 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video today. We're gonna talk about painting one of my favorite things Let's get into some competition level tanks Let's get into it The strict techno man sir that is Vincy V. Let us get to the technique and learn it Vincy V style Games workshop was nice enough to send me this Kratos Big super heavy tank, and I knew it was a perfect opportunity to paint one of my favorite things vehicles Back when I started Warhammer 40k in the late 90s I had an Imperial guard army my general goal was to have as many tanks on the table as I had people and That continued my love to this day This tank is a wonderful opportunity to talk through lots of different techniques We're gonna cover a bunch of stuff in this video We are gonna go super in-depth and we're doing it all in the Imperial fist yellow because well yellow is just fun to paint So we're gonna cover lighting making those yellows pop We're gonna cover weathering battle damage really the whole shooting match So tuck into this one. It's gonna be a long one But it should be very very fun I'm super excited Maybe because the tanks already done you can kind of see it over here in my corner off my shoulder, but It's gonna be a good time. Let's get over to the desk Some people say you should undercoat for yellow with brown and some people say pink. I say why not both? So we started with this sort of small brown, which is this wonderful pinky color and When it comes to yellow a lot of the work we do in setting up this tank is the under shading Now when it comes to vehicles, there's lots of different opinions out there about exactly how to structure highlights Across something that has lots of large flat planes Okay Such as this tank which has all sorts of different flat planes at wonderful little angles to each other my general feeling on it is You can have panel modulation. You can have volumetric. You can do it. It's just sort of Kind of specular light from above It's all fine as long as it's credible and consistent It will look cool and credible consistent and cool. Those are my key words So for this I'm shooting the the brighter color here only from sort of this reverse angle As though it's the light is coming down somewhat from like the back with a slight angle to the tank Basically, you see me having it slightly turned So it'd be over the tanks quote-unquote back left shoulder. I suppose and It's really important to build this up slowly You'll notice that I have my paint rather thinned and I'm just building it up in these soft layers and that's The paint is so thin at least two three to one With thinner probably actually more than that because this was a Is a model that, you know thicker paints not made for the airbrush. It's probably more like six or seven to one And then as I go to the brighter white color what I'm doing here is just Reinforcing those places, but again just building it up really really slowly Because when we apply the yellow over the top It's really gonna knock a lot of that vibrance out of it. So it's okay to go too far Now at this point, I don't know what parts of this tank. I'm gonna turn black yet So I'm just treating everything like I'm gonna do it in yellow and then I'll figure out the black based on what looks good Once it's turned yellow But spend some time on the under shading It's worth it as we move into the yellow phase and begin laying this down same principle still applies I'm working thin. I have this paint extremely thinned down And that's so I can just build it up and determine how much of that under shade color the reds the whites I want to come through and tint the yellow and Working thin like this. I mean with the airbrush. It's still incredibly fast So it's just better to do two or three layers than try to get it all at once Because then you can modulate with that one color and get a lot of different effects The other thing I'll say is that unlike with the white. I'm not being directional here Everything needs to be turned yellow. There shouldn't be any of that original red or dark colors still remaining Once I've turned it yellow. I do want to make sure we actually punch up some of that yellow highlight We're not gonna rely just on the under shading But instead we're gonna play with a little colder highlights since I have very warm shadows That swamp brown provides me with very warm shadows. So for the highlights We're gonna push it into a sort of colder yellow hence the cold yellow weird choices, right? And as I integrate that I'm just hitting those areas But you'll notice now with these since we're back to a highlight again I'm working completely directionally from that back left side Hitting those areas of those edges those places that would gather the most light around them And by doing that we get these natural shifts over the planes of the tank So every time there's an angular change when we're working at this slow and through this many thin layers The tank itself has a lot of wonderful natural variation That makes it look credible. It's consistent across the tank and it feels credible Now by adding in the white we do kill some of the saturation So we still this still needs to be a yellow tank So now here I'm working with this very thin dollar-roundy ink And what I'm effectively doing is I'm not covering the highest highlights But I'm working just slightly into them. So this is over the shadows and not all the way up into the highlights But near them To re-instantiate some of that saturation that rich yellow tone We don't want it to be