How To: Wet Palette

 

I have found, that a lot of people still has problems with preparing this awesome piece of equipment and because I recently made my new own palette, I took few photos and decided to describe how to make the palette work.

 

First of all, you will need something flat, with higher edges and (obviously) water resistant. This piece will be main part of your palette. I highly recomend to have something, that can be covered or closed. You will se why.

 

The wet palette works like this: On "normal" palette, the paint is on dry, flat surface that makes it dry. Wet palette, as the name says, is wet and thus prolongs the drying time of the paints. The pallete has three main parts: Cup, something, that holds water and palette surface, where you put paints. The medium, that holds water, is usually paper towel or sponge, the top cover is almost exclusively baking paper ( I haven´t seen anything diferent so far). The baking paper is resistant enough not to dissolve in water and yet it lets some moist go through it. Therefore you can put paint on it and it stays wet and still you dont get through the baking paper with your brush.

 

I used some plastic pieces that were originaly top covers of some soup cups - one smaller as palette itself and one larger as cover.

 

 

 

As you can see, I put a little bit of putty in a small hole in smaller cup - it was there beause of the hot steam, coming out of soup. Now I have botom of palette. You can see the inner circle (Dark Angels ahoy!) in the smaller cup - that will be filled with paper towel (I will replace it with sponge later, because I like it better) like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Try to fit the water holding material in the palette, it will help in several ways, which I will explain later. Pour some water in - you want the towel wet, but not standing in the water:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, the towel will gain some volume and fills the inner circle from side to side. Now cover the towel with baking paper. It is most important to cover all the towel - from edge to edge (yeah, I made it hard by choosing circle shape).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Touch the baking paper to stick with the towel - if you have good amount of water, it will stick and you can even find some little water drops on the top of baking paper. If water pours through the paper, you made it wrong and put too much water in.

 

 

Here you can see, that my larger cup fits on the smaller one and covers it completely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now the important parts and some observations:

 

Why I required you to fit the towel and the paper from edge to edge? The problem with wet palettes is drying - you dont want them to dry out as long as possible, because when it dries, it is the same as usual palette, which means your paint dries. How does palette dry: by exposing it to the air - the water vaporizes. In wet palette, we keep the water in the towel (sponge) under the baking paper. Baking paper works mainly as palette surface, but also like the cover and protection from evaporating.

 

If the baking paper doesn´t cover all the towel, the water will evaporate from the towel and the palette will dry out much faster. Well, even through the baking paper the palette will ultimately dry out, but much much slower.

 

Thats why you want the top cover - something to close the palette as much air proof, as possible. That will further preserve your palette from drying out. Here you can see my two days old Vallejo acrylics on wet palette - yes, the pigment of the colour separated from binder, but after little mixing, everything works just fine:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. The nice part is, that you only need to change the baking paper on top (when it becomes too painted or damaged) and you have new palette. I recommend changing it when the baking paper is painted too much - the acrylics are basicaly plastic when they are dry, which means they let almost no water through the layer of colour. So, when you put some acrylics on top of dried ones, the water from baking paper doesn´t get through the dry paint - you made normal palette from your wet palette :-)

 

You can of course change the towel too, but it holds pretty nice for a very long time. Sponge is even better, it lasts forewer.

 

If the palette dries out, just raise the baking paper, pour water in, put baking paper on and your wet palette is once again ready to go.

 

2. I have used (made) several wet palettes so far and I highly recomend making one with low edges - for me it is much more comfortable to use the palette with low edge, than to curve my hand every time I want to touch paint with my brush. This is matter of taste however, you may see it otherwise.

 

3. Keep your palette from direct sunlight, warm places and "windy" enviroment, these increase the rate of drying.

 

4. I havent found "bad" and "good" baking papers so far, all of them work for me. It is all about the amount of water and proper towel/sponge as far as I see it.

 

If you have any more tips or questions, I would like to hear them. So far, the wet palette is awesome part of equipment for more advanced brush painting methods and brush painting in general. Considering that it is so easy to create, I can only recommend you to make one too!

 

Dark Vengeance Deathwing Terminators - Part 3

While the termies were drying after washing I started to improve their bases. After all, these models deserve something better than simple "sand" with drybrush. I also wanted to try to put some Miliput (something like "green stuff") to use and because I found one youtube video where somebody did something which I liked, I tried to emulate youtubers work: simply to create a rock paveway.

 

So... take the base and find a stone with some structure on it. Prepare Miliput (green stuff) and put it on the base in such amount, that it is quite high - you will need the height for later proces:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The stone is used to create structure on the Miliput, so just touch the Miliput with stone in a way it prints its surface on the miliput. Rotate it in all possible ways to change the pattern. Like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you have to make individual stones. I use metal slice and old dull knife, but you can do it with almost anything suitable.

