Alright Troops, welcome back!
I saw a commercial it said 'forget everything you know about slip covers' so I did,
and it was a load off my mind.
Mitch Hedberg there
What a legend.
In this video I'll be showing you how to get a high level paint job on these bricks
using a straightforward process that you'll be able to employ in your own basing or terrain work.
Videos showing how I built and painted the rest of the base can be accessed via my Patreon feed.
It's a really engaging effect and simple to do,
so just chill out for a few minutes and I'll walk you through the process.
You'll begin by zenithal priming the bricks and you do that by first priming them in black,
I used some Games Workshop Chaos Black spray but you can use whatever you like.
Then once that's dry you're going to spray once more, this time using white,
spraying the bricks from above, being careful not to get a full coverage from the paint.
That should leave you with this nice speckled pattern on the surfaces
and the black still showing in the shadows.
We'll Start off with quite a dark reddy brown tone.
This here is Valejo Armour Brown and I'm going
to make two different glaze mixes with it just by adding some water.
One fairly thin and the other, a bit thicker.
We'll start off with that thinner consistency
and we'll just start to draw that lightly over the bricks.
It doesn't matter where you begin, just pick a brick at random and go for it.
You don't want to lose the fine detailing from the primer so
don't be in a rush to get a strong colour here.
I'll do that again on this one here.
Notice I'm using the brush to draw off any excess liquid from the surface,
when it pools up just put your brush back into that area and gently
pull it over the brick allowing the bristles to draw the liquid back up into the brush.
You can control how much of the glaze comes off the brush by how much pressure you apply.
The harder you press the more liquid will go onto the surface.
A bit like wringing out a mop or a wet cloth.
I did create a little bit of a stain there just from being a bit slow with drawing off
the excess but if that happens to you, don't worry about it, we're actually a lot less fussed about
staining than usual, bricks generally have a lot of discolouration and natural stains on
them so if you mess up a bit here and there it's actually going to help you get a better effect.
To continue we're going to take some of the
thicker glaze and just place it on one end of the brick.
Then while it's still wet we'll switch to a second,
clean, slightly damp brush and just feather out the edges of the glaze,
pulling it over the surface of the brick with a relaxed back and forth motion.
When you're doing this you want to be quite gentle with the brush,
that way the excess liquid will be drawn up into the bristles.
As you move the brush the glaze is essentially stretched thin making it thinner and thinner.
That way you get a nice gradual gradient.
You can see that stain is also more obvious now because we've
essentially just made it darker by applying another layers of paint.
So we're essentially going to do repeat that basic approach for each brick,
but we'll try to vary the colour on each one by adding more or less layers
so that you have a mix of different looks across the bricks.
You don't want them to be all the same colour.
Also try not to think in terms of highlights and shadows when you're doing this.
It's more like you're creating shifts in colour, so with that in mind you're going to want to
vary the direction that you apply the glazes onto the bricks.
You don't want the colour all going in the same direction, that would end up looking pretty weird.
Don't forget to do the sides by the way, that probably sounds obvious but it's
amazing how easy it is to forget and just focus on the top part.
On this little one here, because it's heavily tilted
I am going to paint it with highlights and shadows in mind.
So I'll pull the glaze down towards the bottom, making that part darker.
It makes sense to do that here due to the extreme angle it's positioned in.
The rest are fairly level so it you imagine a general light source they'd all be fairly
evenly lit so we can go for a more unspecific semi random colour variation on them instead.
We'll introduce a new colour now by adding a bit of Chestnut Ink into some Armour Brown,
and again thinning it down to a glaze consistency with a bit of water.
This is just to help make the bricks look a bit more interesting.
We'll apply that just like we've been doing by gently drawing the glaze
over the surface of the brick in order to tint it.
You can see it has more of a sepia colour to it. And ahhh. Hmm, we might have overcooked
that a bit actually, I think the glaze was a bit too thick, the colour's a tad intense.
I'll just a little more water to it.
That should be ok now.
I'll try that again on this little one over here.
Ahhh yep, that seems better.
Remember you don't want to lose too much of that grain from the primer so try to be
pretty conservative with how your glazes are covering.
To knock back the sepia tone on that larger one
we'll just take some of our thinner armour brown mix and apply it over the top.
That should take the edge of it a bit and make it somewhat less intense.
We'll continue that process just applying
the glaze over the bricks to give them some more colour.
You can go back over ones you've already done in order to darken down areas.
Remember you want some bricks to be darker than others so try not to make them all uniform.
Also don't worry if you think it looks a bit naff at this early stage.
It'll start to look more convincing as you continue to work on them.
If you're not sure how much your glaze is going to cover,
you can test the transparency out on your thumbnail then you can make any adjustments
you feel you need. If you want it more transparent, just add a bit more water.
Or if you'd prefer it to be more on the opaque side, you can just mix in a little more paint.
Just remember to retest it after you make the changes.
I'll use that more sepia tone here to do a couple of the bricks
just to help break up the monotony of all that straight armour brown.
It's actually quite a straight forward process, fairly relaxing too,
definitely a stress free way of painting.
Most of the work has already been done for you with the primer, so
you just need to add some colour to bring it to life.
Just don't worry about your initial pass looking a bit crap, trust the process and have fun with it.
I'll switch back to the Armour Brown again and we'll keep working on the bricks.
You can see I'm not too fussed about reducing the amount of liquid on the brush here,
that's because we can actually use the glaze almost like a wash here,
except we're not allowing it to pool too much.
When you're using glazes to cover up a transition it's very difficult to draw the liquid off the
surface because you're generally working on a very small and sometimes quite awkward area.