faded out. We want it to still have punch and read as yellow So hence The the yellow ink it's a great way to just sort of reintroduce that saturation Now I'm not going to tell you every time I varnish, but I varnished here. I varnish a lot I probably varnished about ten times in the process of this and I'm varnishing because we're about to put tape on the thing. So I varnish and let it dry Now when you're working with sort of this sort of to me a tape You always stick it to your hand or something first to get rid of its extreme stickiness That plus the varnish that has now fully cured and dried will make sure that nothing comes off As I always get the question. What is this black goop every time I use it? That is a K interactive camo putty. You can also just use silly putty And that's fine, but now that I've decided what's going to be black I use the tape to block certain elements off and create stripes I use the putty to just cover everything else because you don't want any overspray on that yellow the reality is It's Gonna really cause an issue if you get any any of that Any of that over spray under that yellow because the black will show instantaneously and I follow the same pattern here Punching it up with a little bit of brightness To make sure that those same highlights and intensity that I did with the yellow Is also reflected in the black. So I just follow wherever I would have done with the yellow That's now covered up with the black Working into that working into that gray tone And I actually end up then using a very thin glaze of ink to even wheel that back a little bit more I want to jump in here to say I'm taking you through all of these techniques with the idea Of really taking this tank to competition level But you don't have to do all of this for your vehicles to make them look great on your tabletop Take the stuff from this that you find valuable Frankly, even a lot of the initial work I do around simply shading the color and setting up the lighting Those kinds of little things plus maybe some of the end steps around pigment and simple weathering Can take your tanks to an exceptional level But as this is imperial fists and they're one of the models that often you can get away with some cool battle damage Because they're dug in siege defenders I thought that would be a great chance to really show everything off So find the techniques from this video you like and apply those and discard the rest Because I don't know if you really want to spend the 80 to 90 100 hours Probably more I spent on this tank on your own vehicles for your army, but you can pick and choose Now you get to watch a man slowly go insane As I'll show you about 30 seconds of each of these steps and then I proceed to spend the next six hours Doing that step off camera Edge highlighting it's important and this thing has oh so many edges on all of these little plane changes But on vehicles like this and figures that have these kinds of flat planes And hard angles it does make a huge difference by adding them We create the alternations of light and dark Which make a model look good, but we also increase the readability of the overall figure I actually do this whole process twice edge highlighting everything basically the first time with the 50 50 mix And then going in with just the pale yellow The brighter color on those brighter areas and what I mean by that is if the plane itself is a butting something Bright if one of the two planes Has a bright edge on it then that's where I use the pale yellow So I don't cover every edge But I try to make sure that the edge highlights have a progression and a highlight to them Just as the normal panels do and that where what color we're using is the edge highlight is respecting The planes and the panels and the volumes around it Speaking of light dark alternation We're also needing to now black in basically everything that's going to end up being metal or some other color So I can start to get a real impression of you know, kind of where the figure will end up where the model will end up So this is just using this intense black to cover everything Once that's all in the things that are going to remain black need the same edge highlights And I use the same highlight color that pale yellow as my mix in highlight color for both Uh with also then increasing the amount of pale yellow on the areas that are brighter The reason for that is because I want to create a unified cold lighting scheme The opposite to edge highlighting is of course panel lighting Here I'm using something I wouldn't recommend you can use panel liner or an oil wash. I tried something new With some contrast paint and ink and flow improver. I wasn't super happy with it, but it came out okay It was a little harder. I should have just used an oil An oil wash for the panel lining, but here we are Um, so if this if you were doing this, I would just recommend mixing up an oil wash of a deep sepia and a black And that would cover this just fine. I wouldn't try to replicate what I'm doing here Um little details the pop color for imperial fists is red. So things like these little windows these little viewports Um, they're going to be red and then I just highlight them up to look like glass With actual moving into the bold pyro red So I start with just a mix of black to tone them down and then moving just like a gem toward the lower area Where the light would reflect out of the transparent surface. I then uh go to full transparent red Unfortunately the me doing all those little steps didn't save