Roguescape

This is the first step I take after applying the base colour. What shading does is adds to the look of depth to your miniatures. As the word suggests, shading adds darker areas to your model, in places that would seem to have shadows or darkened areas. Such places might be folds in skin or joins between armor plates. There are many places to apply shading on models, each with their own individuality. Here I will explain how I apply shading, but I will go into further information as I get race specific.

Rather than paint the shades on with solid colors, I prefer to use a wide range of washes. A wash is simply a color that has been watered down, so that it runs into the cracks and crevices of your figure easily.

If we look back at the Space Marine that we painted back in The Basics article, we will see that we have a helmet to work on, which I would give a shade of Blue Wash. Washes should be applied evenly, and the miniature should not be 'drowned' in it. After a bit of practice you will soon find how much wash you will need to put on certain sized areas. But remember that washes are watered down paint, so as soon as it is applied to a miniature, it is going to run, and you don't want it to run on parts of a miniature that you don't want it to.

For practice sake, I would start with a minimal amount of wash on the brush and applying it to a model, going back and forth, adding more wash until you know when you have enough.

Anyway, back to the Space Marine. I would apply the Blue Wash to the helmet, and make sure that some of it rests up against the chest eagle. Dark lines like this help separate one item from another, and make both pieces stand out. So here are two pictures, one without the wash and one with. You can see that the one with has now become darker in color, but we'll fix this when the wash has dried in the Highlighting stage. Places of note that should definitely have wash in them are where the face mask meets the outer helm, the eye sockets, around the ear piece and neckline, as well as where the neck guard meets the helmet, and along each side of the rib on top of the helmet.

So as you can see, the shaded helmet is quite a bit darker in color, but do not fear, it is all part of the process.