More paiting big stuff

The first thing you need to know about painting big things is that you have five stages of highlighting, so beyond anything else you do, you are already going to be highlighting five stages. Maybe you want to do more. Fine. But five's pretty good.

Those stages are: Base coat. Oh I know what you're saying, the base coat isn't a highlight, it's the base. Very good, but not really. The priming is the real base. Don't screw around and make this harder than it has to be. Spray paint it black. Use Krylon, or whatever, if there's no styrofoam involved. Use Design Masters or H20 if there is styrofoam (neither of these paint lines will melt styrofoam, except for Design Masters Black) Then you paint over that. Probably in really dark grey.

stage 2: Overbrush- Overbrush is what happens when you make sure the brush isn't dripping but you don't care whether the whole area gets painted. Yes, you're still slathering on the paint, but you couldn't care whether it gets in all the cracks.

stage 3- Overbrush with crappy brush- Either a foam brush or a stenciling brush. You're looking for a crappy brush that will barely hold paint. Obviously if it holds less paint than your good brush, it will spred less paint too. You can buy a bag of stenciling brushes at Michaels for about $2 for a bag of $20. By the way, when I say good brush, I mean a pack of brushes 4/$2 you buy from hardware stores. You're wasting your money buying anything better than that.

Stage 4- Drybrush with good brush- Do the drybrushing thing, just like you normally would. It's a little harder with a big brush, but don't worry about it, you just need less paint than before.

Stage 5- Drybrush with a crappy brush- It's really here when you'll figure out the ingenious nature of the crappy brush. I swear all of those effects you've been trying to do for years, the crappy brush does them naturally. You'll say, "wow, it only deposits paint on top edges!" Yes, that's because it's a crappy brush. Remember Monstro's motto: you don't need talent when you have the right tools.

Now as for how to paint. You should prefer downward strokes from the top of the scene to the bottom rather than attempting to paint in all directions all over the model. Remember light FALLs. And therefore, the top should be lighter than the bottom. Also, you're going to want to lighten large flat spaces. Steps 1-3 are technically still your shadow stages. Large flat areas really don't have shadow on them.

Mostly, take no time. Honestly, the quicker you go painting large things, the better. You can overdo this, and for most 40k painters, that's the real temptation. I can paint a road in about thirty minutes, most of which is spent shuffling pieces.

Good, now all you have left is the metalic bits. Test out all your silvers to find out which is lightest and which is darkest. Paint the thing the darkest. Good, now you'll want a reddish copper. That's rust. wash the thing in rust, running a wet brush down the flat parts of the silver thing to keep them clean. Great now take your really bright silver (or if you have a silver pen this will work even better) and put a straight line through the middle of all the flat pieces. Whallah. You're done.