me in japan's Eldar stuff (Dave in Tsu.)

[Admiral-Badruck]

looking good and looking ready for my orks to kill them and put a bunch of Eldar Heads on pikes...

[Seb]

I didn't know about the logs section, now I know and I gotta say that your eldar look really good.
How do you do your highlighting? How many layers do you use when highlighting?

[me_in_japan]

the highlighting on the vehicles and guardians was done by airbrush. Two layers, on most things. The highlighting on the warlock/farseer/scorpions was all done by regular brush, and has about 5 or 6 layers, kinda a bit blended together.

[Seb]

Ah ok, do you use a special technique for highlighting like feathering or do you just dillute the paint and paint it over in layers?

[me_in_japan]

If I'm doing blue armour, for example aspect warrior or space marine power armour:

paint armour plate dark blue. paint a thin line, about 1.5mm wide, of a mid blue around the edge of the plate. mix this light blue and the original dark blue and water it down more so its kinda transparent. Paint this along the join of the dark and mid blue colours. Now paint a very thin, lighy blue line along the very edge of the armour. mix this and the mid blue, water it down, and use to blend the two together, as for the mid/dark join.

For the two blendy shades (i.e. dark+mid, and mid+light) you want a semi-transparent colour, and you will probably need a couple of coats to get the coverage you want. It shouldnt completely cover the two paints on either side of it - the transparency is what makes it blendy, not layery.

I honestly think that words like blending/layering/feathering/juicing and so on are all just parts of the same technique. I do think that its important to water your paints down and use lots of thin layers. I dont think you need anything other than paint and water and a decent brush to get a good paint job. Basically, if youre prepared to practice and put in the time needed to get smooth, even coverage with thin paint, then youre gonna end up with a decent model.

[Seb]

Thanks!
I now have a very good picture on how to paint my models.
Now all I need is practice.

By the way, when you paint the blending layer between the two lines, do you paint while the line is still wet or dry?

[me_in_japan]

once its dry. When youve watered paint down enough, if you paint fairly thinly, it should dry in a few seconds. If youre really going for a fine blend, then you should water it down a lot, and paint it on almost like a tint or a glaze. This dries so fast that you can literally paint 80 layers in 80 seconds, with each layer being basically invisible, but the total layers together becoming opaque as you go. (this is a bit fiddly to describe. If you water your paint down to just the right level, and then blot most of the liquid out of teh brush with a paper tissue, then what you end up with on the brush can be painted on and will dry as you move the brush away.)

There's a really good DVD called "miniature painting with Jeremie Bonamant Teboul" which is rather tricky (um...impossible) to find, but it has a brilliant and easy to follow example of what I'm talking about. JBT is French, so the tutorials are all in French, but most sections also have an English voiceover. If youre familiar with torrent sites you can find it there (search for "bonamant" on torrentz.com). If you find the DVD to buy anywhere please let me know, as I think its brilliant and would actually like to pay the man for his work.

*MiJ waits patiently for Prim to come chop up his post*

[Seb]

Awesome, thanks a lot!