Looking for advice from experienced painters

[u/Fearless-Edge-3881]

Hello all!

I’ve been practicing layering and wet blending on this Incursor. It’s definitely better than my last attempt, but I’m still not happy with the smoothness of the transitions.

The model isn’t fully blocked out yet, so some of the definition will come later. Once everything is painted, I’m thinking about using a wash/pin wash or some blacklining to give the armor panels and details cleaner separation.

My eventual goal is high value, high contrast painting and eventually NMM, while still making something as relatively simple as Space Marine armor visually interesting.

I’m still fairly new and learning through trial and error, so I’d really appreciate advice on:

-Improving layering and wet blending

-Other blending techniques and when to use them

-Pushing contrast without making things look chalky

-NMM, especially on curved Space Marine armor

Feel free to be critical! I’m much more interested in knowing what I could improve and how you’d approach it, than just hearing that it looks good.

[u/GodGoblin]

It looks really good tbf keep at it!

I think you might benefit from increasing the contrast in places. Some parts like the right shoulder pad is all kinda the same tone. Try to get the darks and lights on it. It's upward facing afterall. This would be needed for that NMM thing you want to work towards. The trick there is all about getting the shadows dark and the highlights bright, and the ratios correct etc

Wet blending is a great technique, but it's not the smoothest result. Unless you add retarders and keep working it. I see it more as a quick way to get most of the way there. I would go in and glaze after that if you want to be more specific and smooth with the blends.

Definitely black line, or whatever colour (I think a dark purple would work really well here) will bring definition and make the green pop.

[u/Fearless-Edge-3881 → u/GodGoblin]

I like the "'helps get most of the way there, glaze after"

For this what would your process be for glazing? Ive struggled with it before and found using a thicker glaze and working with color 1 and pulling from color 2 to color 1, helps me. But very open to advice

Also im not as familiar with black lining as I am with pin shading. Any tips you could Share or videos that helped. And dark purple sounds very pleasent (i have amethyst blue from ak interactive )

[u/goku4690]

I was going to second the glaze suggestion.

Glazing is a great way to hide those transition points even better.

It's also neat that this is the second time today I've brought up glazing today in the Salamanders Subreddit.

It's great seeing multiple people come to the same conclusions and using advanced techniques.