Runewars Painting 2 - Infantry Priming

Now I posted a little while ago about painting the two main creatures out of the Runewars 2-player boxed set - the Rune Golem and the Carrion Lancer. Now painting centerpiece models is one thing -what about the rank and file infantry?

The term "zenithal shading", or highlighting, or pre-shading (with zenithal in front of any of those) is a term that's used a lot at the moment, but it's not a new technique. Essentially this is a way of adding depth and definition to a mini before you start painting, and it can be a great way of either speeding up your painting or helping you along the way. I won't go into exhaustive detail here (there are plenty of tutorials and explanations on the 'net), but essentially all this does is prime your models so that undersurfaces are dark, and highlights light, as here:

This group of reanimates looks nice and bright, but that's because we're looking at them from slightly above - if we look at one from slightly underneath...

Here you can see the shade on the undersides, which presumes a light source coming from somewhere above the model. Here are the spearmen treated in the same way:

That's fine, but spray doesn't act completely like light, and I also like to wash the minis to provide a really strong contrast before painting, like so;

I think you can see both the gradation in shading, plus the high contrast provided by the wash - this makes it much easier (in my opinion) to paint the mini as we go along, and get a feel for how the highlights and shading will work later.

Let's show this on a larger model - the horsemen. Firstly, let's have a look at the zenithal pre-shading using just the primer:

Then let's see one washed as well:

Now some people don't see the point in this, as you're going to be painting over this anyway. For me, the trick going forward is using thin coats, which allows this effect to show through, and then this guides the application of highlights, which makes the process more simple and gives you more time to think about the wet-blending on the model rather than where to put your paint. Next I'll be putting paint down on these minis to get them ready for the tabletop....until then...