Tutorial - Painting energy weapons

posted by roman, jarhead, kong

Hi.

If you do paint some SciFi Miniatures you'll often see some energy floating and evil brrzzzzlll weapons. Those weapons are very strong as they ignore armoury and can cut trough a tank like a knife cuts butter.

Before we get to the plan of how to you can show your weapon run by energy with your brush it is always important to know what you are painting... energy, what is this? I did find some links to photos that can be used for your imagination and inspiration on what energy might look like if used by powerful individuals...

First one
Second one
Third one
Fourth one
and some additional inspiration!

As you can see energy shows best with the work of light and strong colours.Let's get into it!

Painting energy weapons
There are different weapons used with energy force in all those SciFi Universes. From hammers over fists to blade weaponry or cyberpunk energy grenades. All in all i try to focus this article on the most common ones and try to explain what its all about so you can use it for whatever you got at home...

Before i start check this - energy works best with light and light works best with shadows - you can also add an OSL.

I show you how i worked on the latest painted Scriptor's energy axe and explain what i have done here - i did start the axe very dark as for this case i wanted some lightning action going on - i have used a very dark red for the basecolour. I did use more red in the mix for the outer areals as i think it might be good plan that the energy gets to the blades for maximum effect. I tried to show this also by using a tip of Elf Flesh in the brighter red mix to simply catch my idea i got... this ain't detail work yet... just a sketch:

I now focused my next steps in strengthen this sketch by giving in more white to this mix (not pure white yet). Trying to paint the lightning brrzzzzlll that i want to work all over the blade - focusing on the edges. If you need some inspiration for your lightning work check out all those great photos and pictures google has to offer, like this one here! Take care that those lines are really fine, they don't need to be everywhere you can also catch only some to regulate and controll the effect of lightning look alikeness...

Now i did get to the detailed work, going back to the dark reds and clean up the fat lines first. Followed by strengthen the lightning in the direction to its unleashed power of the blades with carefully drawn lines of pure white - the edges also have been worked with pure white. Tiny sparkles set with a good brush tip have been added to get a feeling of the lightning movement - all focused to the blades.You need to thin your colour with a bit of water when doing fine lines. If not they are too creamy and you will not be able to actually draw a longer line with them. Before you go at the miniature make sure you ain't got too much water in your colour, as this can bring you not so happy accidents.

My suggestion is always try it before you go at the place where you want to paint it later on. Simply catch a sheet of paper and let your experience grow like "Ahhh, that is a good amout of water for having a good feeling about drawing a line!"...

That's some pretty easy way to get a fine result...
From my point of view energy always has a place where it is stored and can be unleashed. At the Scriptor's battle axe i have decided to use this kind of tank which is sculpted at the staff. I did use about 3 glazes of pure white to get a strong base for some powerful looking energy stored. After those glazes dried i did use several glazes of a strong bright and clear colour like those used for the OSL article. Here is another example for this storation area, done with Ice blue:

For sure there are other ways on how you could have a go on your brrzzzzlll weaponry in your army or at your display models. I can't name all as i don't know all used out there in the world, but what i can do is show you some other examples on what you can do from my own experience - always important is: light, it all works from light and to bring light to get maximum attention you have to stay dark next to it in your colour choices.

Here you can see a bad photo of a try to show an energy weapon that is activated as this guy pulls it out. The energy got to come from the bar end of the weapon so this is where the strongest light starts...

Here you can see an energy sword that is painted with the same thoughts like i paint my normal true metallic metals on a sword, just with casual colours. Additional with some lightning power...

Here you can see a version by Ben on what he did with this axe. You can see the energy pops out from the manufactured energy activators on the weapon:

Here you can see some energy claw weapons that live from the light at the edges. If you are intrested in how i did paint them check out this article of Brother Claudio.

Magic can be an energy weapon too - and it isn't really a different thing to paint it up... stay wild and creative and try and error all the time that is what is all about - here is some magic example, finished with some satin varnish:

I hope this article can inspire you to massive bbbrrrzzzzzllll action going on from now on...

Keep on happy painting!
Regards
Roman