The most common question I get about my Space Wolves is something like “How did you paint that effect?”
Today, we will answer that question!
To follow along with this tutorial, you will need the following paints:
Kimera Pthalo Blue (Red Shade)
ProAcryl Blue
ProAcryl Turquoise
ProAcryl Bright Yellow Green
Any White (I used Vallejo, but I’d probably recommend against it)
Kimera Magenta
I’m using a layering and wet blending technique to get the gradients smooth, but the nice thing about this process is you don’t actually need to get things that smooth as the Aurora isn’t a perfectly smooth gradient either.
Starting with a black primer layer, the first several steps have been done in this picture already.
Basecoat: Kimera Pthalo Blue (Red Shade)
This is a weird paint to work with, and I would recommend not thinning it overly much. If you thin it too far, it turns chalky and strange when it dries. HOWEVER, if you thin it a ton and turn it into a glaze, it dries fine.
I adore this paint as a color even with its finicky nature because it gives gorgeous depths to your colors.
Highlight Blues: ProAcryl Blue and ProAcryl Turquoise
I make three different mixes here, plus the base paints.
Pure Kimera Blue
1:1 Kimera Blue with ProAcryl Blue
ProAcryl Blue
2:1 ProAcryl Blue to ProAcryl Turquoise
1:2 Blue to Turquoise
ProAcryl Turquoise
I’m not going to talk about the blending and layering process in depth here, there are dozens of great YouTube videos going over this process, but the short version is that you want to cover ever smaller areas of the area as you move up the lightness scale. If you look at the left shoulder pad, you can actually see the little delineations between some of the layers.
To get the chainsword “aurora” effect, simply start by making some clumped lines with the first mix over the basecoat that have several peaks, and gradually layer more lines over them with the next lighter color in a smaller area.
Highlight Greens: ProAcryl Bright Yellow Green and White
The next few steps all involve the Green and Whites. We will make mixes in these ratios to use on the next parts:
1:1 Bright Yellow Green and Turquoise
ProAcryl Bright Yellow Green
2:1 Bright Yellow Green to White
Now, the interesting thing about this step is that from here on it blending is fairly optional, and in fact I’ve been finding that I prefer the way this looks without blending if you are very careful with the shapes you paint as you apply. This next picture is a finished assault intercessor – the greens are clearly not blended, but because the shapes are carefully formed it makes them pop harder.
Importantly, this layer (below) sets the foundation for this effect to work. This is the 1:1 Turquoise to Bright Yellow Green.
You can also see that the aurora on the blade has had this blocked in, but once again, in a smaller area than before.
Next, we take the pure Bright Yellow Green and paint that inside the previous color, continuing to be very careful with the shape.
Finally, we add the white mixture – mostly green, just a bit of white – and make the smallest areas brighter.
This is a perfectly valid place to stop if you plan to incorporate the magenta somewhere else (see the Assault Intercessor above, I decided to just use the magenta on the shoulder pad as I was on a massive time crunch), but for the full effect, there are a few more steps.
Bounce Highlight: Magenta and White
This next step is the most difficult part of this from a “making it look right” perspective. What we want to do here is make small, relatively transparent marks and shapes in the darkest areas of the blue, while still leaving some of that area untouched.
We will be using the following mixes:
Kimera Magenta
2:1 Magenta to White
1:1 Magenta to White
Magenta Glaze
The best example of this is the left side knee pad, where the magenta has been applied. You can see where the “pink” area is in a sort of kidney shape with a dark area between it and the layering already done to bring up to the green highlight.
Also note how the magenta has not been placed in all of the dark areas on the aurora portion of the blade – this is important, otherwise it begins to look extremely manufactured and that is the opposite of the desired effect.
The next few steps require no blending. Starting with the 2:1 Magenta to White mix, paint even smaller areas of pink within the darkest layer.
And then make an even smaller mark within that area with the 1:1 mix.
To finish this off, we use a Magenta Glaze. To make a glaze, water the Magenta paint down until you can wick the paint off the brush with some paper towel and paint controlled completely translucent lines on your fingernail that do not run down the nail.
Starting the brush stroke in the brightest part of the pink area, apply this very transparent paint in an outwards direction to all the pink parts. This will drag the majority of the pigment away from the highlight, leaving it brighter than the area around it while still saturating the edges.
You may want to do this multiple times to achieve the desired intensity, and if you ever go too far and the highlight disappears just repeat the last few steps and go again.
Here are some shots of models with everything else finished in context!
Color Pairings
This is a really, really bright color swatch. If the entire model looks like this, it will almost certainly going to look terrible.
I recommend pairing this with a neutral, cool color such as a grey (my personal favorite), dark, desaturated blue or purple or green, or even brown or black.
I also like pairing it with very poppy, shiny metallic paints that aren’t too red shifted.
My personal favorite metals for this scheme right now are:
Golds:
ScaleColor Victorian Brass (base)
ScaleColor Dwarven Gold (highlight 1)
Vallejo Metal Color Gold (highlight 2)
Citadel Contrast Guilliman Flesh (Shade 1)
Citadel Contrast Cygor Brown (Shade 2)
Silvers:
Vallejo Metal Color Iron (base)
Vallejo Metal Color Chrome (Edge Highlight)
Citadel Contrast Cygor Brown (diluted) (Shade)
I would personally avoid Copper colors or rusty or overly weathered metal colors, but it’s possible that in some contexts it’s correct. Adding the shiny metals really helps the model pop, consider the before and after shots here.
These are different models from different units, but I didn’t take good pictures of this because I wasn’t planning on adding this section originally.
Also, note how the magenta is still present in the model even if not present in the blue/aurora area. It’s really important to have that in the scheme somewhere.
In my opinion, the bright, reflective accents add a huge amount to the scheme, and it is much less strong without them.
Hopefully this was a useful tutorial! If you want to learn how to make ice bases like mine, you can find that article here.
If you paint using this scheme, I’d love to see your work! Feel free to hop into my discord and post in the hobby channel or tag me on reddit!
Thanks for reading, we’ll see you next time.
