Streaky Paint

[akiefer]

Hi all,

I have started on my warhammer 40K adventure after having painted up one spacemarine. I have gotten me a couple of good W&N series 7 brushes, a set of Vallejo paints and a nice couple of black primed marines.

I want to paint them in a base red scheme starting out with bloody red. However whatever I try the covering is very smeary and streaky.

I have already read through several posts about diluting paint at least 1:1 with water but that does not help. The paint stays streaky and hardly leaves any trail...

How can I get better control of coverage on my models?

And hints are most welcome.


Albert

 

[J2FcM]

Red is a harder color to paint with... on top of that, its harder to get good coverage with brighter colors over black...
I would toss on a few layers of a dark red...scab red? Then mix in 1/2 blood red, then finally go with full blood red. Make sure to keep the scab red showing whereever there would be shadows, or other areas that look good shaded.

And remember it will take time if you want it to look nice. On top of that experimentation.

The scab red base coat should be 1:1 or 1:2 diluted.
The coats thereafter should be 1:3, or 1:4


But good job posting a pic! and relatively good pic at that... keep posting updates, and hopefully there will be enough advice to get you set on the painters path... and actually enjoy it.

 

[Godlikebuthumble]

Or, if you want blood red to be the darkest red on your mini, try this: mix bloody red with white, 1-2 thin coats should do the trick of covering up the black basecoat (because white has a higher pigment density than blood red). You\'ll now have a pinkish colour you can nicely paint over with thinned blood red. No streaks! Yay!
For an example of the result, look at the shields of Braganzas Besiegers in my gallery.
Hope that helps

 

[akiefer]

I\'ll give both approaches a try... after all I really am open to learning the craft and it\'ll take a lot of practice to learn so I better get some \'flying time\' right away.

Here\'s the very first one I painted... It was at a GW day at my local hobby store and they were handed out base coated over an unrefined model all the seams and sprue detachments are clearly visible

Albert

 

[EricJ]

I like this! A clear question with a photo to show the problem, why can\'t everyone be like this! lol

But the 2 previous replies seem to have covered pretty well. Red is just notoriously hard to cover smoothly. The best bet it so do several layers of slightly watered down paint. Thin enough so that you\'re not clogging the details of the mini, but thick enough to stilll cover pretty well.. No exact formula for that, so you\'ll have to experiment, but it shouldn\'t take too long to figure out.

Anyway, welcome to the forums, enjoy your stay!

-Eric