I've seen some painted up 'dictors that turn the grav wells into an angry red glowy appearance, like on the card art. I'm interested in giving it a shot, but I want to know what type of paint you use for that kind of a job. Standard red paint, or a more technical tool like a glaze?

It's either that, or paint a poka-dot bikini top across the wells.

I'm using brushes and I've started experimenting with doing a G8 looking effect (red). So far, I've made a "thick wash" with GW mephiston red and pin washed it into the recesses of circular portions of the "orb". Be very careful with the wash as you only want it in the trench. At any rate, I like it so far and will probably do a glaze with the same color around the elevated portions but before that will do a bright orange pin wash (normal consistency) on top of the red already in there. After all that, I'll probably put a gloss varnish on top of all the red to help catch light. That or a metal/glaze medium. This is it so far … not much really, just haven't had time to experiment.

I wanted Stupidly Bright. Neon, instead of the deep red. Pink, Dammit!

You can see the main culprits here... GW Bloodletter Glaze, Vallejo Neon Magenta... Mixed. This gave it a bright red/pinky basetone, and I spread it into the recesses, as above... However, I was deliberately over-zealous with it... With tis being the darkest base colour, the area around the area becomes a bit of a "glow zone".

Add White. Be more careful with the application - but its basically goes into the gaps... The Deeper we go, the more White we add, the brighter the glow looks...

IF you are wanting a deep red glow, then your transition plane is going to go from Dark Red, through Red, to Crimson, to a lightest colour which is most likely going to be Crimson + Orange.... You don't want to go too bright, after all...

Topside. Bright, dammit. BRIGHT.

Notice I marked out areas on the side hulls that aren't even Recessed, but are shown as glowing on the upgrade card... You can do that, if you're liberal with your glow zone splashing....

More in depth.

How about a SUPER MACRO SHOT that shows how haphazard it actually is! Because I GODDAMN HATE MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY...

More Glaze to make it even glowier...

Then, in the end, I did some tidy-up with some grey drybrushing in parts where needed....

BOOYAH Dras!

Anyone who wishes to see it in person can go challenge Lyraeus to a battle over in Portland, since it belongs to him

Dras, that post made my day I read it in that 'monster truck' advertiser voice, after all.

Me, well, I overdid the effect (especially now that I know the ship is a rather large 1,150m long. So that means anyone within about 75 meters of the grav wells or trench would have probably gotten melanoma.) Either way, not super happy with it except for the yellow (and base ship).

I sprayed starting with orange for the deepest parts, left it, went for the dark red, then medium red, and finally orange airbrushing, but for the life of me, I couldn't get a bright red interior. It always looked too artificial.

So in something of a desperate move (and because I said 'frig this, I just want it done') I thinned down some white and just covered all the 'best glowy bits' as much as I could. No thinner, no breaking surface tension, I wanted that bloody stuff to pool and be annoying. Then I did it again at certain select parts. I let it dry, then broke out my 'this paint looks to be a factor defect because it has absolutely no body to it' yellow. This stuff is appropriately named 'Irradiated yellow' and may be the brightest paint I've seen with the weakest pigmentation. So, for all intends and purposes, it's an unhealthy yellow wash. One layer, that was it. You could probably get the same effect in red by knocking the orange out of the equation entirely and replacing the yellow I used for a brighter red glaze in the same general application.

Sealed, signed, and sitting on my shelf: that's his majesty's ship, the Astral Claw , likely moments before going nova.

It shows though, Vyksey, just how much nicer and gradual gradiations can be with an airbrush... And not to mention, the base ship is beautiful, with all of its blue window lights......

And don't feel bad.. The one on Rebels blew up, too...

It is true, the airbrush transitions are stupidly nice. The airbrush paints I like using tend to have a good but not absolute opacity, so some of that stuff (like the ridges on the grav wells and top-most plate lines) are actually left over remnants of some layering I did underneath it when painting up the ship itself. It just sorta showed through.

Blue lights, orange glow, never thought that would work. Aye, the Astral Claw continues in the proud lineage of the one from Rebels: exploding in a spectacular fashion. Any other outcome would just be unseemly. Nay, unpatriotic Meanwhile, the Int-418 is just sitting on the shelf next to it, being a proper grav well ship without all that pomp and ceremony.

