If you have always wanted to learn how to paint lightning effects, this tutorial is for you. See how to get that perfect lightning crackle on your weapons.
Getting your power weapons painted up with lightning effects can be secretly easy! Just follow these steps from Spikey Bits’ own Rob Baer. This time we’re painting up a sword arm of a Cerastus Knight-Castigator with a lightning-based effect that will pop out with some nice blue hues. This model has a history with Spikey Bits, so let’s bring it back out of the vaults and show you how it’s all done.
Start off with some turquoise based blues. Citadel Temple Guard Blue works great as a first paint in this tutorial, evolving from a previous selection of a Hawk Turquoise. Temple Guard Blue is less of a turquoise color and it adds a brighter tone to our lightning effect. Add some Flow Improver to your Temple Guard Blue to start the base coat of the glowing lightning.
Use a squiggle pattern when airbrushing on the blues to create a lightning effect.
Next, grab some Ulthuan Grey from Citadel to get some edge highlight work done on our sword. Once you have your color, picture a lightning bolt streaking across the sky. Once you have your idea in mind, start loading up your brush with paint, then pull and twist to get a nice crisp paintbrush tip. If you need to, add some Flow Improver and always pull the paint toward your body.
Use light brush pressure when you start your lightning bolt. You can always come back and retrace over your original painted bolt, so don’t worry about it not showing up well. Continue on until your weapon has enough lightning bolts to achieve a crackling power weapon!
From there apply multiple thin blue glazes in random patterns to add depth. Check out the video below for the LIVE version!
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Here is our previous video on the same thing from a smaller model:
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