Paint Along with Danaussie - Pictorial Tutorial

Paint Along With Danaussie - A Tutorial

(Originally posted by Danaussie)

Part 2 : Painting

Step 1 - Priming or Base-Coating

The first thing we have to do is prime the model, us GW painters call this Base-Coating this is the first layer of paint to which every other coat adheres to. There are two ways of doing this and I do not recomend any one over the other, it will depend on what you have available to you. Just remember that our objective here is to start using darker shades and layer lighter shades over the top.

Try to avoid using black or white primers, black will give you too darker shade to build on resulting in a "cartoon-like" apearance, so too with white this will not give you the definition or contrast between the shades, the subsequent colours will turn out to be too bright. Your transition between the shades should be subtle and soft.

Brush-On
You can apply the first coat by brushing it on choose a dark grey to do this either a darkened Codex Grey (Citadel) a mix of 3-5% Caos Black to 95-97% Codex Grey should give you a perfect base-coat colour. Basalt Grey (Vallejo) also makes a great base-coat shade.



Good Tip - Prepare pots in advance with pre-mixed colours so that you can paint directly from the pot.

Make sure you cover the entire model, get your brush into all the areas of the model, allow the model to dry and then give it a good look over to see if you have missed a spot and touch up the base-coat. These areas will often show up as lighter than the base-coat.

Spray-On

The alternative is to spray on your base coat, many modellers and painters will prefer this method for three reasons:

1. A spray coat will leave a more even coat.
2. A spray coat will provide no loss of detail.
3. A spray coat will take far less time. :wink:  :lol:

I have become a great believer in the spray-on method since talking with other artists here at Forumini believe it or not. As a (once) commission painter the time differential was certainly undenyable. :lol: For example to brush-on base coat 10 battleship sized models would take well over 3 hours. To spray-on 20 battleship sized models would take 15 minutes.


Tamiya Color - German Grey (TS-4)

There are many products for this available, I will recommend Tamiya Modelling Sprays as these are what I use for both large scale models as well as miniatures. Make sure the spray is a dark grey and is matt (not gloss) and all will be well. Pictured above is an amazingly unused can of German Grey, this shade is the closest to Codex Grey (Citadel) and Basalt Grey (Vallejo) that I have come accross.


Sprayed Models IJN Kongo & IJN Nagato

It is a good idea to use a box for spraying into, and to find a well ventilated, dust-free environment. Shake the can well for about 3 minutes, then spray in a side to side motion 3-4 times accross the model/s at a distance of about 30cm away from the model/s. DO NOT spray too close to the model/s. Allow the paint to dry for about 10 minutes before touching the model/s.

Good Tip - If you decide to spray your models try to do a few at a time to make your can of spray go further. Doing this will also allow you to paint another model while your paint dries during other steps....or you could just pay a visit to Forumini. :wink:


....Congratulations guys you are well on your way, step 1 is now complete, we are primed and ready for the next step.

Step 2 - Washing

This is part of a two step process known as the wash and dry-brush, my opinion is you cant do one without the other, these two techniques work in unison with each other for a fabulous effect of depth and shading. In the end you should have something that looks like this: Pretty Cool Huh! :8)  :lol:


USS California after Wash & Dry-Brush

I will often show my students the finished product, it not only inspires them to make the magic happen, but it also shows them the target they are aiming for. So lets make it happen.

There is a simple principle in play here and I am going to show you what that is, we will apply a wash to the recesses of the model before hi-lighting the raised areas with a lighter shade of paint. How does this work?



The above is a simple diagram of the principle of the wash and dry-brush working in unison. The diagram shows you the wash that rests in the recesses (3) (deeper areas) of the model, leaving the raised edges (1) a lighter shade (that of the base-coat colour, the dry-brush (2) then adds a blended hi-light to the raised surfaces resulting in a subtle and soft blended look. Its that simple.


USS Baltimore after Washing

....So how do we apply the wash?

The wash itself is nothing more than a watered down paint in principle. However there are washes available Vallejo has a magnificent range of "Transperant" paints as does Citadel. Not to be confused by "Inks" (we will get to that later).  

I think the best thing to explain to everyone is a simple rule of thumb that "all pigment "stains" even white if painted over a darker shade. If we have that idea then we know what we are dealing with when talking washes. Put simply you can mix any wash in any shade so long as it is darker than the intended hi-light shade. Mix at around 10% pigment to 90% water and voila you have a wash.


A Pre-Mixed Wash made from Chaos Black and Water in a bottle cap. :lol:

I prefer to use Citadel's Badab Black Wash, I warn you now that it smells awful, but it is far and away the best wash available for our application.



Apply the wash evenly over the deck, you will start to see the watery paint collecting around the raised deck detail etc. Around the super-structure you should use a dabbing motion and just touch into the recess areas, remember its watery...let gravity do its work here. :wink: Make sure you get the wash into "all" the recessed areas. Particularly around the base of the superstructure where the deck meets the superstructure and in around the base of the gun turrets etc. Be generous with the wash....get messy! :lol:  :lol:  :lol:



In the above picture you will see that I am using an old brush which is perfect for washing, note also that there is a generous amount of wash on the brush and that I am dabbing and pushing it into the recessed areas.


The Nagato After The Wash

Please note that the "entire ship" is much much darker in shade after the wash in both the Baltimore picture and the Nagato picture above, however, will also clearly see that the raised areas still show through with the original base-coat shade albeit a few shades darker while the recessed areas are almost black, you will also clearly see that the the transition between the shades is gradual and soft, this will be further enhanced with the next step...the Dry-Brush.

