Dark Powers

The latest Painting Dark Sword tutorial is now up for viewing on the Patreon Page!  Since I have focused a lot of recent tutorials on painting white, I thought it would be interesting to go in the opposite direction, and discuss painting those very dark colors!

It is not very difficult to get a nice variety of tones in what is perceived as "black", especially if you utilize the Reaper Miniatures Liner paints.  These are very dark colors which also glaze very well.  They make an ideal start to getting those darker tones, and making sure there's more warmth or coolness in a given area.

That is how you can get that added interest, by making some parts more of a warm dark grey, others a cooler blue, or even a blueish green.  At one point I even use purple to create additional accents.

There are a few little twists in the video, such as the Object Source Lighting, but the home made wet palette is quite the surprise!  It was all very accidental, which I explain in the video.  I took just a few household items and put that together in a matter of minutes!

While it was not essential by any means, an earlier marathon painting session (working on 2 dozen figures at once!) showed that it could be useful.  Those figures all had different color schemes, so it was nice to have the wet palette on hand to work with all those different tones.

With each episode of Painting Dark Sword, I try to take on a few different techniques, or discuss a certain principle.  Several of the Dark Sword videos have gone into great detail on a specific color, such as yellows, reds, greens, blues, and so on.

There are other videos that show how to combine multiple techniques on one figure, and others that show how to deal with multiple light sources for an OSL effect.  I also have a few that dive into Non Metallic Metals, as well as a few videos that show how to use oil paints!  In fact, the next episode will be an oil painting tutorial.

You can see how the use of the cooler, more muted dark grays can be used to intensify the "fire" effect.  I talk about this every time I do an OSL tutorial, as it is so important.  

There is even a quick little demo on how I made that wet palette, which was essentially free!

That Dark Sword pledge is $10 per month, and will also provide access to other "one off" tutorials produced which focus on specific techniques, such as blood spatter, weathering, etc.  You can find that here on the Patreon Page: www.patreon.com/JamesWappel