of wash on the brush and applying
it to a model, going back and forth, adding more wash until you know when
you have enough.
Anyway, back
to the Space Marine. I would apply the Blue Wash to the helmet, and make
sure that some of it rests up against the chest eagle. Dark lines like
this help separate one item from another, and make both pieces stand out.
So here are two pictures, one without the wash and one with. You can see
that the one with has now become darker in colour, but we'll fix this when
the wash has dried in the Highlighting
stage. Places of note that should definitely have wash in them are where
the face mask meets the outer helm, the eye sockets, around the ear piece
and neckline, as well as where the neck guard meets the helmet, and along
each side of the rib on top of the helmet.











So as you can see,
the shaded helmet is quite a bit darker in colour, but do not fear, it
is all part of my process.