painting transparent diamonds

[me_in_japan]

does anybody know where I can find a tutorial for painting those fade-to-transparency diamond patterns that some folks do on their harlequins/eldar? I've been looking in the usual places, but cant find one. Examples of minis, yes, but actual tutorials, no.

I know there must be some out there, so does anyone know where they are?

cheers,

-d

ps not the best example, but the back of his cloak has the kind of thing im talking about
http://www.coolminiornot.com/227380

[Primarch]

Sorry to disappoint, but I have no idea.
That is a gorgeous mini though. Why dont you PM the guy and ask him how he did it?

[Admiral-Badruck]

looks like the layered it... diamonds on frist and then painted over them with a very watered down paint over and over until the got the look he wanted...

[AndrewGPaul]

That sounds about right. Rackham used to do it a lot, and the secret appeared to be mixing the detail colour with the base colour to simulate the 'translucency' effect, then washing over it with the base colour to fade it in even more.

If you can find some of the old Cry Havoc magazines Rackham put out, they had some painting guides in them that might be useful.

[me_in_japan]

cheers folks,

after a certain amount of footering about and trying random stuff, I think I've got the hang of it, theoretically at least. What youve suggested is basically right, so far as I can tell from my own attempts. I blended from colour A to B up the harley's leg, then painted on diamonds in colour B, all the way from the area of solid colour B (where obviously they dont show up) well into the pure colour A area, where they show up strongly. After that, I washed with colour A with increasing layers/intensity from the mid-area back into the colour A area. At the end of the day, it worked. Not perfectly, but I think thats more due to my blending area being too small - I shoulda used the whole leg, rather than just the bottom half of the thigh.

Anyway - diamonds: sorted.

I also tried hearts across the jacket. Not so successful. In fact, im about to paint over em and start again with diamonds...

[me_in_japan]

the story so far...



very dark just now, but the collar and most of his belt/jewels and whatnot are going to be a warm yellow or NMM gold (well, brownish yellow, given my current ability to paint NMM, but Ill give it a shotty...)

The long tassely bits will have the same diamond pattern, from yellow to ... maybe red, or maybe purple/turq, i havent decided yet.

*edit* the wierd sheen on the side of his chest is the pencil marks from where I was trying to pencil in diamond shapes. I'll have to see if I can get rid of them. Black wash, probly...

[Primarch]

Wow, when I get round to painting my Harlies, I'll have to steal this idea. (and fail epically of course).

Looking good there.