 

 

 

 

 

Keep in mind, that these are supposed to be stones, usualy not laser carved in precise shapes, but cut from rock with primitive tools (thats how I wanted it to look), so no straight lines, 90degree angles and such. Thus I have to cut the corners, deepen and curve the interlines and overal make it look inaccurate. Also some cracks can improve the overal look:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here you can see all the bases when I was finished with sculpting Miliput. Today I would add something more: I would made some stones decreased and some elevated over the horizontal line. Even just the corner can be depressed under and opposite corner elevated. But as I said, this work is very much about learning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the miliput/greenstuff is hard enough (about few hours, depends on the amount of stuff, humidity, warmth...), you have to prime it all: I used Vallejo grey polyurethane primer, and than I based the stones with Vallejo dark grey colour:

 

Then I highlighted the central parts of the stones with light sea grey, leaving the cracks and lines between stones untouched:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then drybrushed all with some mid dark brown (I thing it was german camo from panzer series):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The depresses around the stones were covered in white glue and filled with sand. Sand was slightly washed and drybrushed, some dried grass was added. I drilled holes for mounting the terminators on and of course gave the bases nice heavy cover ov varnish. Yeah, before that i painted the rim black. Unfortunatelly I have no photo after adding sand, so you can see the final base on the final photos of terminators in next (and final) part.

 

 

 

Dark Vengeance Deathwing Terminators - Part 2

 

 

Time for painting all the details. On the picture you can see the hose painted black. I wanted to make it little special, because there is or will be a lot of "steel" on the miniature. Therefore I went for drybrushing the hose with bronze colour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The devil is in the detail" grandma told me, and I like to make some tiny deviations to make the miniatures little special or details, that break the overal look and surprise the viewer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I have painted the joints with steel, but only so, that the black undercoat shows in some receses. You can also see the brown undercoat of details and drybrushed hoses on the arms. On the picture on the left, you can see, that the terminators are still not glued together. Also you can see some more work on details - especially those "ropes" are based with very dark red brown, the stormbolters are painted with steel colour. On the autocannon I tried "heated metal" effect - going from steel, to bronze and to blue gunmetal in the end. This was first time I tried and I was happy about how it came out.

 

 

 

 

I also painted the scrolls and put some sepia wash over them. To help the wash settle in the right place, I let it dry on miniatures turned head down. As you will see on the next picture, the effect is nice.

 

 

 

 

Notice one thing: the skulls on terminator knees. They are painted with bone colour and after I was half way through, I´ve decided, that they are not standing out of the model enough, they are lost in the whole surface. You can see later, that I repainted them with red brass colour.

 

Talking about brass, now its time for Rokoko! Gold is coming! The GW terminators don´t wear too much (none at all?) gold but again, luckily there is artists freedom in painting and so much lore, pictures and videos showing space marines with so much gold on them, that I dont feel bad at all after I have painted my Deathwing with gold.

 

 

 

 

Notice the higlight of "ropes" made by lighter shade of red on the exposed places and further highlight of aquila chest symbol feathers with shinier green:

 

 

Next step was painting the tips of the feathers black. After all, the first and original members of Deathwing terminators were clearly based on north american indians (for those who dont know: check librarian Lucian a.k.a. Two heads talking and captain Ezekiel a.k.a. Cloud Runner). Making the feathers to resemble those of an american eagle was clear choice. On the next picture you can see the sergeant with painted eyes (violet), sword, symbol on the right leg and so on. On the second picture there is terminator with scrolls finished, skull on his knee painted with brassy colour and overal details kinda finished.

Here I show one more picture of sergeant with eyes finished and almost prepared for weathering. Also picture of the autocannon wielding terminator prepared for weathering:

Yeeeaaahhh... the weathering... Be kind guys, this was my like second serious attempt to do some weathering and if today I still have much to learn about it, that time I had almost no clue :-) Still, I think that in the end the overal look of the miniatures isn´t that bad.

Using "Spongebob" technique I started with some steel colour all over everything. Next step was covering the miniatures with gloss varnish before washing them.

And  next step is (surprise!) oil washing the terminators with burnt umber wash. I was quite heavy with the wash to turn the color down and make really dirty look. Of course I was cautious not to wash white, golden and red parts.

Well, it could have been worse... Because of I wanted to try it, after the wash was dry I covered the models with matt varnish. It gave the models very distinctive look and the armour looks "harder" then with satin one in my opinion. I still am not sure if I like it enough to use it again on final look, but at least it is a sample in my gallery and I see what it looks like. Well, here are the guys relaxing after matt varnish was apllied and one picture of matt varnished autocannon termie:

Next time on FFT painting:

Making the bases!

P.S.: tell me if you like the finish with matt varnish in the comments, I seriously would like to know your opinions on this.

