Tuesday, October 29, 2013

"Gem Effect" Tutorial - Painting 15mm Visors on the "Hell Divers"

Hi everyone,

I've been painting up some of my Hell Divers, and I decided to do a "Gem" effect on the visor.

Here is an example of two painted visors:



I start with a dark blue, almost black as the base (mixing the base blue and black):


Then, highlighting from "bottom to top" I paint the base blue in the bottom and left corners:


An example of what my palette looks like:


Next, I add a bit of white, and then do a thin line (about half of the base blue width) along the left edge.  If you do too much, you can black line it, or use a wash (like Army Painter Dark Tone) to get the black outline around the visor again.


What my palette looks like after adding white:


Adding a bit more white gives me a very light blue color, and I add that as thin as I can to the lower left edge:


After that, I add two dots of white to the upper right part.  This usually takes me two or three tries to get it nice and round and where I want.  If you need to go over it just mix a bit of your base with black to get the color back so you can try the white dot again:


After that I will add a gloss coat to make it even shinier, since in 15mm I find that it really helps add a focal point to the face.

And here is a picture from the side:


I originally tried red, but it made them look a bit too like evil henchmen (Cobra!!), so I'm very happy with the blue, works well with the khaki scheme too.

Thanks!