How I Painted: Space Cloak

Today I will be trying to recreate this...

Which is a painting.

On this...

Which is a very small surface.

Wish me luck, gentle reader.

After airbrushing a nice blend from navy blue at the top (to key the cape into the rest of the model's eventual colour scheme) to black on the rest of the cape, I splodged on a mix of browns, reds and oranges to create the surface of Sigmar's pet comet.

Crudely mixing on the surface of the model like this gives you a varied, dappled pattern that gives the impression of a rough surface. Plus it's fun to do!

If I'd done this before painting the cloak black the effect would have been stronger, but c'est la vie.

Then I masked off a neat circle with tape, re-sprayed the flat black basecoat, and very, very gently sprayed in some white stripes and swooshes. It's important only to let these be opaque in very small areas. I'm something of an airbrush novice, so I was mostly focused on just not spoiling the whole thing.

Not spoiled, I think.

Still using the airbrush I glazed these areas with a mix of 3:1 blue:green ink to tone them more interestingly, then gently airbrushed some more white within the existing shapes. I also tried spattering some dots of white with the airbrush, but stopped that when I realised it was inevitably going to go wrong and RUIN EVERYTHING.

Also: Look! Comet!

To paint the outline of Sigmar's celestial city/space station/whatever that thing is, I made a circle of masking tape, squished it on, then traced the outline with metallic paint.

I could have just freehanded the circle, but that's difficult enough at the best of times.

Look how neatly it follows the folds!

From there it's just a matter of adding some little stars, painting in the shapes of the space citystationthing, and selectively using black wash to create some depth to all the folds and hollows.

TADA!

All in all I think it's a pretty nice effect, especially considering how quick it was. There's more I could do, but I'll hold off on that until I see how it looks with the rest of the model complete. For now, it's dinner time.

(Credit to Nadya at Hoperiver's Valley for the inspiration from her much better work along the same lines.)