From the Desk: Wee bit of Plasma! (Patreon)

While I’ve been working on this Knight Castellan, I thought I’d take a sequence shot of this simple and effective plasma workflow that you can apply on your tabletop miniatures. Here is a numberical step by step along with each image.

1. Have the remainder of the weapon painted and for more drama on the OSL, make the gun housing dark. In this case I painted it with a deep blue mixed with black. Then take white and cover all the coils. I mixed AK white with some white ink for some excellent coverage power

2. Taking white in the airbrush I gently lay over the edges of the coils that bleed over the gun casing. Keep it thin with a light trigger to get a soft edge. We are simulating the glow with the white as the light source.

3. Airbrush Magenta over all of the white. Be gentle and have a mixture of at least 1:1 paint to thinner. This helps to get a soft fade with the colour overlapping the gun casing etc. Then Take White Ink and a bit of white paint if needed for handling and paint between in the recesss of each coil. We want the effect of the light coming within rather than highlighting the outward edges. Focusing down at the base of the coil and extending part way up.

4. Neon Magenta from AK was then airbrushed over the white ink lines furthering the power and raising brightness. Aim and be mindful to only aim at the white so we have a gradient transition of magenta and the neon magenta.

5. I then mixed white and neon magenta thinned down 2:1 water to paint and went back to push the max lights again in the recesses between each coil. To fix up and clean any mis hits from the max highlights, I then too straight magenta with a 1:1 mix and paint a single straight line on the coil itself brush strokes going up and away from the max light. With that you’re done!

As well the bonus picture is the Knight almost complete with just the base left to do. I’ll have more close ups and references for you all soon! All of the techniques on this Knight are done on the Leman Russ :)