Quick 'n' Easy Verdigris (tutorial)

Not being a master painter like some of those out there, I've never thought to put any sort of tutorial together before now, but as I sat to start painting the symbol on my dozer blade, I remembered someone somewhere asking me how I painted my bronze.

As it's a simple process and one made of very definite steps (based on one in an old White Dwarf, I think from when the tower for Warhammer Siege was released?) and I thought it would be a good one for my first ever painting tutorial.

So without further adieu...

STEP 1)

Have a think about what it is you're painting, which areas do you want bronzed up?, how old is it? etc.

This is the unpainted dozer blade with my hand sculpted Star of Chaos. As you can see it's very rough around the edges, but I find that level of roughness lends itself well to Chaos. The chevrons are there as an undercoat for  the hazard stripes yet to come, and although they were painted before I sculpted the star (to help keep things aligned) they have little to no effect on this tutorial.

Being at the business end of a Land Raider it is bound to take many a knock and scrape, so it will be painted in a way to reflect this.

Also it has been retrofitted to the blade itself in a post-heresy scramble to adorn anything slightly imperialistic with spikes. This means that only the star will be painted in the brass/bronze and eventually blended in to look like it has been welded to the blade.

STEP 2)

Apply undercoat.

Goes without saying, but a good solid undercoat (in this case Chaos Black as we're dealing with metallics) will save you many a headache further down the line.

STEP 3)

The Base Coat

Slap on a Liberal Coating of Tin Bitz, leaving the odd "half drybrushed" spot here and there to ensure a bit of depth to the finished piece.


STEP 4)

GO GREEN!

This is where your Step 1 planning comes in.

I mix my Verdigris by slowly adding Enchanted Blue to Goblin Green until I get the desired colour, but this stage is really up to you. If you want a very bright green, add a bit of Skull White, if you want just a hint of green then add more blue, maybe some Chaos Black, or Dark Angel Green,

Have a google for verdigris and see what comes up, or if your more hands on, take a look under the sink at the copper pipes to see what's there. look at old statues, or maybe an old gate in a churchyard?

Once you're happy with your colour, build up the layers with a drybrush until you're happy with the amount of ageing. (I like to just slap it on everywhere, making sure I leave some of the Tin Bitz visible... you can always go back in and add more TB if you get too carried away).

If what you're painting is stationary, then maybe you might want to stop with just the green, and highlight as appropriate, but if, like my dozer blade, you think it's going to get a bit more of a polish then carry on to the next step.

STEP 5)

Polishing Off

In the Final step, I used a detail brush to pick out the raised details in a mixture of Brazen Brass and Bronze, with a healthy splashing of Devlan Mud to take the edge off and bring out the details.

Much like in step 4, how much you decide to bring back to the surface is up to you. The Chaos Star is a focal point of my model so I wanted it to stand out against the rest of the blade, so I opted for nice shiny brass (Keeps Lord Khorne happy too), but you can just as easily use shining gold for a more subtle effect, or even go back over the verdigris with more Tin Bitz to give a really aged effect, particularly good for stationary objects like statues and buildings.

However much you decide to make shiny/dull down, remember that the verdigris will always build up more in heavily recessed areas, so you should have a good look at your model, and in some cases add more verdigris in places you may have missed but you feel would be more likely to have a build up of verdigris.

And that as they say... is that.

I will of course be posting pics of the finished blade soon, and I'll come back and edit this post with a link to the finished product just to keep things together.

If you're still reading, thanks for bearing with me (this tutorial took longer to type than it did to paint lol), and I hope this has inspired you to go out and dirty up your shiny things.

- Dave :)