 

Dark Vengeance Deathwing Terminators - Part 1

This is one of my older works and I learned a lot of by painting these guys, tried a lot of diferent methods a procedures, so i guess, you can find it interesting too. Most important is, that I have a lot of photos of the whole procedure.

As ussual I started with cutting of the parts from sprues and cleaned the mold lines.

Nice thing about these Dark Vengeance terminators is, that they can be temporarily assembled without glue. That helps a lot during paintind and overal handling of the model. On the photo above you can see the models assembled and cleaned. Next was drilling the holes in the barrels of autocannon and stormbolters. This detail is in my opinion extremly important on final look and helps the wiever to "believe" that such a character could exist.

After removing mold lines, local sanding and drilling, there comes my beloved Mr. Surfacer 1200 as a primer. Diluted to fine mixture and applied with airbrush on assembled (not glued!) models:

 

 

 

As you can see Mr. Surfacer makes nice, smooth and consistent surface and helps a lot with further levels of paintm because they stick on it very nicely. Also, being light grey, it highlights all the imperfections - for example mould lines you forgot to remove or all the receses, schratches or mould anomalies etc. Like this one on the bottom of one stormbolter:

I removed all the mould lines highlighted by surfacer and surfaced these parts again on the places where the surface was scratched. You have to understand, that the final colour will be very light (these are Deathwing terminators after all) and all the imperfections are much more visible on lighter surfaces than dark ones. Be very thorough with model assembly and cleaning, when you plan to do some ligh color schemes.


Now preshading. Preshading is technique that highlights dark places, receses and shades. You use it before base color and you dont cover it completely by base color. Here I used dark brown from Vallejo and airbrushed the miniature from underside - what I did was, that I held the miniature upside down and sprayed on its feet and bottom parts (and of course some other places unaproachable this way, where the shades would be).

 






















Now I used lighter and lighter colour (soft brown, sand brown, sand, light ochre, bonewhite) and sprayed the model from steeper and steeper angle. If I started with dark brown from bottom, soft brown was from bottom side, sand brown and sand from almost horizontal angle and bonewhite from top.





As you can see, the miniature is pretty dark in the start, but by adding more layers of lighter colours it comes to the light again and the receses are nicely shaded  without any hard edges.








I dont like the GW look of the Deathwing because they are very orange in my opinion. Because the lore is talking that the members of the first squad who fought the Broodlord whose cult terrorized their homeplanet painted their armour white, because it was colour of death (and they were sure, they will die), I want my Deathwing more white than actual GW look. Therefore one more layer of bonewhite:

Here we go, I liked this better. Yes, I know a lot of brown shading disapeared, and now I would left more of it, but as I said, I learned a lot from this. I always was little too scared of contrasting colours and transitions from very different colours (like brown and white :-). Recently I´m trying to experiment in this matter more and more. So yeah, this last step was probably little too much white.

 

No better time than now to make sergeants cloak. He is a Dark Angel, so the cloak will be green. Dark green, no way around that. And because I wanted to do it with airbrush, I had to cover everything else. Sooo... first of all, I covered the miniature in satin varnish, to protect all the work. Then i used Humbrols Maskol to cover neigbouring details. All the rest I covered with tape.

 

 

The maskol is made by several companies, all the stuff is the same thing as far as I know. You can also use some "Tack-it", tape, latex gloves, plastic bags, whatever suits you. Then I used airbrush and aplied dark green on all the surface of cape. Then lighter green from top side and the lightest green on the most top parts.

 

Again, today I would go for more contrasting shades of green.

 

 

 

This is the result: as you can see, there are few places painted green on other places than cape. I knew about this, and this parts are those, that will be painted in further proces, so no damage done.

 

Back to the Maskol: dont be afraid of it damaging your miniature. It goes down easy and I had (so far) no problem using it. When applying it, I use one old brush, because the Maskol isn´t very nice to the brush and I definitely don´t recommend usind your fine expensive brush!

 

Using the same technique (maskol and tape) I airbrushed autocannon with dark and light red colour. Remember, how the part, you are going to paint, is situated on the model, where the shades would be, where the light will show. Paint the part accordingly.

As you can see, when I had red paint, I used it on the Deathwing symbol on shoulderpads, stormbolters etc. (with regular brush, not airbrush). Then I based all the deatail, which I planned to paint gold, brown or ochre with dark sanstone.

Gold and metalic colours like to have undercoat of similar nonmetalic colour or black. It makes them shinier, richer and generally imperoves their look. Try this yourself, paint gold on blak, brown and white, and you will see the difference.

 

 

 

 

Same procedure on all the terminators. Then I painted black all the joints, hoses and other to be black or non-gold metalic parts:

Then I painted all the chest symbols  dark green with one exception -  the sergeant, whose aquila was painted gold (hes a sergeant of the first company after all). The ends of feathers were higlighted with lighter green later.

Thats all for the part I, in part two I´ll show you painting the details, some washing and how I made bases for these guys.