Hey all, Jkin here to do a little tutorial on Sky-Earth reflections for glass / non-metallic metals if you wish.
So a little back-story my main force is space wolves and I decided to add a detachment of IG for a little support; however, I really don’t think regular guardsmen could hack it on Fenris… so I made them Vikings!!
As a caveat, I glued down the cockpit before I could convert the pilots on my Vendettas so I wanted to do something different to the glass, so I hope you enjoy this tutorial.
When I started, I was rolling with just a glossed over black paint job which would suffice for a while, but anyone who knows me knows that I can never keep a steady paint job on a model without trying to do something new and different.
Once your base coat is down (in this case just keeping the black over the glass) you want to lay down a solid layer of white, any white will do, as long as its white.
The goal here is to get the white as smooth as you can but it doesn’t have to be perfect (3-4 coats should do).
The next step is to grab a little Baneblade Brown and paint your horizon about halfway up the glass. This layer is your base for the “earth” part of the reflection.
The next layer you need is a bit of Calthan Brown (Mournfang Brown) to layer from the top of the horizon down. Here you want to leave a line of Baneblade just along the base of the earth.
The final step for the earth is to add a thin line of Scorched Brown (Rhinox Hide). Once this is applied, your earth should be complete, if you’re feeling frisky, you can water down some 50/50 mixes of these and blend the layers together a little more if you’d like.
Now, for the sky, I used Ultramarine Blue as my base color and just added white to make the different shades. I began with a 50/50 mix of ultramarine blue and white for the base of my sky. You want to keep a thin line of white to represent the horizon line diminishing from your view (may take a couple of coats for a solid blue)
Once this layer is set, you’re going to need to add some white to about a 75/25 mix of white/blue. This layer will need to be watered down quite a bit and successively added from the white line up to about halfway through the light blue layer. This should fade the bulk of the sky into the horizon.
The final layer of sky will be straight Ultramarine blue applied to the very top of the window. This will essentially represent to sky light casting a shadow from the top lip of the window.
The absolute final step (if you’re going for a sunny day look) will be to add little blobs of white to represent clouds. Again this is all up to the painter, but its adds a little something extra I think.
Well there you have it, a sunny day reflection in the glass of a cockpit. Stay tuned for another update to this thread on painting sunrise effects and grim dark snowy reflections as well. -Jkin
Jkin was also the mad converter that brought us the Stormtalon Helicopter, so be sure to checkout the rest of Jkin’s amazing conversions and paint jobs here!