properly. So I don't have the extra little things. I'm sorry Now comes time for decals. Oh the fun, uh, so we start with micro set Micro set and microsoft are your go-tos. We let the decals, of course soak So they become nice and soft and slide off We lay down a generous amount of micro set as you can see there I want it to be a nice puddle because I want to be able to really scoot the decal around and make sure I've got it Exactly where I want it um The once it's off its little backing I come in with uh an old brush and I just Sop up all of that extra micro set that's around it Now you do need to be careful. You will be scooting the little decal around as you see me doing here That's okay because you want it to be floating and scooty You want it to be a scooty do over here because you want to be making sure it's exactly where you want it And then you let it sit. I let this sit for a couple of uh for about an hour um and then We come in with microsoft and we do two solid applications of microsoft over the whole thing um that microsoft is the part that really softens and flattens the uh decal all the way And so I do two complete applications of microsoft basically applying it letting it dry completely and Fully chemically soften the decal then I go back in The issue is now that'll sometimes leave a little bit of a stain and the decal still shows up. You can see the edge of it Now we come to a varnish step and here I varnish the whole model not just the area That I put the the decals on but the whole model again Because there there are many decals over this thing And so I varnish the whole model because I don't want to create an inconsistent finish. I do that twice Once that's done it's then time to chip and weather these things because I'm going to weather the actual tank and so these need to be done as chipped and weathered as well the nature of Decals is that they look best when they look like they're integrated into The actual vehicle so for example where there was where it's sitting on black I did little black chips to show where this paint quote unquote That's because that's what this in reality in the reality of the tank. This is a painted icon Is has been chipped away and shows the paint color underneath You can't really see it as well because it's yellow on white, but I'm doing the same thing here with the yellow It'll be more evident in the final pictures Randomness is the name of the game And boy is that true with how when we mess up our decals and it's true here Now it's time to create the micro detail and texture of this whole Tank if it's going to be damaged the first place we have to start is micro scratches slashes hashes and dots And boy is this one fun. You want an extremely sharp brush. You want paint that is flowing very well I'm actually using a little flow improver here as well mixed with the paint you saw listed above To make sure it flows off And you want it to be very very very very very very very very small sharp scratches They need to be random. They need to be different sizes people always mess this up They do scratches that are basically the same size all over looks fake immediately You need little tiny short scratches You need really really big scratches and they need to be random and uneven across the whole surface The key with this kind of weathering and battle damage and building these things up Is you want to think about it in the same layers that it happens in reality What I mean by that is as they exist on the figure So we start with the base then we apply the decal Then we weather that out or shade that out then we damage on top of it And then we have those final environmental effects like dust and stuff like that that would be happening on top of everything else By layering in the order that nature happens It makes your paint job more realistic and side benefit It lets you cover up mistakes you make earlier on so that's pretty cool too Now the small pale yellow micro scratches they don't really show up super well They're there but they're only there when you look closely The next step is going to be much more obvious and so we need to be much more careful This is basically edge highlighting number three by the way Because we're going to take rinox hide and we're going to chip the edges first now We're going to chip other things too. We're going to put little scratches and damage With the rinox hide on the body of the tank But we work our way around all of the little edges with a staccato sort of sos pattern And just think like free jazz And i'm going to hit every basically single edge of this thing and chip it out This takes a long time. These are the kind of steps that are optional But it really does again Alternate between the light and the dark and when it sits against the edge highlight It actually makes it pop out and look appropriate This is an optional step, but the white was too white for me Effectively like the deckle just stood out too much So I took a little bit of this tenebrous gray and thinned it down to just an ultra thin glaze a filter And I push it towards the top to create the same shadow pattern on the decals as I have on the side of the tank itself Um, it's a very very minor thing. I would consider it optional It's only because I'm trying to go all the way to competition level that I that I did this It but decals need to have the same environmental effects chipping weathering battle damage Lighting whatever that the whole tank around them has the vehicle around them has otherwise they just seem really fake Okay Now it's time