Talos the Bronze Robot - part two

Over the years I have developed a particular style of miniature painting, one that owes a lot to the Games Workshop/White Dwarf or Heavy Metal style and the layering techniques pioneered by Kevin Dallimore and Steve Dean, called the Foundry method. In summary I use a couple of general painting techniques depending on the style of miniature I am painting. For example;

Flintloque; I use a black undercoat and very bright or stark primary colours with quite a bit of the black showing through and the primary colours having few highlights.

Flash Gordon; I tend to paint the miniatures from a (very) dark brown basecoat, which I find is less stark than just using pure black and the topcoat colours or highlights are blended and washed.

Others; I also use a white undercoat, for miniatures that I want to have a bright colour scheme, particularly 54mm or display minatures.

With this robot figure I am experimenting with a new, actually a revised undercoating technique which I have experimented with in the past, but comments and articles on the Net have led me to re-visit. In summary I am going to use a two colour base, or undercoat, in the case of the robot a black and brown undercoat.

I first spray painted the miniature with Chaos Black from GW, then when the paint was still wet I used a brown spray from Tamiya to lightly dust the top of the miniature (only spraying from directly above the figure), if you spray too much - just go back over it with the Black, spraying from below the miniature and aiming upwards. The finish you get is a dark basecoat with brown highlights on the upper surfaces as if sunlight was highlighting the figure in brown. I think these three photos show the effect better than words!

In the past I have used a similar technique to paint this Space Wolf Logan Grimnar. The miniature was first spray painted Chaos Black and then when dry the figure was spray painted Skull White from directly above the figure, 'the hallo effect', which leaves the miniature with ready made shadow and highlighting effects. When you paint the miniature the highlighted areas show brighter and the black areas are already in shadow. Once again I would hope the figure would show the technique better than words - maybe a photo tutorial would be better!

The same technique is being used on this building, Black on the bottom or shade areas, Brown on the walls and even some White on the highlighted roof areas - all lightly 'dusted' on.

In model aircraft forums or articles the technique is called 'Pre-Shading'. I will continue the robot On-Line build with a simple Black/Brown Wash, see next Blog entry.

The technique of Spray-Highlighted Base Coat (sorry - but I cannot think of a better term) has two effects, the speed at which the model takes on an obvious highlight - shadow, making painting easier and also a less stark base colour. I would hope that others would try this technique.

Tony