Pointers on highlighting grey

[RuneBrush]

I\'m frantically trying to get my GD entry up for this weekend, despite some bugger keep giving me other things to do. I\'ve just started on the highlighting of the armour and am very unhappy with the output. Despite using a wet palette and thinning my paint down etc, my \"subtly blended highlight\" looks like it\'s been painted on with a bloody toothbrush... It\'s bad enough that my salt weathering ended up speckling the thing with little twinkles (I know why, but it\'s too late now) and me being unable to remove all of the salt residue, but the highlighting was meant to go on easily - best laid plans and all that :s

Any suggestions - it\'s the right hand piece (which if you squint at a distance looks OK to be honest...)

 

[freakinacage]

what paints are you using?

 

[RuneBrush]

Base is Adeptus Battlegrey with Codex Grey on top (airbrushed), then highlighted with Fortress Grey. I\'ve persevered and tried blending some Codex into it, so it\'s a little smoother, though still needs more work! I think that some midnight sessions are due soon

 

[Dillweed]

Wish I could give you advise, but I\'m more on your end of the scale atm and could use some good answers to your post myself

 

[obsidianpainting]

I think your paint needs to be thinner(possibly) and also you need to remove some paint from your brush. I think there is too much on.

Cheers, Gary.

 

[RuneBrush]

I\'ve just had another thought that won\'t have helped. I\'ve actually gone from the base colour straight to Fortress Grey. I think that mixing up an intermediate colour actually would have helped smooth it out - bugger. I\'m going to try and finish the rest of the highlighting tonight the same as the first panel - if it\'s all the same it probably won\'t look quite as bad as I feel it looks. I also need to \'dirt\' it up so could hide some more with that

@ Gary. To be honest, I really struggled to get the right amount of paint on the brush, the only reason I could think of is that I\'ve had a couple of month\'s break from actual painting - quite infuriating to be honest.

pete

 

[Einion]

I would have suggested at least trying an airbrush if you had it. Since you have already used one I think maybe you need to examine the \'style\' that airbrushed highlighting/shading gives, versus what you want the thing to look like.

Airbrushing at its simplest gives a very neutral - perhaps even bland - kind of lighting effect. But as long as the contrast is sufficient then it can still look pretty darned good, particularly if supplemented with some weathering.

In terms of moving from colour to colour where you don\'t want to jump too much in contrast, even though an airbrush can give such smooth results it\'s still worth using intermediate colours IME, so if your base is 3 you don\'t spray directly with 1; at least use 2 between them. Also worth trying feathering using heavily-thinned versions of each subsequent colour, can help give even more subtle transitions.

Einion