The Thinnest of Coats

On Glazing

Glazing is a word bandied around in the miniature painting world but it is often used to describe a broad spectrum of similar techniques. So to start this article, there are a variety of techniques that can loosely be described as glazing and they are perfectly valid methods for achieving an effect. I'm going to describe my technique for glazing, and what situations are best for applying this technique.

To start with, I believe glazing is the most effective when you are glazing from highest highlight colour to the darkest shade. It is possible to start as a shade or mid tone, and glaze up, but this is a far more time consuming process, that is not to say that I don't do it. I tend to do this for thing highlights, but this often takes many more layers with significant drying time in between.

These are the colours used for this project, one mistake though I ask you to mentally replace the bottle of gloss varnish on the right with a bottle of Vallejo Glaze medium, thank you.

Stage One: Preparation

For this example I used my old school Commissar model to demonstrate this technique.

To start I applied a combined Chaos Black / Zenithal Corax White undercoat. As usual, I have fully prepared the model and have put down my usual layer of basing material before any undercoat hits the model. For this example I will be painting the greatcoat and hat material only, and I'm aiming for a black-grey colour.

Stage Two: Highlight Basecoat

To start the actual painting for the greatcoat I applied fully even coat of one of my highest highlight colours, in this case the highlight colour is Wolf Grey. Since this is a very light colour it will take two to three coats of colour to get an even layer. Once this coat is down, dry, and even, I now have a base on which I can work on our mid tones and shades. Since this was a base coat I used a basic base coat brush, one that can take a bit of punishment.

Stage Two: Mid Tone Glazes

For this stage I glazed in my first few mid tone layers of Shadow Grey. To start with I mixed the Shadow Grey with Glaze Medium at about a one to one ratio, with some water mixed in to reduce the thickness further. This resulted in a very thin liquid with virtually no viscosity, which is what I needed to achieve a consistency which works as a glaze. To apply this I switched to my Windsor and Newton Series 7 brushes, in this case a size two watercolour brush. To apply the paint I layered each section of the greatcoat with this mix with a downward stroke so that the majority of the colour tends to build up towards the bottom. The glaze medium also helped this colour run into the deepest recesses to further define our shadows. This stage is the most time consuming and can take upward of ten layers with significant drying time in between.

Stage Three: Shade Tone Glazes

This stage involves shading down the model even further. While I originally intended to make the Shadow Grey the majority colour of the model, I ended up leaning further into black. For this stage I used Black mixed with Glaze Medium and water at similar ratios to the previous step. I also used the same technique, painting from top down and also putting more colour into the shadow areas, such as under the arms and under the hat, and in the collar.

Stage Four: First Layer Highlights

This stage involves applying our first highlight layer. To start with I went back to our original underpaint layer of Wolf Grey and mixed it with Glaze Medium and water. To apply this I used only the tip of my brush and painted using upward strokes, ending the stroke on the most prominent points so that the colour would accumulate where the highest highlights should go. I repeated this process until I felt I had emphasized the highlights enough.

Stage Five: Second Layer Highlights

This was the final stage of the highlighting process. In this case I did not include any glaze medium in the mix and went with pure colour, in this case Ghost Grey, and thinned it with water. I was very selective as to where I applied this highlight, putting it on the highest points and sharpest peaks of the model to further emphasize the highlights.

Conclusion

Overall I find this technique very useful for blacks and grays, as it really provides a subtle transition of colour that you would normally have a hard time achieving if you start off from a black base coat, as the only way you can go from there is to highlight up. If you are not in a hurry this works well for characters and heroes as each layer by itself is relatively insignificant, but at each stage you can wait for it to dry, evaluate it, then decide if you've applied enough colour or not. This technique can also be used for tinting a variety of colours, as a matter of fact I've already covered this topic here and here. All of these techniques involve starting at your highest highlight and shading down. Most wargaming level painting teaches you to start at your mid or base layer and work your way up. To be fair going the other direction often isn't intuitive, but once learned can really help you use methods and techniques to to help speed up your painting without sacrificing quality. As a matter of fact, the new Contrast paints appear to be formulated to make use this shaded basecoat method that was first pioneered by James Wappel, citation needed of course. Traditionally painters use artist inks to achieve this washing in of colour, where Games Workshop appears to have made a product to take the hassle out of doing this step. With this in mind I'll probably pick up a selection of Contrast paints and the associated spray and do a review of them, either in video or text format depending on what I feel like and if my camera setup can hack it. Anyway, I hope this helps and best of luck applying it.