I have recently begun putting together a Blood Bowl team. Citadel offers several types of paints. Base paints are what you’re apparently supposed to paint your miniatures in, with layer paints and the others there only to add highlights and such.
The problem is, all three of the major colors I want to use are layer paints. As an example, I want my players’ jerseys to be bright yellow, but the only base yellow I can find is a dull yellow. I’ve painted a few players with the bright yellow layer paint, but it looks a bit odd, with the black primer still showing through several layers of yellow layer paint.
I played Warhammer 40k for way to many years. I even placed in a Golden Demon tournament (I play Redneck Eldar) You would need to play 40k and see my army to understand why I call it Redneck Eldar. Maybe I will get bored someday and dig them out.
I used a black primer base and then used 40k specific paints from Games Workshop. You can pick them up at almost any GW hobby shop. I used flat paints to get better details.
Ok! I’m not a painter, but I was in the art business 35 years. So I’m just going to throw this out there.
Have you considered using/layering with a fluorescent mixture as a brightner?
I have never heard of fluorescent paint… These are my first minis ever. I think they look good for being my first, but it’s just not working as well as I had hoped.
Are you not a child of the sixties?
LSD ( Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ), Quaaludes Black light posters Not that I did any of that. Heard about it from friends, I didn’t inhale either!
Ok, when I said I wasn’t a painter, well back in the day, car, motorcycle and plane models were my thing, I did plenty of painting with Testors! Photos of them would fool the eye, in a time when “photoshopped” wasn’t a word!
From what I see they are quite awesome. If you’re looking to possibly brighten that yellow, you may need to primer with white, so as not to dull the yellow!
I was thinking that. My cousin helped me get started, and he only had black, so I used it without thinking, but if the white shows through like the black does, I was thinking my Skinks would look like they have leprosy. Right now, I think they look vaguely zombieish.
Another good way to highlight yellows ( warm colors red, orange, yellow, gold ) is to use opposing/dark contrasting colors.
Yellow next to black will pop, yellow next to green is soft.
Another technique to brightening yellow is to mix with white or ( may sound crazy, but light green! ) should increase the vibrancy of your yellow.
Got me to remembering my Collectible Gaming days. I had an absolutely massive Warhammer 40k collection over 250,000 points of Eldar. That’s about 5,000-models+ In the early days of Magic the Gathering, the pro tour for professional players was crazy money. Wizards of the Coast (the creators aka WOTC) dropped another Collectible Card game called Battletech the Trading Card Game). Once WOTC published the game, they started a pro tour. I was the #1 ELO rated player in the world (ELO is ranking system used for Ranking Chess Grandmasters and other ranking systems). I have so much collectible game merch.
Here are a few samples of my 40k figures, some are tournament legal paintings and others are what I call my “Redneck Eldar”.
The reason I had so much 40k swag was WOTC would give stores swag pre tourney and a cash purse after the results were in. So the stores, a lot of times were cash strapped and mostly out of town so to pay out they would offer store credit plus cash in hand. I didn’t really need the money, I owned my own security company at the time. So I would offer my store credit for the swag WOTC sent, in trades and use my left over store credit to build this massive 40k army.
Good times. I’ve made a living a few times as a gamer through sponsors or tournament winnings. I don’t have the fine motor control to do it anymore but it was fun while it lasted
Edit: These models are 30ish years old and painted in flat colors as I wanted them to look like they had been used in actual battle.
Reminds me of my cousin’s Orks. His latest Ork machine gunner looks like it came printed in color, not painted. Yours appear that good in the pictures.
Have you considered spraying them with a clear glaze? When Nancy is done with a painting, she sprays it with a KRYLON clear glaze, and it makes it really pop.
I use it on rocks, wood and metal, painted or unpainted. It is triple-thick so you would have to spray carefully. This is what we use.
I was told to varnish my pieces to keep the paint from flaking off. I don’t have any yet, but this looks like it’s at least something similar. What does it do besides protect the paint?
It protects from UV rays for outdoor stuff, and really makes the sprayed surface stand out and really brightens the colors, wood, metal, plastic or rock, or really any surface you want to protect.
So, more teams have arrived, and I have human and elvish skin to paint. The “flesh” tones are all too dark, so I know I’m going to have to mix my paints. Is it going to be better to mix the “flesh” tones with white to make them lighter, or with yellow/reddish paints?
Tried a little dry brushing of blue on his legs and under his throat… any ideas for how to make the scales on his back look better? I tried dry brushing white to simulate a shine, but it just made them turn pink.
Have you tried using a matte paint in your base coating? . My advice would be to use an anti-shine matte as your base and then use a clear gloss varnish to enhance the shine where you want the details to be glossy.
Hope that helps. There are some great YouTube videos for advice. If you decide to try a channel, see if they have won any “Golden Demon” awards. The reason I recommend that is, that will mean they have experience painting Games Workshop figures. That’s who created Blood Bowl.
One thing I will say that is different, is my figures are 30+ years old and they are metal, which makes a difference from the plastic figurines you are painting.
Grr. I ordered what I thought was a white primer, but turns out to be white spray paint from Citadel. I found out it wasn’t primer AFTER I sprayed my miniatures.
You would need to play 40k and see my army to understand why I call it Redneck Eldar. Maybe I will get bored someday and dig them out.
Black light posters 
