Highlighting

Now that the model is base coated and shaded we will highlight it, by painting the raised areas with a lighter color, to make the details really pop!

For the Warg, I decided to highlight the fur by dry brushing, and the face by detail painting.

Dry brushing is a messy technique that is more frequently used in speed painting than showcase painting. Some people claim to never dry brush at all, as it is too messy and lacks control. However I have seen many a dry brush critic get to a point where they’ll say… “Well… in this special case… I’ll dry brush… just this once…” It’s a valuable tool in the right situations.

And the right situation is this Warg’s fur! And the right color is grey!

A lot of greys have a surprising amount of blue in them… which I didn’t want to clash with the red in the sepia. So I went with the mostly neutral Vallejo Game Color Stonewall Grey.

When you dry brush, always, always, always use an old brush that you don’t care about. Dry brushing chews up brushes.

Get some paint on the brush when it is completely dry. Now rub the brush on a paper towel or rag until almost no paint is coming off it. Then run the brush quickly over the raised areas of the model, going against the grain of the surface you want highlighted. The raised areas will pick up the small amount of paint on the brush, while the recessed areas will remain untouched.

Not too shabby. We could stop highlighting the fur here. But, in my case, I wanted the highlight to be a little more subdued. So I took my black wash and thinned it out even more into a glaze.

A glaze is thinner even than a wash. Unlike a wash, it is not meant to be left pooled in the recesses. It is meant to be applied more lightly and to go over highlights and shades to help blend them together. The effect is often subtle, but it can help make the gradient between shading and highlights appear smoother. Premade glazes are usually called “clear” or “transparent” paints or something similar. These paints have uses outside of glazing as well, but in this case, I just want to use it to mellow out the dry brush highlights a tad.

Finally, I want to detail paint some highlights on the face. Why special attention to the face? It is the focal point of the model. All figures have focal points, the area that first grabs the eye, and these areas should get special attention.

When highlighting after shading with a wash, a good color to start is your base coat color. Since this was the starting point before the wash was applied, it will almost always make a good first level highlight color.

I highlighted the cheekbones, the area around the eyes, the ridges along the snout, and the sides and tips of the ears with beige brown. I also mixed up some thin black paint and gave the nose a couple coats, being sure to let each coat dry before putting on the next one.

With that highlighting done, what is left is mostly fiddling. I added a small drop of white to the beige brown, thinned it out, and gave an extra highlight around the mouth and the ridges of the snout. I used some black wash in the mouth, the inside of each ear, and the eyes. I painted the teeth bone white with my number zero detail brush. Then I gave the whole mouth another black wash to tone down the teeth a bit. I used the same number zero brush to put a drop of blood red in each eye. Finally I painted the base black.

And there we have our speed painted Warg!


This post was adapted from an article originally published on the Mad Adventurer's Society.