Tutorial: How to Paint Yellow

How to Paint Yellow

Yellow can be one of those tough colors to get the hang of, mostly due to how transparent/translucent the color is when thinned. If painted over a dark color, it likes to stay dark, or takes multiple coats to get even coverage. But, when done right it really pops.

Today, I'm going to share how I painted the yellow on my Blood Bowl Orcs. This tutorial is thanks to kjsubtle on Twitter, who asked how I painted the armor on my Orcs.

List o' Colors:

• Citadel Corax White Spray
• Citadel Yriel Yellow
• Citadel Averland Sunset
• Citadel Flash Gitz Yellow
• Vallejo White
• Citadel Agrax Earthshade

A couple of notes before we get started:

• Make sure you thin your paint. Painting straight out of the pot will eventually clog details with successive layers. Multiple thin layers always win vs. a single thick coat.
• Now I mix my paint with water on a wet palette. But I've also had success with Liquitex Matte Medium and water. There are other additives you can try as well, you've just got to play with it and see what works for you.
• I prime my minis with Games Workshop's Corax White, but you could use a different brand. Be wary of Rustoleum and Krylon, I've had mixed results. Sometimes the chemicals in the spray react to the plastic of the mini.  
• A White primer coat is a big deal for this, the yellow works best with a white undercoat than a black undercoat.

Step 1
Base Coat - Yriel Yellow

After doing all the prep work and priming the model with Corax White, we base coat the armor plating with Yriel Yellow. You'll want to do a few thin layers for even coverage and thanks to the nature of the yellow paint, it may take 3-4 coats.

Step 2
Wash - Agrax Earthshade

With the base coat dry, we do a controlled wash of Agrax Earthshade in all the seams and around all the rivets. We don't want to cover the entire surface with the wash, because we would need to add more layers of Yriel Yellow to the surface. Don't worry about being messy though, we'll fix it up in the next step. Note: I actually made my wash a little too dark in this picture.

Step 3
Clean Up - Yriel Yellow

Once the Agrax Earthshade is dry, touch up any areas where the wash spread to wide or ran away from the target area. If you need to, you may need to do a couple coats to cover the dark color of the wash.

Step 4
Edge Highlight - Flash Gitz Yellow

Next up, we want to highlight the edges of the armor plates with Flash Gitz Yellow. Edge highlighting can be daunting, but if you drag the side of your brush, rather than the tip of the brush, over the edge of the armor you'll get a nice smooth line.

Step 5

Edge Highlight 2 - White

Similar to the previous step, we want to do the same with White. But for these highlights we want shorter length lines that the ones we did for Flash Gitz Yellow. We want them to reinforce the idea of light reflecting off the hard edge, without over powering the lighter yellow.

Step 6
Shadows - Averland Sunset

The shadows are the next step. For this we use Averland Sunset and paint all of the shaded areas. So the bottom edges of the armor plates, the bottom half of knee pads and anything that should be in shadow. This also helps clean up any Flash Gitz Yellow and White that strayed over the intended areas.

Step 7
Wash - Agrax Earthshade

Now we go over the Averland Sunset with Agrax Earthshade. For this wash we want to cover all of the Averland Sunset with the Agrax wash.

Step 8
Clean Up - Averland Sunset

Finally, touch up any areas where light should be reflecting a little bit with Averland Sunset. This will help the shadowed sections a little bit by giving the areas some variation of color.

And that's it! A nice bright yellow. With a few extra details and the miniature all finished, it looks really good!

I hope this tutorial helped you with your own painting. If you've seen me working on a project on Twitter or Instagram and have a question about how I do something, feel free to ask! I'm always game to help. I may even do a full tutorial on it!