How to Paint Power Swords Quickly for Warhammer 40k

Welcome to one of our first YouTube Video companion guides! Today, we’re going to be looking at using an airbrush to quickly and easily paint power sword glows for your Warhammer 40,000 miniatures.

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Yeah, this article is totally a video tie-in. We’ve been threatening the invasion of youtube for a number of years. now it’s finally happening.

How to Paint Power Swords Quickly for Warhammer 40k – Paints and Tools

Brushes

• Any airbursh should do here (in the video, FauxHammer uses a Badger Sotar 20/20 for priming, and a Cult of Paint Infinity CR+ for everything else).

If you’re thinking of buying an airbruish and need some inspiration, check out our Best Airbrushes for Miniatures and Models list

Paints

• Pro Acryl Dark Grey Blue
• Pro Acryl Turquoise
• Pro Acryl Bold Titanium White

Painting Swords any Colour

Any similar shaded dark blue, light blue, and white will also suffice. Also, if you’d rather have red, green, or some other coloured power swords on your figures, you need only a dark shade of your chosen colour, a bright shade of that same colour, and a white (or equivalent brightening colour like an ice yellow for warmer colours)

For a stark shade, take something you would use as a shadow for your first colour and something you;d use as a second level highlight for the second. this will give you a blend from really really dark to reallyy really bright. the final colour will be almost white anyway.

Tools

• Masking tape. In the video, FauxHammer uses purpose-made Tamiya masking tape.
• Masking material – something like silly putty that’s not too sticky.

How to Paint Power Swords Quickly for Warhammer 40k – Introduction

What better way is there to spend a snowy Saturday morning in January than repeatedly listening to FauxHammer’s dulcet tones on our latest painting video, and transcribing his words of infinite wisdom into a written guide for those of us who have an aversion to YouTube/his voice? and face…

Today’s guide will take you through some quick and easy steps for painting the power swords on your Warhammer 40K miniatures using only a few paints and an airbrush.

You can find the accompanying video here on FauxHammer’s YouTube.

How to Paint Power Swords Quickly for Warhammer 40k – Tutorial

Step 1 – Prep

The first thing you’ll need to do is prepare your masking material.

Sily Putty is best becasue it doesn’t stick to the model like blue-tack does, it’s super easy to form and remove later on.

Break it apart and smooth out a thin piece of it into a wider sheet that can cover your figure.

Once you’ve got your material prepared, wrap it around all parts of your figure apart from the power sword. This will stop any excess paint ending up on parts of the miniature you may have already painted.

Pay close attention around the swird hilt and use a flat sculpting tool if necessary. it’s ok to leave some of the hilt showing as we’ll paint over this later.

Once your figure is suitably covered, you can begin painting!

Step 2 – Painting

Paint the entire power sword with your darker colour.

Next, get yourself two bits of masking tape. Using the tape, carefully cover adjacent sides of the sword as shown below, taking care to ensure the edge of the tape is lined up with the centre of the sword.

Now, prepare your mid-tone colour.

Taking your mid-tone colour, carefully spritz the centre of the sword and carefully work your way outward towards the tip and pommel. Take care not to cover all of your blue basecoat, though, as you want some of this to show through in order to add some depth of colour to your figure. Do this on either side of the sword.

Ensure you build up a good, opaque mid-tone layer at the centre of the sword, but use les paint when moving up and down the blade to create a nice gradient effect.

You will notice your masking tape prevents the paint from hitting part of the sword. This is so we can paint this slightly differently in a moment.

Step 3 – Whiteout

Next, take your white and mix a little in withy our mid-toned blue to create a lighter shade.

Carefully spray this lighter shade up the middle of the already lightened section of blue to create a more stark gradient between the colours on the blade.

When Adding a lighter colour just be conscious of the usual rules you would apply when edge highlighting. For example, red.

If you add white to red it will become light pink. You may want to mix in a touch of yellow to bring back some luminosity in that case. Or use Ice yellow from Vallejo or Ak Interactive or Pale Yellow From Pro Acryl. Just remember that white can desaturate a colour, and you may not get the effect you want.

Step 4 – Remove, Replace…

Next up, remove the masking tape from the sword.

At this point, you should be getting a good first impression of what kind of effect you’re going to have by the time you finish your painting. Now is a good time to go back and make any corrections you may want to make.

Once you are certain the painted side of your sword is dry, using the same bits of masking tape, cover them up like you did earlier, carefully lining the tape up with the centre of the sword.

Step 5 – …And Repeat

Next, we’re back to painting again. Grab your airbrush and that mid-shade you used at the beginning of Step 2. This time, though, instead of painting the middle of the power sword, carefully apply the mid-toned colour at the base and tip of the blade.

On both sides of the power sword, carefully apply layers of paint at the very base and tip of the blade to build up the opaqueness of the shade, but take care to ensure there’s a gradient fading towards the middle of the blade, as you can see on the image above.

Now, simply add your white or lightened shade to the very base and the very tip in order to make that gradient really stand out.

Once the blade has dried again, remove the tape.

Nice!

Step 6 – Finishing Off

Next, remove the putty from your figure. You won’t be using your airbrush again for this tutorial, so you no longer need to have your figure covered.

Make sure you’ve picked off any little pieces that have got stuck in the nooks and crannies of your figure.

Now, using a white paint or other very light shade, paint the edges of the power sword.

Make sure your paint isn’t too fluid or else it’ll run all over your model and ruin the finish you’ve just put on your power sword.

This, like most edge highlighting, is where your wet-palette can actually do you a disservice. You want your paint to have less water so it’s tackier, this really helps to easily pick out harsh edges.

The most difficult part will be painting the raised middle section of either side of the blade, so ensure you have a very small amount of tacky paint on your brush and very gently touch the flat side of your brush to this raised section. Using careful movements, brush some paint onto the very middle of the blade.

With that, the blade of your power sword is more or less complete! You’re free to paint up the hilt, pommel, crossguard, and the power nodes that reach up onto the blade however best suits your figures. We use a bright metallic paint (Vallejo Metal Color – Aluminium) because it’s quick and easy.

Just something that makes them stand out from the sword. You can take this further by glazing these over with a thinned translucent ink (also known as Citadel Contrast paints)

How to Paint Power Swords Quickly for Warhammer 40k – Complete

And here’s the finished model…

Not bad, eh? Especially for very little effort.

Make sure to check out the accompanying video available on FauxHammer’s YouTube, where you can follow the steps outlined in this guide. Don’t forget to leave and like, comment and subscribe!

Please Note: This site uses affiliate links. Our Affiliate Partners are shown below
(Affiliate links will result in compensation to the site on qualifying purchases)

Click this link & buy your hobby stuff from Element Games for the UK & Europe to support FauxHammer.com – Use Code “FAUX2768” at the checkout for double reward points.

Our Affiliates / Hobby Stores

• UK: Element Games, The Outpost, Wayland Games, Mighty Lancer, Goblin Gaming, Forbidden Planet, Model Scenery Supplies, eBay, Amazon
• US/Canada: MTechCave, GameKastle, eBay (US), eBay (CA), Amazon
• Germany: Taschengelddieb
• Europe: eBay (DE), eBay (FR), eBay (ES), eBay (IT), Amazon
• Australia: eBay, Amazon
• Global: RedGrass Games, Warcolours

• 3D Printers: Phrozen 3D, Elegoo, Anycubic

FauxHammer – Latest Video on YouTube

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