How To: The Raven Guard Chaplain - Part 2

For the Emperor!

Welcome back to the second part of the How-to article. I finished Part 1 with shading the miniature. This time I will try to tackle all the highlighting steps. Recently I've stuck with a 3-step highlight on my miniatures, unless it's a HQ choice or a miniature for a competition. The latter is the rare case nowadays, though. It's hard to find the time to attend Golden Demon and prepare a miniature appropriate for the required level of painting. Thus I stick to a high level of tabletop quality.

Highlighting Step 1:

Generally, keep in mind that I use a sort of edge highlighting for black power armour, the same technique was used on all other parts though, with the exception of the tabard and the shoulder guards.

• black armour: Games Workshop (GW) Chaos Black + Adeptus Battlegrey in a 30/70 ratio; You get a grey which is a tad lighter than your base coat and can apply it to all the upper edges on the armour pieces. The edge highlights don't need to be thin right now, it's okay if this is blocky.
• tabard and bone faceplate: a mix of P3 Hammerfall Khaki, P3 Ironhull Grey and P3 Jack Bone in a 60/20/20 ratio; Thin it down a bit more than your average edge highlight, so you can push the colour toward the lighter parts of the tabard.apply it to the edges and all the parts exposed to a zenithal lighting. The faceplate demands for less watered down colour, apply this to all the ridges and upper edges on the mask.
• seals: Skorne Red with P3 Khador Red Base in a 20/80 mix
• grey and white areas/shoulder guards and crozius heft: Use the basecoat mix from Part 1 and add P3 Frostbite so you get a medium grey-blue. Thin it down a bit and then push it up the curve of the cauldrons, leave the darker tone only in recesses. Also drybrush a part of this colour (not thinned down of course) over the heft of the crozius' upper heft.
• metals: GW Boltgun Metal mixed with GW Chain Mail in a 80/20 mix
• Rosarius: GW Dwarfen Bronze 

Highlighting Step 2:

Step 1 will only make a minor difference compared to the shaded version. Therefore there's no picture of it. Step 2 is where you will come to see how the mini starts to look...hm...cleaner.

• black armour: GW Adeptus Battlegrey with a bit of P3 Ironhull Grey mixed in, about 70/30; Now apply this in only along the upper edges of ther armour sections and on lower edges which jut out from the mini in a sharp angle.
• tabard and bone faceplate: a mix of P3 Hammerfall Khaki and P3 Menoth White Highlight; Use the mix on the edges of the tabard and on the lower edges of the rips in it. On the faceplate, touch up the cheeks, the brows and the ridge of the nose, as well as the lower jaw line.
• seals:  P3 Khador Red Base with P3 Ember Orange in a 40/60 mix on the upper outside curve of the seal and the lower inside curve
• grey and white areas/shoulder guards and crozius heft: Mix even more Frostbite and Menoth White Highlight into the previous colour and push it with your brush toward the uppermost curve of the shoulder guard. Drybrush the uppermost section of the heft with this mix.
• metals: GW Boltgun Metal mixed with GW Chain Mail in a 20/80 mix
• Rosarius: GW Dwarfen Bronze mixed with GW Shining Gold, 40/60 ratio on all the edges

We are getting closer to a cool looking chaplain

Highlighting Step 3:

Almost done. Step 3 is the fastest step, because there's no edge highlighting along all the edges. Some areas like the boots, f'rex are completely left out. Only the uppermost and/or extreme edges get this treatment.

• black armour: P3 Ironhull Grey mixed with P3 Hammerfall Khaki and P3 Menoth White Highlight, a 40/30/30 mix ratio - be careful and use this extreme highlight only sparingly, as mentioned right above.
• tabard and bone faceplate: a mix of P3 Hammerfall Khaki and P3 Menoth White Highlight, this time with a lot more of the latter; again, only use this on the upper parts, the extremes of the curves and only on edges. On the faceplate, touch up the cheeks, the brows and the ridge of the nose, as well as the teeth - and with touch up I mean just dots, this time, nothing more!
• seals:  no further highlighting needed
• grey and white areas/shoulder guards and crozius heft: Add some P3 Morrow White to the previous mix and apply it to hughes point of the shoulder, where the actual joint curve is
• metals: GW Chain Mail with GW Mithril Silver in a 80/20 ratio, just minor dots to the highest parts of the metals
• Rosarius: GW Shining Gold for the uppermost edges

One colour to bind them all:

Remember your basecoat colours? You will need to mix them again or something close to the original colour and thin it down like for a wash. Only do this for the colour of the armour, the tabard and in a very thinned down version for the blueish-grey on the shoulder guard. These will act as glazes now, tint your almost finished mini and pull all the different highlights together. Apply the glazes very very carefully to the corresponding sections and only one coat. This will dim your highlights a bit but also lessen the contrast between the individual highlighting steps. 

The final touches:

Congrats, you are done with all the highlights. Now there's only a few more things to do. Apply your chapter badge of choice to the shoulder pad, in this case the raven. I hand-painted it because I suck at decals, but that's just me. Use a 30/70 mix of GW Chaos Black and P3 Umbral Umber, take your finest brush and add some scribbly lines to all the purity seals and the tabard. I prefer a 0 size brush or similar (Fine Detail Brush, if you use a GW one) and be careful, it's easy to mess up the paintjob with this.

If you are any good with decals, better use them! Way easier! 

And now for the special FX - the glow: It's really easy, to be honest. Paint the eyes and the  inside of the jump pack a pure white. Then take the preferred colour you want the area to glow and thin it down - a lot. Take a white sheet of paper and test your thinned down colour. Once it barely leaves any colour on the sheet, you got the right mix. Then continuously apply it like a wash over those white areas. Let the previous coat dry, and apply it again, always moving away from the centre of the part you paint. Push it to the outer edges of the area, so the middle section remains brighter. Also apply this colour to the surrounding edges like armour or skull-plate. These parts will slowly tint in the desired colour. Now mix some P3 Menoth White highlight (or any other off-white) with the original colour and only use some slight edge highlighting on the edges closes to your fictional light source. And that's all you need to do.

It glows!

Once the base is done, your chaplain is ready for his Litanies of Hate!

Burn! Maim! You know the drill!

Comments? Questions? Critique? That's what the comment section is for! See you there.

Cheers,

Kenza