Painting Tutorial: marble effects

[hairyyahoo]

Ok guys, just to prove I haven’t been idle in my self imposed exile, here’s a little tutorial I knocked up on painting marble. This isn’t a comprehensive guide by any means so if anyone else wants to add to this thread with stage-by-stage pics of their own please feel free. By the way I’ll be using citadel colour paints for this so if you use a different brand you’re outa lucky buddy

Ok, to begin with I’ll take a look at the marble effects in this picture,



Some searches of the net provided these pics for further reference.





(ok so the red one isn’t quite right but it’s close enough dammit!)


List of colours

Red marble
Chaos black
Crimson gore
Blood red
Blazing orange
Skull white

Pale marble
Skull white
Bleached bone
Snakebite leather
Crimson gore
Chaos black

[hairyyahoo]

PALE MARBLE

Start with a nice even white undercoat, I suggest you use a spray as it will avoid any brush strokes showing up. On top of this apply a couple of thin coats of bleached bone. Now thin down some snakebite leather and paint on some jagged, uneven wide lines for the cracks. Try to keep these going mostly in the same direction for now, although having a few of them joined by a line in the other direction is a good idea, we’ll get a bit crazier a little later try to get the edges of the snakebite lines to blend into the base colour a bit. Using nice thin paint helps with this.



Fill the centre of these lines with a line of crimson gore (not too much precision needed here),



then add a bit of black to the areas you want to appear as deep cracks (less is more!)



Now we vary the colours between the cracks a bit. Take some thinned bleached bone/skull and paint it onto some of the bleached bone areas, again trying to blend the edges into the base.



Then do the same with pure skull white. Filling in the area between some of the cracks with pure white creates a nifty look.



If you’re feeling particularly squirrelly you could add a few darker patches using the process above with a bleached bone/graveyard earth mix, but it looks fine without.

[hairyyahoo]

RED MARBLE

Start with an even black undercoat, again, spray is recommended if possible.

I’m gonna outline a technique called stippling before I launch into the pics. When stippling you use the point of the brush like you’re stabbing the area you want the paint to go. As you can imagine, this is a perfect way to ruin a good brush, which is why we don’t use the good brushes. I use a cut down brush, basically an old brush that has been worn out and I cut about 70% of the bristles off. Looks like this,



Right, once the undercoat is dry dab on some crimson gore in a couple of thick lines, preferably at a diagonal.



Use the same technique to highlight with blood red followed by blazing orange.



Next up, take some thinned skull white and paint on the veins. Follow the same angles as the red areas but branch off a bit in a few places to keep it interesting



Now lightly dry brush around these lines to create a mist like effect



Lastly, with thinned skull white, add some very thin “hairline fractures” (only way I can think to describe them) coming off from the main white veins



There you go, hope y’all found this helpful. That’s not all I have though, watch this space for future marble tutorials!

[Ides]

for red marble, it seems better to use red gore as the base and stiple black and blood red onto that, using shadow grey for the lines, highlighting with codex grey at the edges to keep it softer...

[hairyyahoo]

well, don't just tells us, grab a brush and show us!

[Ides]

I only have it done on a bolter at the moment but I'll see what I can do, also, the red wouldn't need as extreme a highlight. If you've ever seen red marble, reflections of light would be that colour, the red and black would not change...

[SteveBerenyi]

+ rep hairy, and the red marble you have there would be a great scheme for a night lords or some such chapter.

perhaps you would want less white and more red....
Meh..

Thanks though.

[iNsOmNiAc'S dReAm]

Great tut man. I've always had problems painting marble, so this should come in handy. I feel inspired to do some painting,not but, it will have to wait till this weekend... le sigh...

[Rellik]

sweet! great tutorial