Monday, January 7, 2013

Painting Realistic Fluid Filled Vials in 4 Easy Steps




The idea of painting a vial to look like it's filled with fluid does seems like a scary thought… but it's just another painting obstacle that can be overcome with a little practice and a firm understanding of the principals that make it work well visually.




Initially when I set out to make a bunch of Dark Eldar Coven models I was scared to death about all the vials I would have to paint on Haemonculi, Pain Engines, Wracks, Grotesques, Scourges, etc. I developed a 4 step process that I would consider High-Quality Table Top

Is it Golden Daemon? No, certainly not. But it does look great on the table and is realtively quick and effective process.


Step 1-2 : The Base Colors
This it the MOST CRUCIAL part of the whole process. You have to understand the process of how liquid moves in a glass vial and paint accordingly. Using the horizontal edge of the minis base as a guide, imagine how the bottom half of the vial will look once filled half way with fluid. It's crucial for each vial to have the top edge of the liquid parallel with the base edge. This will vary from vial to vial depending on how it's positioned on the model. 




Step 3 : Fluid Highlight

All you do here is simply highlight the upper edge of the fluid line. The trick is to make the edge where the fluid meets the empty glass hard. The edge where the fluid highlight meets the darker fluid needs to be blended a bit. This makes it seem as if there's more depth to the bottom of the fluid filled areas.




Step 4 : Vial Highlight

The final step here is to paint the vial highlight. A simple thin line down the upper outside section will usually suffice. I prefer to use a light grey instead of white for this as to not overpower the effect of the vial painted underneath.



Optional Step 5

You don't need to do this, I usually don't. But you can paint bubbles into the fluid, by simply adding some tiny dots of a lightened up version of the base fluid color. 






Here's examples of this technique in action on some of my Dark Eldar Coven models.













Now go paint some vials!


17 comments:

  1. Great tutorial! I was wondering if you would mind if I posted about this in a few days so my readers would have access to this resource?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Heretic!

      Yeah no problem on the repost. Just throw a link back to the blog :)

      Delete
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  2. Looks great, thanks for the quick tut :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great little tutorial, man! I usually go with white in the "empty" portion of the bottles, but I have to say I like the look of the black with the white specular light.

    I'll have to try that out soon!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Looks better than how even GW does it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love it, simple but highly effective.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks everyone! Glad you find the tut useful!

    ReplyDelete
  7. You know, as great as the vials look, I think your wings are superb. Thanks for a great post!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Excellent work and happy year. Regards.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Nicely illustrated. I'll be adding this to my tutorial list on the blog if you dont mind :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  11. This is really a remarkable topic close to my heart thanks. Keep up the good working!
    Renown Painters

    ReplyDelete
  12. This looks brilliant, bookmarked for when I paint my scourges :)

    ReplyDelete
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