Painting Robes

[Marshal Vespasian]

Hi guys,

 

How do you do your robes?

I have until now done vallejo heavy warm grey, washed with sepia wash, then drybrushed with two lighter bone colours. Which is how I also do my skulls and parchment.

Its not that I dislike how these come out, but I want to add some more contrast to what I do on my minis so I found myself thinking about how can I improve upon this and add more contrast/make it pop.

 

My idea was: paint the whole thing bone white, shade the recesses with slightly thinned sepia ink and go up to off white with the Highlights. But to be honest that doesnt sound like it will do a lot in comparison to the wash and dry brush process. Might look a tad cleaner, so that would be nice.

 

But if you have some great ideas on how to make cream coloured robes Pop the way Red ones can look really striking, I am all ears.

Edited June 10, 2019 by Marshal Vespasian

[Spacecow]

What you might want to try, is to start wetblending. Put down your shadows where you want it. Put down your highlight where want it and mix the the two on your model.

 

Using unthinned paint is the way to go. You will also have to work fast as you can’t blend drying paint.

 

There are quite some videos on YouTube that explain this method far better than I’ll ever be able to do. ( check Sam Lenz or Vincent Venturella)

 

For a creamy robe i’d be more inclined to look at shades of brown for the shadows and work my way up to a creamy colour instead of grey.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited June 10, 2019 by Spacecow

[Tichinde]

for white robes I use the GW "Celestra grey- drakenhof nightshade - ulthuan grey - white" method
red I used to use "mephistion - carrebourg shade - then some lighter red/pink or orage" but I tried last night drybrushing red over rhinox hide and it works really well for dark red.

 

 

it tends to be just "base colour - relevant shade - one or two layers/drybrush/blend of lighter colours" sometimes I'll add a glaze to tone down the highlights or increase the depth of colour.

[MaliGn]

I layer up from a brown base, typically using be paint I start with mournfang brown then start mixing in ushabti bone, leaving it darker in the recesses, add more ushabti and repeat, eventually switching to screaming skull instead of the ushabti for about 2 layers, maybe a final highlight with some white mixed in.

[jaxom]

One method I've used in the past for a lot of robes at once is to pick out the three paints for the recesses (base), the robe ("actual color"), and the ridges (highlights) and then move them all up by one shade. Paint the base, leave it alone in the recesses when painting the robe, then highlight. Once all three are done you do a heavy glaze of a dark, unifying shade to tie them together and bring the colors back down to the real colors you were aiming for. I think the new contrast paints will make this even easier as it'll be slap on the contrast paint, highlight, then glaze.

[Marshal Vespasian]

Thanks for the advice so far. Gonna Experiment a bit with these ideas when painting the next bunch of robes.

I still have some drying retardant knocking about on my workbench somewhere.

[jkoczan42]

This is a great tutorial on white robes in general, offering both a cool and warm white options. It may not be 40k specific, but his channel also has some overall great tutorials, from beginning work to more advanced how to videos. Definitely worth a view.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJTM0XHBKlg&list=PL3WLHZP4fB6Psqp-AHRiSbBVv21PiCxn9&index=4