# Question: Highlighting Space Marines



## countchocula86 (Sep 1, 2008)

As the title says, Im trying to understand how I would go about highlighting your standard Space Marine?

For something like a cloak or robe, I think I understand the base idea; highlight the peaks, darken the valleys. But Im not sure how to transcribe this to a Space Marine.


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## The Son of Horus (Dec 30, 2006)

You're looking for the edges of the armor. Think of highlighting as producing shading. You're lightening the model as you move away from the crevasses in it. So on an Ultramarine, for example, you've got a dark blue basecoat, and the first highlight layer gives that sort of royal blue tone. Then, to highlight that, you want to paint just on the edges where light hits the armor the most, so to speak, with a lighter blue. Usually, that'll be the "snout" of the helmet, the crest of the helmet, sort of a thin line on the main bowl of the helmet, the sort of upper shoulder pads, the top of each knee or greave, the front of each foot, and depending on the pose, the elbow or forearm, the top of the hand, etc. A final highlight can be literally applied to the edges-- an extreme edge highlight just follows the lines of the armor on the edges of each plate. Be careful with that though, because it can get out of hand really quickly. It's better to selectively highlight the edges rather than do the entire model-- mostly to emphasize the muzzle of the helmet and other sharp edges, such as the bottom of the greave or the rim of the shoulder pad.


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