Tape masking tutorial

Ever since I saw the first painted tank I wondered how the pros did those impeccable markings and lines on vehicles and other miniatures. After trying several thing (without success) I tried something very basic, but which yielded a stunning result – sticky tape masking.

This tutorial will take you from the newly-cut Rhino top hatch cover to the finished product.

A checklist of stuff that I used for this article is:

• Large flathead brush

• Hobby knife
• Scotch clear sticky tape
• Knarloc Green paint
• Camo Green paint
• Astronomican Grey
• Vallejo White
• GW Skull White spray

First, we prime the top chaos black. After it has dried we proceed to coloring it to the vehicle’s color.

If you desire to have your vehicle black you may choose to skip the painting section entirely, but I still recommend reading it because it details the process of painting a light color over a dark background.

Painting the hatch

My chapter color is Camo Green, so I will need to make my Rhino hatch this color as well. However, Camo Green is a color that doesn’t have good coverage (pretty much like all the light colors in the GW paint range). Because of that, I’ll start covering the entire surface with a foundation paint that is the closest to Camo Green. In our case Knarloc Green. Foundation paints are less saturated colors but have an excellent coverage. Also, I use a large flat head brush for vehicles, because it allows me to paint fast and get very uniform paint coverage, without streaks. Only an airbrush beats a large flathead when painting large areas.

After I get an uniform Knarloc Green cover I start mixing the Camo Green with the Knarloc Green and applying successive layers until I get as close to Camo Green as possible. If I do this the following things happen:

• I combine the good coverage of the foundation paint with the saturated color of Camo Green. This means we get a Camo Green-ish color.
• In case I mess up with the painting there will not be dark streaks below my current paint layer, because the color below the current layer is very close to my actual color.

After each thin coat add a little more Camo Green to the mix. This should be done at least 4-5 times for good results.

After we are content with the color we leave the paint to dry really well (30 mins at least) because acrylics tend to break off the surface if you force them to do something nasty before they are ready. In our example “something nasty” translates by using sticky tape directly on the color.

Masking

For masking we use sticky tape. The best thing that you can use is thin clear sticky tape, because it’s easy to handle and it has a soft glue that can be peeled off easily. Do NOT use bandages, black insulation tape (the one used by electric technicians) or anything else that has a lot of glue, because this will leave a nasty seam in your paint (which you will have a hard time cleaning).

Now, proceed masking the contour of the arrow with sticky tape as shown in the picture.

As you can see, the only non-covered area of the hatch is the actual tactical arrow that we wish to paint. The most difficult part of this is sticking the two vertical pieces of tape, because you have two edges that must be cut and stuck perfectly.

There are a few important things to remember when doing this:

• Avoid touching the sticky side of the tape too much with your fingers. While it’s impossible to handle it without actually touching it, remember that glue will wear off on touch and make the tape edges curl.
• Always make sure that the edges of the tape that are towards the interior of the shape are tightly stuck to the surface.
• Always leave a healthy amount of slack outside the model so you can get a firm grip on the tape when peeling it off. You can stick some pieces paper on the slack so your grip is even better.

Painting the arrow

After everything is done, we start painting the arrow. We paint it in the same way we did the base color of the hatch: starting with the lightest possible foundation Astronomican Grey then mix it with Skull White until we get to the desired white.

Now, you may ask why didn’t I use Undercoat White since it’s also a foundation color. The answer is simple: while the basic composition is the same as with any foundation, Undercoat White has the poorest pigment of all the GW colors AND the chunkiness of a foundation paint, which leads to splats of paint and other unwanted results.

Another method of painting this is to use the Skull White spray paint, but if you choose to do this you need to cover the whole model with tape. Also, the spray color is so powerful it will seem unnatural if you exaggerate with it.

After the paint has dried, proceed in peeling off the tape from the hatches. Do this in a continuous slow motion, and be sure not to do any sudden moves because it may rip the base coat off the model. What you get if everything was done right is very precisely traced arrow that you can proceed to dent in some places to make it more interesting.

For this tutorial I have used spray paint. In the picture above there are two hatches, the left one done with spray painting and the right one painted with the method described above. The difference between them as you can see is minimal and the precision is roughly the same.

Finally you can see the Rhino with both hatches on, for comparison. The Rhino itself has been painted without using foundation paints, hence the slight color difference.

Wrapping it up

No matter what painting method you chose, you will find out that when the two pieces of the hatch come together, the line between them has all but disappeared. If you didn’t glue the hatch in one big piece you can dry-brush the interior edges to give the illusion of chipped paint along the hatch line. This will make the hatch look like a hatch, not some sort of huge boring metal slab.

You can use this method for any model whenever you need something made out of straight lines. If you have small hands and work really quick you can even cut shapes in the sticky tape and make fun stencils.. like smurfs and such..

