Yellow paint can be a difficult medium to master, but the payoff can be significant! Our guest writer will give you tips to make your models stand out.
This picture is taken from my latest book and was quite popular with my friends. It generally came with this comment: “Dude, that rocks.”
Get your brushes and get ready for yellow made easy!
Now this technique will not get you an award or anything, but it’s simple enough that a blind monkey could do it and it looks pretty dope on a table. And it’s fast to do in bulk, so grab at least three units to paint them altogether. There is no messing around here.
In Bob Ross’ terms, this method is what is called a happy accident. I knew staining works well for gritty stuff like Death Guard, but for yellow to come out this way…wow!
Step 1 : Orange Basecoat
I used The Army Painter orange for this with an airbrush to go faster, but white primer and a large brush will make short work of this. Or, better still, orange shaker can like this one ( TAMTS-31 85031 Spray Lacquer TS31 Bright Orange 3 oz).
You don’t really have to lay it on perfectly, but make sure the deep cracks and recesses are well covered. Also, don’t make the mistake of using an orange that is too light. We are looking for bright and striking!
Step 2 : White Drybrush
Savage! Savage, you say? Well yes, very much so. As I said, we are not messing around here. While this is savagery, don’t slack on the drybrush. The cleaner (as clean as drybrush can be, really) your drybrush is, the better your yellow will look.
You can pay closer attention to the areas that you want to pop once the painting is finished.
Step 3 : Yellow Shade
For this step, I used Games Workshop’s Cassandora Yellow. With the shade/tint phase, we want to give the model one even coat, rather that apply it on like a barbarian you would with a wash.
This shade will tie in the orange and white and tone everything in a bright yellow.
Your model will look a little weird at the moment because there’s yellow all over the place. But once you add a couple of blocking colors on other surfaces, BAM!
Optional Step 4: Classic Overachiever
And really optional, we are not doing this to be fancy. There’s no point in adding unnecessary steps, but if you want a shinier look or to pimp out a character, you can highlight or drybrush (very lightly this time) with white.
Very lightly is the key here, you don’t want to take away all the work you did in the previous steps.
About the Author: Hellfire Hobbies
Max Dubois is a hobby enthusiast from Quebec. Max produces a lot of hobby ressources that you can find on his own blog as well as well as on Spikey Bits.
He is always ready to talk shop with other enthusiasts, whether it's about, painting, playing or drinking, no matter your skill level in either those activities.
You can also find some of his work on amazon kindle, where he sells hobby e-books for a dollar!
