Hi all, I need some advice and apologise if this has been covered before. I have recently returned to the hobby after twenty years (and was never good at painting to start with). I am trying to get a really bright green paint scheme but I am having issues with shades. The shades just seem to darken the colours down too much and end up making my warriors look "dirty". If anyone could suggest a really good really bright scheme or point me in the right direction that would be fantastic.
Any shade will darken the scales you cannot get away from that other than a recess wash which would take you ages. What you should do it reapply your base colour after the wash to bring back the colour so you would do the following. Base coat the scales Wash the scales Reapply base avoiding the recesses Highlight the scales Now how you reapply the base can be done in two ways, the first is drybrushing fast and effective but not always consistent, the second is to individually layer the paint on each scale, time consuming but crisp precise detailing.
OK thats great cheers, I will give it a go. This is the level i've got 'em at the minute. I will reapply the base on the flesh and see what happens.
@HolySalad Regarding your pictures you can upload them directly to the site, just hit upload file bottom right
What shades are you using? If you're going for bright green then the wash shouldn't be too dark either. Even Biel-Tan Green might be too dark. A good tip is to add water to the wash to thin it out. This will lessen the darkening effect of the wash and retain some of the brightness of the model. Another different idea is to apply the Biel-Tan straight to a white basecoat and see what happens. Could be a good result that is also pretty quick and easy.
After you wash and let the wash dry do successive layers of dry brush with successively lighter shades of paint. You might have to do the old take the base color and mix it with white technique
Thanks for all the good advice, I actually ended up drybrusbing with white before using Niblet green and it came out OK (I think). I'm halfway through a unit of saurus guard so I will try thinning the wash down some more. I'm using kabalite green on the scales, sybarite on the skin, washing with coelia green (which is definately too dark) with a final dry brush of niblet green. I'll stick a pick on when a model is finished.
Not bad! For some of the scales you drybrushed a bit too heavily, thus getting the paint into the crevices. Happens to me all the time as well. Not too severe.
Thanks! Yeh I've almost finished the first 10 and they all have different markings on their crests, I'll stick a pic up in the morning.
Reapplying the basecoat is always a good idea but it can get tedious, you can also thin down the shades using lamenin medium or airbrush flow improved (not the thinner) from Vallejo. Cheers!