Hey guys, in my army blog some guys requested a tutorial, and now that I have some spare time I'd thought I'd post the steps of painting a firewarrior. So here we go!

Step 1: Use chaos black spraycoat to give the mini a black basecoat.

Step 2: Use watered down codex grey on the main armour areas of the firewarrior, but remembering to keep the hoove boots black, as well as the gun (not pictured), in addition to the lower panel of the shoulder pad. It took me 1 coat to get a smooth layer (my codex grey seems to have some strong pigment), next, use a few watered down layers of bleached bone on the middle of the shoulder pad until a flat smooth color is achieved. I also painted the gun arm grey, but left the gun chaos black (this is being painted seperately so I can paint the chest armor successfully.


Step 3: Go back over the black areas with watered down chaos black paint. The gun is attached with blu tack at the moment. The gun remains black at this stage.
The circle in the chest and the small shoulder pad are black aswell. The indent in the helmet near the lenses is given a wash of chaos black. The pants and non armoured bits are given a wash of chaos black aswell.



Step 4: Now starts the shading on the grey parts. On all my models the light source is on their right side and up, so the shadows are on the lower panels on the left side. Slowly start to use either watered down layers of dark grey, or use wetblending between dark grey, black and codex grey (the way i do it) If you get a few streaks thats fine, because you can convert them into deflection damage and streaks.



Step 5: Now it is time to shade the bleached bone shield. I shaded it in the same orientation as the grey, but with a shade color of watered down layers of snakebite leather. I also mixed in between shades between bleached bone and snakebite leather to get a nice transition.




Step 6: Now we highlight all the edges of the black areas with codex grey. To get nice even highlights, go back over and tidy up with some more chaos black. In step 5 and this step, the grey is highlighted with a 50-50 mix of skull white and codex grey.


Step 7: Now we do the markings and damages. The markings go where shown, and are done with 2 layers of watered down skull white. Next comes the battle damage/weathering. I decided not to add rust on this firewarrior however. Use a very thin tipped brush to add "chips" of chaos black around the edges and areas where the paint would usually scrape off. The grey underneath each chip is given a thin line of watered down white to make it look like it is being naturally highlighted.



Step 8: Now mithril silver was added into some of the black chips selectively to make it seem like the metal underneath is exposed.



Step 9: "GLOWY BITS", I skipped ahead all the little details of painting these. Basically it is a base of regal blue, with successive layers of ice blue then skull white added towards the center or as shown (shield)



Step 10: Now we add the glow to the gun barrel. This is achieved with a couple watered down coats of regal blue, then successive layers of ice blue towards the lense of the gun sight.


Step 11: The base is done with varying ratios of snakebite leather and chaos black. Then watered down layers of snakebite leather are added to give a dirty appearance. Then gloss varnish is added and while it dries some static grass and green flock is sprinkled on. The stone is codex grey washed with chaos black.


Finished product:






I hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial, and find it useful. Thanks and Enjoy. C&C if you want.

Excellent! I've been waiting for this! Thank you for putting this up; I'll eagerly await the update.

Question though, have you tried any of the Foundation paints? I have used them and I love how well it covers. Not sure if you use any further along the process, but thought I would ask. Thanks!

I have not tried the foundation paints, Im used to watering down my paints anyway and doing many layers, it is good for blending. I think the foundation paints would make blending hard (which is used a lot in shading/highlighting my models.

The first page was updated, with the full tutorial. Please be sure to read it and leave comments! thanks.

Thank you so much! Now I can get started painting my army!

The way you explained the steps are very clear and I thank you. But Step 5 confuses me a bit. You are basically saying that you create darker shades on left side of the model?

I have always have trouble with highlighting and blending, so this should all be a trip!

Basically, all my models have realistic highlights and not edge highlights. So on all my models, the light source is on their right side (where the sun is for example) so everything on their left side and panels facing down instead of up are darker and shaded. Then the edges of the right side towards the sky are highlighted. Hopefully that makes more sense. I look forward to seeing your models.

Hmm, that actually makes a lot of sense to me. I think I like that better then traditional highlighting. I will attempt to do some painting tonight and a bit this weekend, so I'll do my best to put up some images and you can critque them. Thanks again and I look forward to learning!

Hope this isn't too much to ask, but any chance of getting a Kroot tutorial?

Ya know, your armies pictures sit in my inspiration folder and I am examining them closely. Thank you for taking the time to do all this!

Quick question, are you using water effects for your bases, and if so what brand and do you have any advice for matching your results? I have a jungle/swamp themed SM army going on the side and would like to do something quite similar to what you have achieved.

If you look at Step 11, you'll see that he just paints the base and then gives it a gloss varnish. I really great idea actually.

Now that I think of it, I wanted to use Merchite (sp?) Red instead of Bleached Bone for the shoulder pad. I know you said that you have not used Foundation Paints, but I was wondering if you could give me some tips on how to do the red properly.

hmm, I don't use reds too often but when I do i use red gore, scab red and blazing orange. You could use merchrite red as the base color, then mix in some black for the shading, then to do a highlight you could mix in some blazing orange to mechrite red. That should work.

Wisdom: As Wolfs16 has pointed out, the bases have been glazed with gloss varnish. On some bases i might go back over with snakebite leather (very watered down) or mix some into the varnish to give a dirty water look. Hope that answers your question. Also, to be clear, I use the Games Workshop 'Ard coat gloss varnish that you can buy in a paint pot.

Wow, look how attentive I am! Thanks, I'm going to give this a shot tonight with the vallejo gloss varnish.

Great tutorial Mont'yr! I'm a confirmed fan of your thread in Gallery, and nice to see a write up on how you go about doing highlights etc. Your blues are something else!

Full marks for effort, clarity and general great all-roundedness. Thank you, Cire Mont'yr

E.

PS. No fair! You paint too well

Soon after posting this i redid the lenses on the helmet, so that they become whiter in the middle, not near the bottom.