Today I engaged in an experiment.
To “glaze” in miniature painting means to coat something in a thin, translucent layer of paint.
I decided that for one squad of eldar guardians I want to try making their guns kind of teal.
Instead of painting a normal base coat of teal over my black primer, however, I want to try glazing teal over a base coat of off-white.
Not sure whether one way looks better than the other since I didnt think this through enough to do a test first. But I went ahead and painted my whole squad’s guns off-white anyways. Kind of.
You see painting any kind of white over pure black can be a fool’s errand. It takes a few layers to completely cover the black which means it can get time consuming.
So rather than commit to a solid coat of off-white, I chose to just coat each gun with one to one and a half layers since I plan on glazing another color on top in the end anyways and the white is there as something to assist that and not as an end in itself. Might look like crap even after the glaze though…
So on this matter I will get scientific and compare the look of one gun painted fully white vs a gun with a weak single coat.
When painting shades of white it helps to use some advanced techniques.
White on its own has a tendency to go chalky and dry out prematurely, making it hard to work with. Taking advice from Youtuber Vince Verturella in his “Hobby Cheating” video on the color white, however, I added some flow aid to my white paint to keep it from drying out.
What is “flow aid,” you ask? It is a paint additive that lowers the surface tension of the paint while also extending the paint’s drying time. If any of those terms make no sense to you, Google’s your friend. I personally use Liquitex brand flow aid, but you can also find comparable products called “flow improvers” or “flow aids” from other brands. I hear you can even use dish soap as a macgyver flow aid. Your mileage may vary.
Wile E. out. Thank you for reading.
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Wile E Painter's Hobby Blog 