One of the most common questions i have been asked about Waagh Buzzsaw is how did i paint the yellow. There is a perception that yellow is a hard colour to paint, well thats not true :). it is not one of the easiest clours to paint, but thats just because it is a light colour and if you muck something up its hard to go back over. but as a colour its as easy as any other.

So where do you start?

1 Make sure the piece to be painted yellow is undercoated white. the more coverage the white has the better the yellow will go over it.

2. Mix up your pallett. I use Bubonic Brown mixed with Hobgoblin Orange. I use a brown as a base becuase when highlighting you want to start with a darker colour. With a lot of colours you can mix it with a bit of black, but with yellow that would just look dirty, and you dont; want to go to dark. So i use the brown as it is dark, but still has a yellow feel to it. I mixed in the orange so that rather than going from straight brown to yellow which could look dirty, going from orange is cleaner but still gives a dark to light feel.

When you mix the brown and orange you want to go for an orangey brown colour, less brown than orange. kind of jaffa. This is the first pallet i mixed up:

Unfortunately my camera has washed out the colours a bit, but you get the idea. There is no exact science to it, so mix up something until you get a colour that works for you.

Instead of Bubonic brown you could use Vallejo Yellow Ochre, or any other brown. the Bubonic or Ochre has a yellowy feel to it so be careful you don;t pick a red brown instead.

For the Orange, once again any orange will do, i used hobgoblin becuase it was the first one i found and i have had it for 12 years and have never used it :)

Stage 3:

Base coat the areas of the model, this may take two coats as the yellow is quite thin.

Stage 4:

Add some Vallejo Flat yellow to the mix, the more yellow you add the brighter the colour so the more obvious the steps and the less you will need. the less yellow you use, the more steps you will need to finish but the smoother the transitions.

With the new colour paint around the edges of the yellow pieces, leaving some of the darker colour in either the shadow part or the middle of the flat piece, so that the highlights are moving towards the edges.

Bad photo, but you can see the darker part in the middle of the jaw, its less obvious on the shoulder pads but you get the drift.

Stage 5:

Add more yellow ,and add another line of yellow around the last one, closer to the edge. on some peices there may not be much room for lots of highlights, so you may feel that you are not making any changes. i still paint all of those levels becuase i feel that even if the eye cannot directly see the highlight you still get the impression. At the moment the model is in the "Arse Stage", This is the stage where what you are painting looks crap and you cannot see it ever looking good.

You can see a bit more contrast across the pieces and a start of an edge.

Step 6:

More yellow added, Actual definition starting to come through. With the arrows i have dark at the bottom and and move lighter towards teh point.

With the pad that has arrows, i am highlighting away from them, because when i paint the arrows they will be darker, so i want the dark to light transition to fit with them as well.

Stage 7

:

A bit more yellow and we are nearly out of the arse stage. the edges are starting to get a sharp contrast to them, you can see the points of the arrows starting to look right as well.

The light colour is starting to move away quite well from teh arrows. The marine helmet is highlighted like eveyrthing else, with the lighter colous on the high points.

Stage 8:

This highlight i have switched straight to pure yellow as we are nearly done. we now do a line on the edge, to sharpen the highlight. its important not to jump to this if your other levels are not close to this otherwise it might look a bit jumpy. You could finish right now if you want to, but :)

Stage 9:

I add a bit of white to the yellow, so our final pallet looks like this:

Its quite lemony, but you are not using much at all so it does not look to bad.

The final highlight, rather than going around the hole edge, this is just on the sharp points of the edge to give a 'ping' where the light might hit the edges. so on the shoulder pads i have 'pinged' the corners and the the high point of the curve of the pad, you can barely see it, which is good but it helps the whole effect. The arrow points just have the final ping on the very tips of the point. the skull has it at the bits that stick out all around it, so the points of the teeth, and the corners of the outline.

Unfortunately this did not turn out, but you should be able to see the final ping.

So how do you do this as well?

Practice and lots of it. If you want to take a short cut, then as long as the first base coat and final edge ping are the right colours and look good then the middle colours matter less as your eye will (from across the table maybe not from close up) will add the gradients for you. You can add as many or as few levels as you want, but i think that at least 3-4 should be the minimum, but its up to you and the size of the piece you are doing, the bigger the piece the the more levels i think you will need.

So there you go, how i paint the yellow for Waagh Buzzsaw, any questions email me