Painting Vorlon & White Star Ships?

[Proiteus]

I've recently brought both a ISA and Vorlon fleet, problem is 2 things.

1. What is the best technique to paint the pattern on the hulls of Vorlon ships rather than building up layers?

2. What colour or shade is a white star purple or blue and what paints are best suited for it? (refer to GW paints as they are the ones that I use)

 

[AdrianH]

1: try to find an airbrush or aerosol paint which produces fairly coarse spots. I've managed this once before but the one I tried for my Shadow ships came out finer than I'd hoped; it doesn't look bad on the Shadows but using a similar method to put grey over yellow onto a Vorlon ship would probably make it look dark green. So try it out on something expendable first!

2: based on this picture, I'd say purple, and that's how I intend to paint mine. I don't know GW paints, and I suspect that neither did the people who designed the original White Star, so you're probably going to have to do some mixing anyway.

 

[phoenixhawk]

I used GW Boltgun metal for the White Star body and Testors Napoleonic Purple for the purple. It's the first time I've come across a look for the White Stars that I liked. Found in the past that regular purple is just "too purple" on the small scale, and this other does a pretyy good job, at least for my eyes and tastes.

Chris

 

[Marco Raimeous]

so you don't want to do a lot of painting? You want the quick and easy path. Well I don't think they look as good when not painted by hand and the quick and easy path leads to the dark side.

I can tell you how I do mine if you want? Look at the gallery sticky and see if you like the look of those.

 

[David Anla Shok']

White primer. Ink washes. Drink heavily.

 

[Locutus9956]

Quick and easy whitestars:

Paint silver (important to note that you must actually PAINT them silver properly not just leave them bare metal, I assume you probably know that anyway biut just in case ).

Then splatter liberally with purple ink Voila, whitestar, it wont win any painting contests but they look decent enough that way.

As for Vorlons, pick a colour then dab on a second colour with a big brush or a bit of sponge. You can dab on a variant shade of one or both of the colours to add a bit of depth to it if you like or can drybrush a lighter coat of the base colour alternately. For standard Vorlon colours I recomend olive green then dab with varying shades of yellow. For red vorlons Id suggest a dark maroon red then dab with orange, then a bright red.

The trick I personally think to making the hulls look organic is to not try and be uniform, symetrical or neat, make it random

Now I think this creates quite a nice effect for very little actual effort but it's not to everyones tastes of course, but as with any paint scheme I'd suggest you give it a try on a small ship and then see what you think, if you like it use it for the rest, if you dont, clean the paint off and start over

 

[Proiteus]

Anyone got any pictures like the one above of the white star of a Vorlon ship?

 

[Shadow Queen]

try black primer and then dry brushing and ink washes

 

[Silvereye]

1. What is the best technique to paint the pattern on the hulls of Vorlon ships rather than building up layers?

If you have access to one, I'd suggest an airbrush. If like me you do not, I was going to paint mine the following way. (Red since I hate using GW yellow paints).

• Black undercoat
  Mid Red basecoat (old Blood red)
  Using the sponge dabbing, apply the random pattern of darker and lighter red 'splodges' and blacks/greys - Scab Red/Go Fasta Red & Black/'Charcoal' (50%Black ink, 50% Codex Grey).
  Petals/engines starting at Ultramarine and bring them back to Ice Blue/White.
  Lightning Cannon arms probably starting at Ice Blue/Ultramarine and taking them to white where the lightning discharge will come from, and follow the Petal/engines further back along the arms.

If you are going for the yellow option, I would recommend a white undercoat.

If you want to try something completely different, have a look at pictures of cuttlefish.

2. What colour or shade is a white star purple or blue and what paints are best suited for it? (refer to GW paints as they are the ones that I use)

For my White Star, I was considering the following:

• Black undercoat,
  Basecoat of Regal Blue/Warlock Purple highlighting to Ultramarine.
  For the 'grey/metal' I was considering either a boltgun metal with chainmail highlight or going for a NMM grey with a 90%+ Codex Grey/10% black ink mix highlighted back to Codex Grey and, in some areas, back to fortress grey.

 

[Burger]

For my white stars:
1) Undercoat white
2) Paint silver
3) Apply purple with a bit of washing up sponge (I said sponge not Sprange!! )

 

[AdrianH]

What I did was a base coat of a mixture of white and silver, then dry-brushed purple approximately to the pattern, then went back over the lines with the white/silver mixture and a very fine brush. The final touch was to paint the gun barrels and the band between top and bottom halves of the forward section (the mouth, if you like) in gunmetal.

Here's the result.

 

[Triggy]

I'm not a fan of the airbrush technique for Vorlons as it creates patterns that don't match the style seen in the show. I painted mine with a simple yellow/light grey basecoat, drybrushed over with yellow and stippled with a dark blue/grey. It doesn't take very long and gives colours and patterns matching those seen in the show (what I was aiming for).

 

[Hindsight]

I primed the models using a Citadel Chaos Black, and allowed it to dry overnight. I like to shake my spray extensively and keep the can in a warm place, in direct sunlight when possible, prior to spraying as warmer spray goes on cleaner.

I took the cap to a Citadel paint that had dried out long ago, and put in about three parts Codex Grey to one part Bleached Bone. Added some Future Floor Wax, and a few drops of water. This created the base coat gray that I painted one coat of over the hull.

Once this dried, I used Warlock Purple and using an image found while searching on google images (which happens to be the same image seen above) I free-handed the design as close to that image as I could. I took extra special care with the nose of the craft, and then in other areas just made squiggles in the appropriate shapes, trying to leave the appropriate space clear for the "paths" of the design, as seen in the 3D reference.

I thinned down some of the Warlock Purple with water, and gave some of the aft sections a wash, filling in some of those crevices with a purple shadow. Once this dried, I washed the models with Future Floor Wax straight out of the bottle, which not only protects the model, but gives it a shine that I felt was appropriate for our vorlon inspired armor. I'm sure 'Ardcoat from Citadel would work just as well, but I really like Future Floor Wax, both as a paint thinner (it seems to work really well with surface tension on the model) and as a varnish. If you don't want a gloss finish, just spray a Matte Varnish over the Future Floor Wax and it'll tone down the gloss a great deal.

After the Future Floor Wax dried, I painted the gun placements Chaos Black, and then the raised edges were painted Mithril Silver, before getting a Badab Black wash (thinned down Chaos Black works too, if not with a slight gloss). I then highlighted the washed placements with Mithril Silver again.

Finally, I highlighted the hull of the ship behind the main wing section, and a few other places I felt would be appropriate. I began with my base coat color with a bit more Bleached Bone mixed in, and did a final highlight of stright Bleached Bone.

I hope this helped.