Painting dark red – a tutorial

So this is my first painting tutorial. I’m doing it because a couple of guys asked me how I did the red on my PoM army. It is pretty simple, but everything is easier to understand with pictures.

I had a new reckoner standing ready for paint so the guide is based on me painting the top plate of it. I would usually do all the plates together, but it was a lot faster to just do it on one plate for this guide.

What do you need?

I’m using GW paint, and the reason for that is it is the easiest brand to get in Copenhagen. You need Khorne Red(Base), Wazdakka Red(Layer), Evil suns Scarlet(Layer), Bloodletter(Glaze) and Agrax Earthshade(Shade).

Step 1

I’m going for a dark red so I’m priming with black. After that I simply lay down some base color with Khorne Red. You all ready know to thin down your paints with water or some medium so won’t get into that.

If you want a brighter red, I would go for a white primer and lay a much brighter base color like evil suns scarlet.

Step 2

I want some shadows at the borders and a slightly darker red, so I lay down a shade of Agrax Earthshade. It doesn’t do much on the big plates but on smaller plates and around bolts it gives a nice dark shadow.

Step 3

And now the feathering begins. I’m not a painting genius, so I’m doing a lot of thin paint strokes going out to look like thin triangles. The triangles are overlapping and it just gives the look of a blurry edge to the color underneath. After the shade I do a couple of layers with khorne red once more, which gives a nice blend to the shaded base color.

You want you paint to be a little thinner than usually and use more than one pencil stoke and move each pencil stoke a little further up making each layer cover a little more.

Step 4

And now we go for Wazdakka Red and more feathering.

Step 5

And some final layers of Evil suns Scarlet

Step 6

The final step is a couple of glazes with Bloodletter simply to tie the colors a little better together. It isn’t necessary on all the plates, but a good idea on the bigger plates.

On big plates it can also be an idea to do some more layers between each color mixing the colors a together.

I hope some of you find this guide useful, I will be back later with some pictures of the latest stuff I painted and I will post pictures of the reckoner when I'm done painting it.

/Johan B.