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I'm in a Painting Rut

I'm in one of those painting ruts. Truth be told, the weather here isn't helping, with days and evenings all dreary from rains and monsoon storms. Case in point are two boxes worth of the GW LOTR Men of Gondor plastics. I've finished priming and painting them save for the shields, which look like a pain to paint. The archers are finished with just the base texture awaiting a wash and some grass flocking.

The swordsmen and spearmen though have me in a rut. The figures have the tree embossed on the shields but for the life of me,I can't seem to bring out the detail. I'm currently using a technique I found easy and fast to do wth 1/72 plastics but the results with these models left me --in a word-- appalled. The shield faces were first block painted flat black with acrylics. I then applied a white on the tree heraldry. Maybe the problem started here since I wasn't careful in applying the white. I was hoping the next stage would correct the imperfections.

This involved applying a black ink/acrylic paint mixture wash with an acrylic flow enhancer. In theory, flooding the design would cover up the white spaces on the lower parts of the embossed design and leave the raised parts a bright white.


Sadly, all I ended up were 8 murky looking shields. Hmmmph. Back to the drawing board...or the painting station as the case may be...
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  1. AnonymousNovember 21, 2010 at 2:21 PM

    Try using a foam painting brush from the hardware store. Gently dry brush on a couple layers of white and then wash with a thinned out black ink.Pulls it all togehter nicely.

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