MindFad's Gallery: concrete painting

Step by step: Rocks and concrete

Welcome to this installment of step by step tutorials. Last tutorial was on how to paint a ravenwing army, you can find it here.

This week, we go through the steps for painting rocks and concrete in a simple yet striking way. This will be quite shorter than a whole army like last time!

Read on!

Disclaimer: I'm still french, this is still written in english. Bear with me.

Once again, I emphasize on speed and effectiveness in this tutorial. This will probably not get you a crystal brush, but you can easily paint an urban table in an afternoon ( 4 beers time to be more specific on time. ) Notice how I put « probably not get you a crystal brush » this is because it still looks awesome.

Here's a list of what you'll need:

Rock or urban bases, or a building that you want to paint.

Black Primer

GW Mechanicus Grey ( neutral dark grey )

GW Celestra Grey or ( Fortress grey of old, any Light neutral grey )

GW Rhinox Hide ( Scorched brown of old, or P3 Umbral Umber )

GW Skraag Brown ( Vermin Brown of old, or any orange-ish brown )

Black paint for the edge of the bases 'cause it looks boss.

Large worn brush ( 1'' wide is pretty nice )

Optional Materials( You still need all the stuff above ):

Grey Primer

Dark Green, Dark Purple, Turquoise, Reddish Brown ( GW Doombull brown )

Airbrush

For this tutorial, I'll use a Ork Golem that I had to paint as part of a feral ork comission, you can find the same steps applied to traditional bases and building at the end.

Step 1

Black primer. Give your models 2-3 light coats, you want to get in every recess with the black.

Step 2

Grey Primer. Lightly go over everything your painting. Less is more on this case. If you are familiar with dual priming, this is much like it, but with grey instead of white, and lighter.

You can airbrush or drybrush your Mechanicus Grey to get a similar effect. I use a shaker can because it's quicker and your stuff is already lined up from priming them black.

Prime smart, prime p-ma... whatever.

Step 3 to 5 require no skills, a blind monkey will get this done for you. Make no effort to blend colors together, the goal is to get this done quickly, much of this will be covered later. Also, I did these step with a brush for quite a while before switching to the airbrush. The result is honnestly the same, only you save time by using the airbrush because you don't have to wait for the watered-down paints to dry.

Step 3

If you do not own an airbrush, you can do this step with a brush using watered down ( 50-50 ) colors.

Get your artistic juices flowing, this is the happy accident step y'all. Well start with Rhinox Hide, and airbrush this in random patches, but aiming for deep parts of the models. You can cover from 5% to 50% of whatever you're painting with this step.

Step 4

Pretty much like step 3, but with Skraag Brown. This time, go a little less trigger-happy, you want both your primer and your darker brown showing on the model.

Step 5 ( Optional )

This is for those of you who want to go the extra mile. Much like the last 2 steps, create more patches with dark green, dark purple, or even turquoise. Turquoise is best used on the higher parts of the models rather than the recesses like the darker colors.

I used Dark green on the Golem and also applied it to the lichen-like stuff on it.

You should be into your 2^nd beer by the time you reach step 6, assuming you're doing a man-sized project. ( Step your massive quantity painting game up, bro.)

Step 6

Using your trusty beaten down 1'' brush ( GW or Army Painter's Large Drybrush is my weapon of choice here ) drybrush you entire models with celestra grey like there's no tomorrow. For reference, only the right arm of the golem has benn through this step on the picture so you can compare.

Although this step is quite straightforward, it is quite time consumming as you want to wipe the paint clean your brush enough so you don't over do it. You are better going over your model twice with not enough paint, as once stroke with too much will ruin this step and you'll have to pretty much start over ( more on that later )

Step 7 ( Optional )

With a lighter grey or white, drybrush over certain areas to give them a more striking look. Once again, overdoing the drybrush will force you do re do steps 3+

Step 8

Paint whatever details are on the models you're doing. Skulls, ammo casing, grass, lights, whatever, the way you want.

Step 9

Paint the edge of your bases black. Finish your beer. Take your shirt off Paul Murphy style. Victory dance all over the place.

Quick note on touch ups:

It is quite easy to touch up this method, simply start on the area to tough up and around with step 3 and work your way to step 9 doing all touch ups at the same time.

Here's a couple of buildings done with this method. Because I don't really care for them being pretty, I skipped the whole brown steps and simply dual primered and drybrushed them. Looks mighty fin on the tabletop.