How to paint OSL effect on a jump pack

Written by Pandadosmares

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This is a little tutorial on how to paint OSL to give a little color to your assault packs, giving them a brighter and yet a very real effect making them unique in a table without spending lots of time, since the end result can be achieved in more or less than 15 minutes to a full 5 man crew.

Why go with OSL?

I’m painting an assault squad form my Imperial Fist Army and decided to give it an extra touch to the jump packs, usually we give them the burnt effect some battle damage and we are happy, but what about give them something more?
So I remember just how fantastic is the effect of a welding torch when in use, something like this:

Painting OSL

Then I decided my jump packs should look like this but in standby mode, I didn’t want to sculpt the flame.
After I painted the jump packs and gave them a dirty look with black and Smoke (VGC) they looked a bit boring

Next all the recesses were painted with Necron Abyss (GW foundation) leaving the rest of the reactor untouched. This was made painting always three levels: top ring, middle ring and bottom of the reactor (fig.2)

The result is almost unnoticeable but in the end will give you the blue shine needed to stand out from the black.
Now begins the highlighting of the reactor by brushing just the lines that define the several rings of the reactor with a mix of Necron Abyss (GW foundation) + Magical blue (VGC) and the bottom of the reactor, leaving always the darkest parts untouched.

Now we start to see results.
The highlights continue with Magical blue (VGC) but now we start to decrease the area painted leaving some of the previous color showing.

At this time there is no need to be overcautious when painting since this will make the effect more real.
In the next step were used magical blue (VGC) + Space wolves grey (GW) again your stroke is getting smaller.

Now we start painting with a little more detail, using Space wolves grey(GW) the brush strokes were done in a kind of checkered pattern, the top level of the reactor paint was applied in the edges, the middle level the color was painted in a cross pattern and a dot was made in the middle of the lower level.

Now it starts to look like a welding torch, finally the pop-up factor was used with plain white doing small dots in the edges of the top and middle level, in the bottom dots were painted randomly to give the final look.

Possible improvements

I know that the gaps should have been filed, and with them filled the final result would be much better, but this was a speed painting and the crew was already assembled.
Now with a little more time and care the end result should be fantastic. As I finished the assault crew I started to think how cool it should look given some purples to the blues, if someone tries this let me know how it looked.
Hope this was useful, have fun.