I'm getting ready to paint my Interdictor soon and I thinking of doing the red glow similar to Dras but not as SUPER BRIGHT as his and only doing the 4 grav wells. I know the upgrade cards have the mid trench and other spots glowing red but it really does look like the thing is going to blow to kingdom come.

I think I'll do a light grey/white over the hull with minimal wash to give it that just out of the shipyard look and then do some blue lights similar to Vykes. Then hit the grav wells with some red and glaze them a little to get a similar glow like Dras.

Beautiful work you two!

Dras, that post made my day I read it in that 'monster truck' advertiser voice, after all.

Me, well, I overdid the effect (especially now that I know the ship is a rather large 1,150m long. So that means anyone within about 75 meters of the grav wells or trench would have probably gotten melanoma.) Either way, not super happy with it except for the yellow (and base ship).

I sprayed starting with orange for the deepest parts, left it, went for the dark red, then medium red, and finally orange airbrushing, but for the life of me, I couldn't get a bright red interior. It always looked too artificial.

So in something of a desperate move (and because I said 'frig this, I just want it done') I thinned down some white and just covered all the 'best glowy bits' as much as I could. No thinner, no breaking surface tension, I wanted that bloody stuff to pool and be annoying. Then I did it again at certain select parts. I let it dry, then broke out my 'this paint looks to be a factor defect because it has absolutely no body to it' yellow. This stuff is appropriately named 'Irradiated yellow' and may be the brightest paint I've seen with the weakest pigmentation. So, for all intends and purposes, it's an unhealthy yellow wash. One layer, that was it. You could probably get the same effect in red by knocking the orange out of the equation entirely and replacing the yellow I used for a brighter red glaze in the same general application.

Sealed, signed, and sitting on my shelf: that's his majesty's ship, the Astral Claw , likely moments before going nova.

Nah , there is nothing wrong with your ship................consider this, it is one massive warning sign to anyone getting too close............IE) go ahead punk make my day.............I will slap you so hard your nav computer will still be spinning when I finish punching you

into next week

I "paint" my ships quickly to give them some character and to easily identify them. I recently painted my 3 Interdictors and I'll try to post pics tonight. These are 1-session jobs to get the best looking tabletop job as possible without spending too much time painting. My motif is somewhere between Dras and Vykes, but in red, green, yellow.

... I really wish my camera was working...

Once I finish these Rebellion Miniatures, I'm probably getting another Interdictor, and doing the Glow in Purple - since Purple is the Signature colour for my fleets...

I hadn't though of doing green! Hmmmmmm.

Green is Wonderful for it, because Green has a Yellow component, which means you have your highlight / bleed through colour... its Yellow.

Its more difficult with light reds, because Light Reds want white, which tends to Pink, which... pastels things out, rather than brightens them.

But a Regular deep red will go through the Yellow field, too, - through Orange to Yellow, before going to white - so the Brightness ist here, without the pastel-ness...

...

Purple, Pink, and some things with mostly Blue components, can make things difficult....... But I'ma try.

Green is Wonderful for it, because Green has a Yellow component, which means you have your highlight / bleed through colour... its Yellow.

Its more difficult with light reds, because Light Reds want white, which tends to Pink, which... pastels things out, rather than brightens them.

But a Regular deep red will go through the Yellow field, too, - through Orange to Yellow, before going to white - so the Brightness ist here, without the pastel-ness...

...

Purple, Pink, and some things with mostly Blue components, can make things difficult....... But I'ma try.

Do you have a link to a basic 'idiot's guide' to colour blending for miniature painting? I guess that colour blending principles should apply whatever the application but it's not necessarily easy to pick out the bits which are most relevant to miniature painting, such as the highlighting tips above.

Not really. What I wrote above was about 3 hours worth of very boring Art Classes that I took as a College Addenum in Highschool while my Teacher was stoned off her Face.

When I get my camera back working (which should be today!), I've got a bunch of commission pics to take, and then I'll look at making some "Star Wars" esque Cheat sheets for people.

Thanks Dras. I've just pulled a bunch of old citadel paints out of a box from 22 years ago to see what I've got to play with. I've also picked up some Vallejo airbrush paints to practice with and whilst I'm happy doing a light bit of colour blending, anything beyond that, such as component colours and hues, is a murky grey area.

Or maybe it's blue, I can't tell from here.

This is a good starting point:


http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-design/basic-color-theory