But here we're just covering the whole element in the glaze,
so it becomes a lot easier to manage it.
Again don't forget the sides or you'll be feeling a bit silly later on.
All the cool kids and going to be pointing and laughing at you.
Then before you know it you'll be forced to invent a gruff Scottish sidekick to deal with the trauma.
And no wants that.
You're no wrong there pal.
Alright so when you're doing the glazes you want to.
Here! Is that all I get aye? One, two.... FIve words?! What kinda low effort beep is that?
Ah should be the headliner here! I've a good mind to call the police!
Oh yeah Angus, I've just had a lot on my plate recently,
I didn't have the time to write your lines, sorry about that.
A lot on your plate aye?
That explains the double chin. You want to get on that Keto, and get ripped. Like me.
I mean you can always improvize them.
I don't have to think of everything for you, I'm sure you've got a lot to say.
Guess not.
Anyway as I was saying.
On your first pass don't worry too much about creating some kind of transition,
just work on tinting the surface to get a bit of colour on there.
You can mess with the way it looks as you apply extra layers.
I'll grab that sepia colour again and we'll fill in this little one here.
So I'll just it a quick glaze to get some colour on it.
And maybe we'll add a bit more on this one here,
pulling the glaze down to that longside to make it a bit darker.
I'll switch back to the Armour Brown again and just work on filling in the rest of the bricks.
I'll also start to create some more variation to the surfaces by
going over them and pulling the glaze up to one side of the brick.
Like here on this one, I'm pulling it up to the short edge.
Just to make it darker on that left side there.
This one here is still white so I'll just it a quick glaze to get some colour on it.
And again, make sure you do the sides,
you don't want them to end up left with that white primer showing, it's not a good look.
The glaze dries pretty quickly so we can go ahead and add some variation on the top,
pulling the glaze up and over that long edge.
Again remember we're making these decisions on where
to make the colour more intense fairly randomly.
As long as it's not the same on every brick it's going to look pretty good.
We'll do a bit more work on the broken ones off to the side here.
Just making them darker towards the lower edge.
You can see I'm always keeping the paint really thin
and simply drawing it over the surfaces letting the primer do most of the hard labour for us.
As long as you don't overwork the surface too much you can't go far wrong with this.
Alright guys so all we need to do here is keep working on it using that simple process
of applying thin glazes over the bricks.
Make some light, some dark, and have the colour going in different directions for each one,
without worrying about staining too much because that's just add to the effect.
Alright, I'm going to go grab a cup of tea, I'll be right back!
I'm just doing the Mortar between the bricks here by
running a little bit of that Valejo Dark Brown wash along the top, just to cover up
that white primer and help separate the bricks out a little so you can see the edges better.
Now that we've given the bricks a bit of colour with the brown glazes
we'll take some Games Workshop Seraphim Sepia which we'll thin down slightly with a bit of
water so we can better control the coverage. And then we'll glaze that over the top of the bricks.
Using it much like we would a normal wash but without allowing it to pool
too dramatically in any areas.
So essentially just pulling it thinly over the whole surface.
This is going to help fill in any areas where the coverage is a bit weak
but it'll also give us some more interesting colour variations.
Once that's dried I'll take some Army Painter Strong tone and just place this on the bricks
nearer the edges of the base.
This is going to darken them down slightly, leaving the middle, where the model will be,
a bit brighter thus hopefully drawing more focus towards the miniature.
So you're essentially creating a subtle focal point as your eye is
naturally going to be drawn to things that are brighter.
It's up to you how dramatic you want to make this, I've gone for a more subtle effect but you could
add a few more layers of the wash and make it much more obvious if that's what you prefer.
A lot of painting is just down to personal preference really.
It's not about following guides, it's about what you want to achieve.
The effect was maybe a bit too subtle so another layer should do it.
You can see the way I'm pulling the brush towards the outside edge of the base
so that the wash collects more around the outer edge of the brickwork.
This ensures we get a nice fade into the colour,
rather than just an abrupt shift from light to dark.
Alright, so to finish the bricks off we'll add some edge highlights and for that we'll use
some Scale Colour White Sands which we'll thin down slightly with a bit of water.
Decide which side of the base is going to be the front and we'll apply
some small highlights along the edges of the bricks on that front side.
So this just gives the sense that the light is coming from that side
and catching the edges of the bricks.
You can also use it to pick out little details here and there like this little mark for example.
Try not to totally cover the whole edge with a solid highlight.
Add some variation to it by applying little dots and lines here and there.
You can use the natural wear along the edges of the bricks to
guide where to put there or you can just make it up as you go.
So try to be a bit random about it so that you don't end up with an
obvious pattern. That's the most important thing.
Notice the way if I do add a solid line it's generally applied fairly lightly and then I'll
come back in and place a few smaller and more opaque highlights over the top just to create
little points of interest and bring out the inconsistencies along the edges of the bricks.
This is actually my favourite part of painting just
farting about adding in the small little details.
There's something quite satisfying about seeing a little dot or two bring something to life.
I mean bricks aren't alive but you know what I mean.
It makes it seem more real. Is what I'm trying to saw.
Also notice the way I'm holding the brush at a bit of an angle.
That's so that I can use the side of the brush, near the tip
applying the highlights by lightly dragging the bristles against the edges of each brick.
So I'm not trying to paint these on with the very tip of the brush.
It's very difficult to do that.
It's much more manageable and easier to control if you use the side of the bristles.
Also notice I'm using the side of the brush
quite close to the tip, that allows me to get a more refined and thin highlight.
Thanks for watching troops,
don't forget to subscribe if you're new and I'll see you all in the next video.