Kenny from Next Level Painting is back to help us nail down some techniques for glazing miniatures in his latest tutorial! Death Guard army.
Kenny usually does full-scale painting tutorials, but in order to paint well, you also need to master the small stuff! This week he’s helping us by adding a new tool to our arsenal. Glazing can be hard, but Kenny shows us how to do it quickly and easily on any of our minis.
Glazing Glass & Liquid: Miniatures Painting Tutorial
This is the end result you want to get on your grenades. Let’s see how he does it!
Setup:
To start break out your wet palette. Then he puts the following Monument Hobbies Pro Acryl Paints going from dark to light on the palette: Bold Pyrrole Red, Orange, Golden Yellow, Bright Ivory. The next part of the setup is to add some Vallejo Flow Improver to the bottom of the palette. Then he pre mixes the colors so he has his jumping-off point. Add a little of the flow improver and a bead of water to each color to get it ready.
Base Coats:
Start by mixing the Bold Pyrrole Red with a tiny bit of water and getting a good base coat over everything. Nothing crazy here just make sure you have good coverage. Let this dry fully before moving on.
Next start mixing in some Orange to the Red and keep layering it. The opacity of this is going to give it the feel we want not necessarily lighter and lighter colors. So you can mix the colors all day but make sure you’re getting good coverage on each layer and worrying about the feel. Then start mixing some Golden Yellow and Bright Ivory in. Hit the lighter layers from the bottom to build up that flame feel. Don’t be too worried though about messing up. With this style, you can constantly go over it again and again. Don’t let the brush get too wet here either. Too much water makes it harder for you to control.
Start of Highlighting:
To move forward, add more and more yellow and white to the mix. Keep hitting the grenade from the bottom down to get that flame effect. If you ever want the paint to stay wet longer use the flow improver instead of bunches of water to keep it wet.
Keep adding more yellow and white to the mix as you move forward. When you start getting close to the edges use a stippling technique to get a little more control. To help blend everything hit the piece with a little of the flow improver every once in a while to keep it nicely mixed.
Shading:
Next, mix some black with the red and pull it down from the top of the grenade. It doesn’t look great at first but just use the flow improver to pull in the orange from the bottom to mix it better. It still won’t look super crisp here but the next stage corrects that. Then, fill in the frame with black and paint a horizontal black line on the top of the bottle to represent where it’s empty. Once dry, hit a very light of yellow all along the black line. Lastly, in this step, take the white mixed with yellow and do highlights all over the bottle where you think it looks right.
Final Highlights:
Go back to glaze style here to mold in those hard painted lines and make them look liquid. For this add some yellow with the water and flow improver and mix it all in. This will give it a fluid feel. After that do the same thing with the black to give the top a glassy feel. The last step is to hit the metal edges with some bronze.
And with that, the glazing is done! Glazing is a great way to take your miniatures from looking pretty good to looking great.
If you liked this tutorial, you can also support Kenny on his Patreon page, and stock up on all the great Chaos gear over on his Heretic Swag store. Or see what other tutorials he has here.
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About the Author: Travis Pasch
Travis Pasch
Job Title: Head Writer & Editor
Socials: @paschbass
About Travis Pasch: Travis has been a Warhammer 40k hobbyist since the 1990s, playing the game since Third Edition. Through extensive traveling, he’s seen a lot of the miniatures hobby from across the world, giving him a unique perspective on the latest gaming topics and trends.
Travis’s brother even owns a commission painting studio, where he’s picked up a lot of good advice and techniques for painting Warhammer and tabletop miniatures over the years, as well. Travis joined the Spikey Bits team in 2019 and has been the lead writer since 2020.
Currently, he’s working on converting all his 40k Adeptus Mechanicus models and becoming a true tech enjoyer, complete with both sad and happy robot noises!
