Cape fabric effects

While occupied with paperwork I recieved a communiqué from the Spiky Rat Pack asking questions regarding my recent endavour with Inquisitor Velk. The Pack wanted knowledge about my dealings with the cape. Here is my return message in brief:


The cape was painted using airbrush over the zenith primed mini. The airbrushing work was done before any other areas were painted.

About 4 successive layers of grey going from dark grey towards light grey/Bleached Bone. The final two layers or so layers were sprayed on at an angle straight from above to get the zenith effect.

Over this I worked in some shades (using various browns, greens, reds) now and then as I was working on the other areas.

When most of the model was done I sponged on some almost pure black with a bit of blister foam. And over this I sponged a light colour - Bleached bone. I also did few "scratch"-highlights on some of the black spots using bleached bone. "Scratch"-highlights meaning that the black sponge marks were highlighted illusionistic by adding a highlight to the grey cape just under the black spot. This makes the black spots looks like tine holes in the fabric.

Finally, I worked in some more washes in certain areas - mainly to emphasize the folds and areas that are in the shadows.

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I hope you can use the information provided above. I plan to bring this technique to good use on some Astartes within the year...

thoughts on painting RED

Got questioned a few times over the years about how I paint the red robes and cloth on my miniatures.Truth is that I have done it in very different ways from project to project and usually experiment every time I am painting another red robe. Trying new stuff improvising to get closer to what I want.
Here are a few images:

 Mercenary Captain (1999) 

 Missionary Judge (2006)

Duchess Death (2011)

A short standard write-up would be close to my description of painting red in the chaos warrior tutorial on my website.

A great colour when painting red is Citadel Scab Red since it covers horribly, but has a silky transparent finnish and a good surface strength that makes it go on very even and smooth. It is very good for mixing with strong red ink and layering over an already shaded and highlighed area. Sort of blends it all together like a tinted layed over an image in Photoshop if you know the effect.

Another colour is Bleached Bone that can give more subtle transistions for the highlights. I then only add white for the very final highlight.

More recently, I have started to experiment using an orange Winsor and Newton artist ink over an already shaded and highlighted orangy red. This is what I have done on the recent figures shown here - the checked shield on the Daemonhost and the red hood on the Skulker.