....Does it look messy like an old hulk in the Thames? Good! Then we have accomplished our goal. Congratulations you have just performed your first magic trick. :wink:  :8)

Step 3 - Dry-Brushing

Important! - Please ensure that your model is completely dry before attempting the next step, allow up to 30 minutes drying time.

Dry-Brushing is perhaps the most difficult technique to demonstrate by text and photograph alone, it certainly helps to have this technique shown to you to fully grasp what is involved with it. It throws everything you know about painting completely out the door, and it is certainly one thing I still recall having alot of difficulty with in the early days. It is important to perservere and open your mind to a new concept.



We will refer back to Fig 1, so that you can understand the second part of this two-step process. The purpose of dry-brushing is to (4) add the hi-light and bring out the detail of the model. The idea is to remove "all" the paint from the paint brush, this will leave but filaments of pigment that are drying to the bristle of the brush, when flicked accross the raised areas of the model these filaments will attach themselves resulting in a flecked and subtle hi-light.

It IS for all intents and purposes the "complete reverse" of the first step which was to leave the raised edges light and make the recesses dark...we are now leaving the recesses dark and hi-lighting the raised edges.

Also take the time to study the picture displayed below, this is the technique of dry-brushing being demonstrated up close and personal.



Take a close look at the bristles on the brush, there is absolutely NO "visable" signs of paint on this brush, yet have a look at the deck planking slowly being hi-lighted and the recesses are remaining the same colour as the wash colour that was applied earlier. Note also that I am using a much larger brush than a "fine detail" for this job and a very scruffy and old one.

The direction of the brush strokes are moving vertically (top to bottom) from the edge of the superstructure to the edge of the deck, moving accross the lines of the deck planking the paint filaments are sticking to the raised edge of each plank, while leaving the recess of the planking their original colour.

...so how exactly do we do this?

The method is actually quite simple, it will take you a few goes to get past the idea that you must "have" to have paint on the brush to make this work....NO, you dont! Put your trust in the technique from the guys that know how to do it. :wink:



First take a few sheets of clean white paper, printer paper is what I use. Fold the sheets in half and set them down beside you on at your work station.

You will need to select a colour that is a few shades lighter than the base coat for best effect, however it should be mentioned at this point that you should do some research into what your ship should look like before choosing colours. But for purposes of this demonstration we will select a fairly neutral grey. We have selected a slightly darkened Fortress Grey, about 10% Chaos Black to 90% Fortress Grey.


Removing Paint From Your Brush

Begin to actually paint the piece of paper, get all the paint off, when you are happy with how much paint you have removed then begin to apply it to the model in rapid motion accross all the detail of the ship.



You dont need to press hard on the brush....be delicate here. You will begin to see the lighter shade starting to attach to the raised surfaces.



This process will need to be repeated several times to successfully dry-brush the entire ship.


The Final Result - IJN Nagato After Dry-Brush

In the picture above, this is the final result after repeating this process just 4 times. You will clearly see we have soft and subtle definintion between the shades. The great thing about it is that you can now see all the detail of the model, detail that perhaps you could not see before the model was painted in this way.

...Congratulations you have just performed your second magic trick.

Step 4 - Deckwork

We are almost there, we now have a model thats detail is quite nicely defined, and has an almost realistic appearance. I will now show you how to add the wood deck to the Nagato. Once again guys will want to check their resources to see what actual shade you will need but I will show you the technique I use on most wooden decks.

Important - Of course the technique is slightly different when painting carrier decks or decks with other colours such as Deck Blue for most USN ships, but the principles remain the same.



We start the process from the top again because we are using a different shade, so a great base-coat for the wooden deckwork is Bestial Brown. You will now see all the deck detail such as anchor chains, gun mounts etc far easier now after the wash and dry-brush stage so this part of the job is quite easy.



As we go we will leave a small gap between the deck detail and the deck this will give us a good shadow when it comes to our final deck hi-light shade. Continue this process until all the areas of the deck that should be wood are base-coated in the dark brown. Once this is done allow to dry and then continue with the next step.

Wet-Brush Blending
Please don't let the title put you off from perhaps trying this technique, it is a technique that I have used since wanting to find a different way of achieving a wood grain effect without the need to dry-brush the deck. Why?

Carrier decks have a nice large surface area that can be dry-brushed quite easily, the same however cannot be said for Battleships and anything smaller. You "can" drybrush the decks of anything of course if you so desire, after all guys drybrush 60mm miniatures all the time.

However, when it comes to War at Sea miniatures you do run the risk of drybrushing over deck detail which will only result in further work later on to fix. So wanting far more control over where paint goes on decks is what created this technique in my skill set....and very quite by happenstance as well.

The technique involves using a watered down hi-light shade, I use predominantly different shades of Bleached Bone depending on the deck type I will often add a few drops of Sunburst Yellow to darken this shade or Skull White to lighten it. The consistency of the Wet-Brush Blend colour should be about 70% pigment to 30% water, this will water down the shade and make it quite thin.

[Graphic to Come]

Start to apply the paint from where the shade would be lightest and work your way towards the deck detail being careful to always allow a little space between the deck detail and the deck colour. You will find that as you go the paint will become thinner as it comes off the brush leaving a gradient effect between the darker shaded area and where the deck colour should be lighter in shade. Much like what a drybrush looks like.

:wink: