You SHALL Go To The Ball

Having thought about it, I have decided to offer up a small tutorial on how I painted the white clothes. I have always found whites and blacks to be very difficult to paint and if your experience is anything like mine hopefully this will help you.

The colours I used are:

• Ushabti Bone base
• Seraphim Sepia
• Lahmian Medium
• Screaming Skull
• Pallid Wytch Flesh
• Whitescar

Step 1.

I started by giving the area a base coat of Ushabti bone. It goes without saying that a white undercoat is preferable for this as this will ensure that the colours are as vibrant as possible.

Step 2.

Next, I washed the whole area with Seraphim Sepia. Ideally you don’t want the wash to be too strong so thinning it down with Lahmian Medium is highly recommended. I went with a roughly 2:1 Medium to wash ratio. When I thin paint I actually make my own thinning medium (de-ionised water and matt medium) but for washes I still go with Lahmian Medium as it doesn’t affect the consistency of the wash.

Step 3.

Next I applied a first highlight using the Ushabti bone again.  This was also thinned and applied in several coats to provide the smoothest finish possible.

Step 4.

The next step is to apply another highlight of Screaming Skull, slowly building up the colour in thin layers

Step 5.

The next step is to layer is Screaming Skull mixed with a little Pallid Wytch Flesh, gradually adding more Pallid Wytch Flesh to the mixture until it is almost pure Pallid Wytch Flesh.  I went through around 3 iterations of this.

Step 6.

The next layer is to add a layer of pure Pallid Wytch Flesh.

Step 7.

Finally pick out a few extreme highlights with a little Whitescar

The trick to all of this is thinning your paints. I know its a cliché but I was thinning the paints here almost 1:1 with thinner and paint. The extra coats are not only provide a smoother finish but also the increased translucency helps to create smoother transitions between layers which you really need when painting cloth.

Hopefully this has been useful to someone 🙂

Below there’s some photos to help you see what each step looks like