Tutorial: Speed Demon - Speed Painting Troops

[Ghool]

I released an article on Hand Cannon today, covering a method of speed painting.

I use an underpainting method that only requires a coloured glaze over top.

 

Using this method, I've painted 10, highly detailed troopers in just over 4 hours.

It took a bit of research and trial to figure out, and I was inspired by one of the PP forum members asking if the method would be viable; can you determine your highlights and shades monochromatically, and then just add colour?

 

The answer is Yes.

And it creates high quality looking models in very little time.

 

Speed Demon - Speed Painting Troops.

 

Enjoy!

[kanli]

Great article. This is the way to go for speed painting units.

 

There was a decent Miniature Mentor video that uses a similar zenithal lighting/glazing technique. I have experimented with it myself and have had good results creating the zenithal shading with an airbrush from a very dark green, though khaki and finally to an Ivory or white, but this basic recipe could be varied. The theory being that more distant things (in this case, shadows) contain cooler, bluer colors and closer surfaces contain yellow due to the way wavelengths that filter out (through air I believe?) over distance. This is clearly visible when looking over a forest that recedes into the distance. I believe Jeremie Bonamont uses this color theory in his painting as well.

 

Anyway, keep up the awesome painting and tutorials. I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates the level of detailed explanation you provide.

[Shakandara]

I may not appreciate the tutorial (ok, it's cool, but since I rarely paint, not especially my "bag" as it were), but I certainly do appreciate the results.

 

Oh yes, my little precious...

 

~v

[Dinoman87]

I must say I do find this rather interesting. I have painted a few warhammer armies in the past and never had thought of trying this out. I think this will be a rather nice trick to try when I get into painting mantic abyssal dwarves and orcs(which is coming very soon).

 

Thanks for the tutorial.

[Bruunwald]

Gonna sound like a jerk, but I've been doing this for years. The "Zenithal," or whatever they call it now, thing, develops naturally, I think, from the practice of "dusting" your subject with sprays for other reasons (such as creating rust effects, or sand effects, or what-have-you). Once you start lightening up, it quickly occurs that glazes and/or washes might work over this. The first time I did it was with a Woodland Scenics tree about five or six years ago. Then, about three years ago, I told a friend who was heavy into Warhammer. He thought I was nuts. Then, about a year ago, he came to me with no memory of our earlier conversation, saying his Warhammer buddies had "invented this new style of painting up from the primer stage," and that is when I first heard the term Zenithal.

 

I think everyone who stumbles upon this thinks they came up with it, but like most good techniques, really old dudes with train layouts and/or model tanks and planes likely came up with it before any of us were born.

 

That said, I still liked the tutorial, and the final result is quite excellent!

[Ghool]

Oh, I didn't come up with this at all, nor do I make any claims to have.

I originally saw the method by Thomas David on the Helldorado site about 4 years ago. It looked neat, but I never gave it a try.

 

I just did a bunch of research on speed painting methods, and found this particular one to provide excellent results in a short time period, which looked much better than the typical drybrush and wash method.

 

Once I figured out the method after reading a bunch of other techniques, and other painters that did the same thing, I decided to share. :D

 

Zenithal lighting is just a type of lighting on a object, and it's traditionally known as single light sourcing. It's been around since the Renaissance (so much longer than the train and military modelers for certain), and all you do is imitate a single light source from above in order to render your object in a realistic sense. Zenithal is just a fancy art name for lighting an object with a single light source from above the object.

[Ddot]

Looking at this, it looks doable, except that spray primer and I don't mix, and spray is sort of impractical for me at the moment for a number of reasons anyway.

++Let me run this by you. i'm thinking about white primer, a solid white undercoat, then a couple of thin washes to simulate the original black primer in the tut, then moving onto the glazing portion. It should "fake" the spray priming portion well enough, as well as maybe allowing a couple of other tricks (blue wash followd by a brown wash, etc.) looking at my model inventory, any speed painting techniques are worth investigating.

[Ghool]

I was asked this on the PP forums, and somebody found a video that demonstrates the same technique.

Prime black, and then just drybrush the white over top.

 

Then use the method as described with glazes and washing and get basically the same results.

[Ddot]

Think I'll try that. The washes didn't quite get the effect I was looking for (just finished a test model).

 

For starters, I based in Linen white, washed with Dark elf flesh, then washed with Dark skin. Once these were dry, I drybrushed with Linen white to reclaim the base colr and the pure white for the zenithals. It wasn't bad, but the shadows weren't deep enough for this technique. Tjat said, I had a test model from bare metal to exhibit A in 3 hours. I have a bit of brush control to work on for it, but at its heart it's a solid technique for what itsets out to do.

 

Cheers.

[Bloodthorn]

Thanks for the great tutorial.

[Ddot]

Did a variation on a bunch of zombified stuff for my Nicodem crew. Basecoated in Dark skin ( a not-overly-dark brown), dryrushed with Dark elf skin+ghost white to build out of the shadows, then drybrushed the overhead zenithals with pure white. Made for a great undercoat to glaze over, although my glazes started off a bit thin and I overcompensated and ended up with more of a wash with some colors, so had to do a little more classic layering in places. Being zombies, it works... Took the night off frompainting after a long two weeks of work+paint+gameday on Saturday. Will try to finish tomorrow night and post pics sometime this week.

 

Overall, I found this method to be workable and may include elements of it into "normal" techniques. When the glazes were "right", thwy really transitioned color onto the "preshade/highlight" areas and tied together some of the rough transitions nicely. For painting cannon fodder, I give it two thumbs up but would go a more "classic" route for really important models.