to do some streaks and grime For this I'm actually using the skeleton horde, which is already a very thin very faint contrast paint And I actually thinned it one to one with contrast medium. So it's even thinner And the reason I use contrast paint some contrast medium is because that shrinks It'll still leave some of it staying but it'll shrink It makes for very easy natural weathering because when you put down the initial streak As it dries it shrinks toward the center and it leaves the outer edge a little more faded I do this across the whole surface about four times Alternating exactly where my streaks are every single time to build them up, especially closer to the top My next step is just finally with all this done I varnished it one last time and then we get into the metals Because I'm not going to varnish it anymore now that there is metals on it With things like tracks, I never like to actually turn them completely metal That just doesn't ring true to me. They're they're driving around. They're scratched and dented and Dirty and all this stuff and we'll spend a lot of time on the tracks But I just drybrush lightly some of the same Metal that I've been using on everything else onto the tracks Doesn't if it's consistent or splotchy or anything like that doesn't really matter It just needs to be rough Uh Then I want to turn these sort of copper elements copper I was trying for a fun color. I failed so, you know, don't be like me in this case Um, but this came out. Okay There's also, you know, when we're when we're turning this copper. We got to make sure everything's there The next step is to make sure that the tracks have the appearance of something that's driven around in dirt We're far from done with them But this is our next step We just agrax over the whole thing now the agrax will have basically no effect on the black But we'll really dull and brown the metal With all the rest of the steels I use tenebrous gray to create shadows on the steel Basically darker areas. So again, this is just a glaze of tenebrous gray. Same like I used on the deckle Uh with these back pipes and other areas. I use very thin rinox hide To add a little bit of a rust tone So I do that somewhere on some barrels and on some of the metal joints where water would also collect With those back smokestacks. I didn't want to just leave it with the tinting of rust I looked at heavy construction equipment and the top of that smokestack is usually a very thin metal that rusts really easy I assume because of condensation So I mixed in some heavy pigment into rinox hide to make it chunky This is how you make your own typhus corrosion You just mix you super saturate paint with a raw pigment and then I just dab it around here I want build up. I want a visible pigment Because what then that lets me do here is take these orange colors like this rust And as I dab it along with a mostly dry brush like this isn't dry brushing in the traditional sense But most of the paint's been wiped off the brush. It only catches on the high spots Same then when I go in with the fluorescent orange to really show that fresh rust I can just make sure to hit those edges those raised parts those pigment deposits That I made with the previous steps If you're ever doing nergal work or something like that this tip is essential You can just do so much by actually creating physical texture that you can later dry brush Now here's a fun tip for you with pigment Uh, especially for when you want dirt stuck into things I looked at a lot of real tank treads and the dirt really gets down in the cracks and crevices and gathers around things So you just slap on a bunch of pigment But then you grab a clean brush with just water and you just run it over there You can also put a use water and a drop of ice propyl alcohol and that'll actually help it run into the recesses even more Uh, and so but i'm just sweeping around and then I wipe the brush basically to get rid of the excess pigment Redip it in fresh water Wipe it around and then I just sop up any extra standing liquid that you see me doing there As that dries it will evaporate and gather the dry pigment around rivets and in cracks and crevices The final step here that I have is just applying this pigment to the bottom of the tank as it drives through this dusty Martian environment, which is where I picture it kind of being it's going to of course pick up dust on the bottom And so we want to make sure that it has the dust that's been kicked up as our final step of realism So there's the tank. It's all finished. I've got to say I'm super happy with how this thing came out I don't know if I'll actually take it to a competition. Maybe I will maybe I won't but it was a fun challenge for myself Anyways, and it got me really super charged on painting some more vehicles Of course, there's going to be pictures running over the top here If you've got any questions about any technique or anything I executed in this video feel free to drop those down below I always respond to every question asked If you like this, you know, don't hesitate to give it a like it's really appreciated It helps other people find the channel Subscribe if you haven't already we have new videos here every saturday We also have a patreon focused on taking your next step on your hobby journey So if you're looking for a review feedback at an awesome discord community full of enthusiastic hobbyists You can find that patreon link down below As always, I thank you so much for watching this one and as always We'll see you next time