Painting for dummies – easy OSL

While working my eldar vehicles, I had to make a decision when it came to paint the cockpit and the pilot. You know, it is a well detailed part of the model, but it will be rather obscured once its cover has been glued on place. Besides, being that cover made out of plastic (and not true glass, which is more transparent), the painting below won’t be really appreciable, and that is really a pity.

So instead of painting it “normally”, I decided to think of a quick and effective way to bring it out with a minimal effort, and I came with the idea of an easy OSL (Object Source Lighting) effect suppossed to be caused by the glow of the screen in front of the pilot. I painted it in less than five minutes and using only five colours (Chaos Black, Dark Angels Green, Snot Green, Scorpion Green and Skull White).

So here’s the recipe:

• Paint the whole cockpit Chaos Black
• Drybrush it all heavily with Dark Angels Green
• Drybrush it again with Snot Green, not so heavily and concentrating mainly on the areas in which the ligh coming from the screen would fall most (front of the face, chest and inner arms)
• Drybrush it lightly with Scorpion Green in the main focal areas of light impact (front of the face and hands)
• Paint the screen Snot Green
• Paint some lines (references or axis) and dots (objectives or enemies) in the screen with Scorpion Green
• Paint the center of the dots with a mixture of Scorpion Green and Skull White to bring them out

Et voila! The cockpit is done and ready for action. Fear the Serpent, mon-keigh!