How do you do panel lines? I've been looking around and can't seem to find anything.

-DD

Hy!!

Do you want to paint them or do you want to make them (as a modification or scratch build work)?

I'm assuming you refer to the existing ones . I'm a lazy bastard, so I never paint them, I just drown my minis in wash. It gives them an "used", dirty look that I like, especially for Scum or Rebel ships (Imps should be shinier in my opinion).

My process is as follows:

1. Base Coat
2. Wash
3. Re-apply Base Coat avoiding the recessed areas
4. Highlight on the top/leading edges.

The darkened panel lines are taken care of in step three by avoiding them with the second application of the base coat. Another option would be to paint the base coat and then carefully apply the shadows with a brush or pen, but that requires a lot more precision and time. I let the wash and gravity do that part for me.

@Decan Mabu Painting them. Sorry about that, I meant to write "How do you paint panel lines."

Thanks, guys. I try to drown my lines too, and that seems to work, but mine are not half as good as some of the ships here on the forum.

-DD

14 hours ago, Darth Drago said:

@Decan Mabu Painting them. Sorry about that, I meant to write "How do you paint panel lines."

Thanks, guys. I try to drown my lines too, and that seems to work, but mine are not half as good as some of the ships here on the forum.

-DD

No problem

There are several ways of doing this, I think the most feasible with the common materials we use to have (not mentioning airbrush and/or oil paintings...)

here is tho one it gets me quite good results:

First of all use a diluted dark priming (using a dark grey, brown or black as a primer) to “re-prime” over the priming paint that is usually a light grey or white.

Then with a dry brush technic and big care paint the panels with the desired clear paint, try to not use a big amount of paint, otherwise you marigot lose detail on the paint, but do not take special care if sometimes you accidentally cover the line with the clear paint, you’ll solve that later wit the inks.

With really clear colors like yellow... ...you have two options:

First option. You have to add a little bit of white to the paint, in order to help the color to get attached, and repeat the process later without adding the white to your color this time, this option will give a brilliant and vivid color on the finishing but has some risk on it, as you are using more paint than usually and may reduce the details.

the other and easier option is to paint over the priming (who’s usually white or light grey...) with the clear color, and then apply an ink, I’ll recomend you to have several inks and use the one who gets more related with the color you are using, normally for warm colors I use a dark brown ink and a black ink with cold colors.

INKs

Once you had applied the clear paint, yo have to use ink over the model kit, get special attention on applying the ink over the lines of the panels as if you were painting them the lines directly by yourself... you may provably get out of the lines doing this, do not worry... ...the part of the panel covered accidentally with the ink you can diffuse/erase it using a wet pencil (just wet, not with a big drop of water on it, otherwise you may destroy the work yo had done before!!)

If you want to get a better finish, you can highlight painting again with the clear color on the borders of the panel (you had to get some experience with the technic for doing that) use a diluted version of the clear paint you had used before, this might soften the change from the shaded color of the effect obtained with the inks and the dry brush used before.

hope this helps here attached are some pictures with the results obtained with this technic.

Thanks! Have to try it. There was only one part I was confused with...

10 hours ago, Decan Mabu said:

First of all use a diluted dark priming (using a dark grey, brown or black as a primer) to “re-prime” over the priming paint that is usually a light grey or white.

Do I prime white then black? Do I just prime black?

-DD

18 hours ago, Darth Drago said:

Thanks! Have to try it. There was only one part I was confused with...

Do I prime white then black? Do I just prime black?

-DD

Ok.

Prime with the color most convenient, normally we use white or clear grey... and then make a diluted priming with black, in case your prime coating is black, you don’t hesitate to add a second black priming coat...

OK. Thanks!

-DD

Prime, paint, wash using a matching wash color. After the it dries, drybrysh with very light grey.

Since you won't just hit the panel edges but also the flat surfaces as well, it will look like tiny litte paint chips and scratches.

That'll do just fine for tiny spaceships

No need to overcomplicate things.

Or there's manual edge highlighting to add contrast between the dark color in receses and the panel edge.

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.sk/2011/08/basics-line-highlighting-made-simple.html?m=1

If you are really lazy you can use panel line marker pens.

Something like this: https://hlj.com/product/GNZGM01

On 1/1/2018 at 9:47 PM, Darth Drago said:

How do you do panel lines? I've been looking around and can't seem to find anything.

-DD

I've had good luck using a MICRON 005 pen. I picked mine up at Pat Catans but I'm pretty sure that Michaels carries them too but you should be able to get one at any paint/craft store.