How are you doing the armour?
Is that simply Mithril Silver drybrushed over black?
Do you do a black wash over that?
Thanks Mick.
This one has a bit of Vallejo 'gunmetal blue' mixed in with black and silver for the basecoat. Then increasing amounts of silver added to the mix to lighten it, and applied - very watered down - to build up a patina on the raised areas. Then a final highlight of neat silver on studs and so on. No black wash involved, apart from a tiny bit of retouching here and there perhaps.
is there a 'trade secret' to getting the continuous stripe on the lance (tape perhaps or just a steady hand?).
Simon - no trade secret, but I can tell you the technique I've developed for doing it. It doesn't even require a particularly steady hand - just a bit of patience...
For the purposes of the explanation, imagine for a moment that your lance (or flagstaff or whatever) is not a slim cylinder, but has four sides like a length of planed timber...
Once you've painted your shaft in your chosen base colour (say, green), then along one 'side', paint a row of equidistant diagonal stripes in the opposing colour (purple). These don't have to be particularly neat, because you can tidy them all up later.
Now turn the lance (and figure) through 90 degrees, and paint another row of diagonal stripes on the next 'side', that carry on the diagonal lines you painted on the first 'side'.
Then again on the third side.
Now we come to the moment of truth... When you get to the fourth 'side' (unless you have a mathematically precise eye!) it's highly unlikely that when you paint your diagonal stripes down the fourth 'side' of your shaft, they will join perfectly up with the start of the diagonals on the first side. But they should be roughly in the vicinity.
So you now have a slightly messy, wobbly, and imperfectly joined - but notionally continuous spiral in your contrasting colour.
So now go back to your first colour, and tidy up the resultant spiral line as best you can. It won't be perfect, but you can certainly fudge it slightly so that any slight variations in the thickness of the opposing lines are imperceptible to the naked eye. Or even the camera!
Make sure that your fourth and final 'side' is the one least obviously on view. In this case, underneath the lance - so that even if things do look a little bit awry down 'the join', they're effectively hidden from view!
And finally, the real trick is then to paint a highlight down the centre of each of the two opposing spirals. This lighter central band of colour running through each spiral draws the eye from the
actual darker line where the two spirals lines but up against each other. So again, the eye minimises any imperfections
Sounds like a rigarmarole - but is actually quite easy, honestly.
Just requires patience, and the understanding that you're not going to get it right straightaway, but you're going to have to do some touching in, in the opposite colour until you get your two spiral lines broadly equal in weight, and lined up as you want them.
Hope that helps
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June 06, 2010, 07:04:55 PM