5th Dimension: Painting Sky/Earth

5th Dimension: Painting Sky/Earth: Part 1: Sky! Little step by step how I paint blue chrome, sky/earth. The model is legs of a contemptor dreadnought by forgeworld.  To begin with, I try to find out what areas that are to be sky and whick to be earth, something like this:

I can tell the hard way, you’ll save a lot of time if you get this correct the first time, so take your time. some thoughts about SENMM can be found in this article by Chrispy.

For colors I chose the following: (All colors are gw’s oop paints.)

Basecoat: Ultramarine blue
Highlight: Ice blue
Shading : Regal blue.

+Black and white, in this case, P3 paints.

After basecoat, first highlight with ice blue. Unfortunately, The knee , that was supposed to be the main point seems to be out of focus in all the pictures (DO’H!!) but at least you can look at the pretty end result on the other leg ;)

Adding white to the highlight, much smoothening using glazes…

First Shading with regal blue, blurry blurry..
End shading using black in the mix.

White highlight on the edges, making it ‘pop’

Additional white spots at random places add the effect, be sure not to overdo it though! You don’t want the metal to look like it got some kind of decease!

little bit more closeup. shown here are also some 'neutral' chrome on the bearings, using blue and brown (scorched brown) while the other mechanical parts are regular NMM. The white highlight on the boot are not painted yet as i do it in one go with the "earth" later.



When painting sky, what you have to keep in mind is to reverse what’s bright and what’s dark and think the opposite of “normal” painting. The top of an object is what is the most subjected to the blue sky and therefore becomes darker than the horizon which is, if the object stands straight, in the middle of it. and when the true shading begin, its “Earth” :)

Coming soon, Earth!