Note: I have also posted this tutorial on http://www.miniwargaming.com

Quick base-coating

Since my drybrushing tutorial I've been planning to paint a new squad of tactical marines, and this proved to be the perfect opportunity to show how I actually did my sargeant WITH PICTURES.

So, the basic idea would be to create armor plates that are of a certain color without obstructing details and having brush strokes all over.

First, I primed my model Chaos black and did a drybrush of Knarloc Green, making the models look something like this.


Then , started mixing Camo green (the final model color) with the Knarloc green pool, and drybrushed the models in a few stages as I added more and more Camo green.
This accomplishes the following things:

• Mixing a normal color with an undercoat color results in a color whose pigment is close to the normal color but retains the coverage properties of the undercoat color.
• Applying several layers of similar paint means brush strokes and other imperfections will be hidden by the previous layer of paint.
• Applying several layers of thin paint is better than one layer of thick paint as it doesn't obscure details.
  
• It's easy to do some shading to models by brushing the destination color only on "lit" surfaces"
• Mixing paints will always result in darker tones of normal color, which means you can use your final base color to do really smooth highlights.
• It's extremely fast!

Here are some intermediary steps for painting the marines with this method

As you can see, the camo green begins to show more and more each stage. During the last stage I brushed a Camo green-ish color from the mix only on the most lit surfaces, which gives the model more volume.


And here is how the final squad looks coated with this method. Notice that the details are all alive and well, there are no brush strokes and only minor touch-ups are needed. Oh, and it took 1 hour and not too much wasted paint to do all 9.

Eyes that burn

The following model had a somewhat unlucky history. As you may see, it has a pretty uneven paint distribution. What happened is that I dropped it by mistake 4 meters from the balcony (where I spray the undercoat) in the garden below. So wet undercoat + mud equals something else than good.
On the positive side, I've used it to experiment with some color schemes and painting techniques, the latest being the EYES.

I wanted to create a new helmet pattern for my army, since the other marine squads need to stand out from the sternguard placeholder I've finished. I tried yellow faceplates , I tried gold faceplates, and settled for black.
However, the regular red eyes were not good enough against a black background, so, after several tries I came up with this look (don't mind the paint splats, he's my walking test pallet)


How this came to be:
1) Painted the eye sockets with Mechrite Red
2) Painted almost 3 quarters of the eye socket from front to back with Blood Red.
3) Painted the first half from front to back with Blazing Orange
4) Added a dot of Sunburst Yellow
5) Filled the eye sockets with a hefty amount of Baal Red wash. This last step provided an internal outline for the eye socket as well as blended the colors together.

I've made a rough sketch of that below. Note that the colors I've used are the RGB values from GW's paint chart.




The good thing about very dark backgrounds is that you don't have to worry about overflowing paint from detail slots, such as eyes. Instead, you can use the extra paint outside to create a glow effect. This is done by using a wash corresponding to one of the colors (background, or overflowing foreground) as it will blend one color with another.

Drybrushing, "wetbrushing" and the likes

Hi,

Because I struggled a lot with the subject of drybrushing before actually getting what it meant, what it can be used for and how, I decided to write a small tutorial that should shed some more light on the subject. Note that this is a beginner level tutorial, as I myself have been painting for only 7 months or so.

1. Basic drybrushing

Drybrushing, as many people will tell you, is the best method that you can use to quickly bring out the surface details of a miniature or any other object for that reason. This is done by using as little paint as possible on the brush and stroking the brush repeatedly over the details that you want to bring out. In time, after several strokes, paint will rub off the brush and you will it on the details.

Now, this may sound easy enough, however, many people (myself included) tend miss one very important factor in this: the paint and how much should we use ?

Section 1 of the picture shows the brush stroking a corner towards the right side. The outer edge (or surface) is actually the surface that gives the most resistance to the brush and the paint on it at a "microscopic" level. Thus, most paint will rub off the brush on this edge of the corner. The tangent edge (or surface) hardly opposes the brush or the paint found on the brush, hence less paint will rub off it.

Section 2 of the picture shows what happens when a very dry brush encounters a model edge. The paint will scrape off the brush almost exclusively on the outer edge, with very little (if any) paint remaining for the tangent surface.

Section 3 of the picture shows what happens when a brush filled with wet paint meets a model edge. Some paint will rub off the brush on the outer edge, but continue to be applied on the the tangent edge as it "drips" on to the surface.

So the rule is pretty simple: if you want precision, use VERY VERY little dry paint. This is because dry paint won't rub off tangent surfaces (surfaces parallel to the brush hair), it will only color the outer edge of the surface. This is why drybrushing brings out the detail in a model, because it creates a thin outline of paint for every model corner it is used on. This is also why you have seen tohe continuous rubbing motion that brings the brush on the model from all sides: because you might want to create outlines from all sides.

2. Drybrushing steps

So, now that how paint applies to surfaces we find asking ourselves how to dry the paint effectively. Here are the steps:

a. Dip your brush in non-dilluted paint, directly from the pot (prefferably).
b. Clean the excess paint in the pot
c. Rub the brush on a sheet of paper (normal writing paper) as if you are trying to draw something on it until almost no paint comes off. This serves 2 purposes : One: It helps to distribute the paint evenly across the brush's hair. And two: Paper absorbs water , so it's only natural to use it.
d. Use a paper towel to clean the brush until almost nothing gets out of it.
e. Start drybrushing the desired surface.

Now, if you cleaned the brush , the first strokes you do on the surface will yield almost no result. Do not panic, keep at it and soon you will start to see the model's edges receiving a faint amount of color. Continue until you get the desired result.

3. Wetbrushing (I couldn't find any other term :) )

Drybrushing is the best way to apply a thin layer of paint on a miniature without having its details obscured. Because of this, you can use roughly the same technique (but with a twist) to apply an uniform layer of color on miniatures, such as undercoats, and achieve results that are comparable to airbrushing a model. Here are the steps:
a. Dip your brush in water and clean some of it back into the water jar
b. Get some paint on the brush and clean the excess paint up.
c. Do a few strokes on a sheet of paper until you can see that the paint gets thin (you start seeing the paper's white through the color).
d. Roll the ferrule on the same sheet of paper to remove excess paint that could be stored inside
e. Proceed with brushing the model in broad strokes.

Doing this should provide an even coat of paint for any large surface. If you get blobs of opaque paint that looks like the one in the pot, it mostly means that some of it still remained in the ferrule, because that's where the paint tends to go if it's watered down.

I use this technique to paint the green armor of my space marines as well as vehicles and I have discovered that applying layers of paint by using this technique allows me to have an almost perfectly uniform paint distribution. The sargeant in the image below has been painted with this technique.


4. Paints

Paints are what we use daily , but some are better than others for drybrushing techniques. Basically, what you will want to use primarily are the Games Workshop foundation paints and the metallics.
Foundation paints are slightly less saturated than normal paints but have a formula that makes them stick to any surface easily. They are especially good for wetbrushing, since normal dilluted paints have a tendency of making small puddles. These don't :)
Metallic colors from GW are some of the best metallics that you can find anywhere. The main downside of any metallic color , though, is that they dry very fast, in a matter of seconds. Also, since most details in a model (especially in space marine ones) are metallic, this makes them ideal for drybrushing. Get that Crux Terminatus done in no time ! :D
Citadel colors are the run of the mill paints, and have the broadest range. They are thinner than foundation paints and need to be applied in several layers in order to get an uniform color. Lighter colors, such as badmoon yellow and skull white are a pain to apply on large surfaces. A tip would be to have a light undercoat, such as drybrushed undercoat white and then apply them in thin thin layers with wetbrushing.

5. Brushes

Before going into details , keep in mind one very important thing: drybrushing destroys brushes. It mostly does that because it forces paint into the ferrule and this makes the brush hairs to loose their shape and bend eratically. So, when you choose a brush for drybrushing keep in mind that you will end up using that brush for that thing alone after a few paint sessions.

Any brush may be used for drybrushing or wetbrushing, however some are better than others due to a number of factors:

a. Hair length is probably the most inportant thing, because it dictates how much pressure the brush does on the surface, and thus how precise the drybrushing process will be. Generally , the shorter the hair , the better.
b. Shape is another important feature of a drybrush. What GW does is provide a round brush as their standard drybrush. This brush is decent as long as you don't want any precision, mainly because round brushes tend to turn into hemispheres after prolonged use. The best shapes for a drybrush are flat head , conic or scrubber brushes. Flat heads and conic shaped brushes are very useful for drybrushing entire edges of models with ease. You may want to have at least one flat head brush in your brush collection (and make it a small flat head) especially dedicated for those small details. Also, a large flathead will prove invaluable for quickly painting vehicles.

Flat head brushes

Scrubber brushes are essentially flat heads with very short and strong hair. This makes them the perfect drybrushers, but are very hard to come by.

Scrubber brushes

c. Hair material is also important, because it gives the stiffness and paint retention properties of a brush. Natural sable brushes have high paint retention , are very soft and can be used to paint uniform surfaces , while nylon brushes are a bit tougher and have the tendency to trace hairlines in the paint. Also, natural hair brushes are much more expensive, so you might want to get a cheap brush for drybrushing. Bottom line, nylon is a good choice, because it's inexpensive, tough and you apply dry paint which is always more uniform than wet paint.

6. Another use of drybrushing

Paint huge surfaces uniformly - generally when you're painting a tank with a small brush you will end up seeing your brush strokes after the paint dries off, which leaves quite an unpleasant effect. Drybrushing over the surface with the same color will make the paint seem more uniform, not airbrush quality, but still many times better than the original.
I have used this technique on a Rhino that ended up being quite messy. You can see it in one of my older updates. By heavily drybrushing with a large short haired conic brush I managed to give it a pretty decent finish that will look almost flawless after I spray it with matte varnish.