Zenithal works best if you don't do the GW standard Basecoat. If you start with a value sketch and place your base tone on the grey parts, a highlight on the white parts and your shade color on the black parts, it provides you with a nice outline of what to do. Alternatively, if you use contrast paints or inks, you'll get that effect for free since they're transparent. Most skin tones are opaque, so it does defeat the zenithal effect.

One of the best explained wet blending guides I’ve seen. Too often the pros doing these forget that newbies have no idea what to do on the palette. I think it’s awesome that she took the time to explain how to properly mix the paints. Being relatively new to the hobby wet blending has been intimidating up to now. But I think I actually can grasp the process now. Great video. I’ll be recommending to some friends!

this may be the clearest, simplest, description of blending I've seen. I've watched a lot of videos on it and they always make it seem a little mystical. Good job on making this accessible

This explains so much that expert painters wouldn't think to mention, good effort :)

Love this format! Ciara is always entertaining, but being able to see what's going on on the palette was a new experience which I really enjoyed!

We need a tutorial on how to paint Ciara's hair colour - it is amazing.

The poke, poke poke is called stippling. It is a great technique. Thanks again guys! Always entertaining and fun.

this is honestly one of the better videos i've seen on wet blending.

Man, Ciara's come quite a way since that "Painting your first model" video from last year. Those skintones are really nice - and those Darkoath dudes and ladies are pretty perfect for someone who enjoys painting skintones.

As a beginner I absolutely love this! Learnt so much in this video that the "Pros" havent been able to teach. Thanks!

So glad I found this video. Great guide on wet blending and skin color. Being a newbie, this totally helps!

I zenithal prime then basecoat using contrast paint. It tints but maintains the prime colour shifting. Then you can use that as a "key" for where to place highlights etc. 😊

hi there. best (and funniest) explanation of wet blending I'Ve seen so far. Thank you!

The best broadsword videos is ones with Ciara!! She my souls Mate I think! 🥰🐶❤️

Great video. I really like the way you referenced real world makeup techniques to explain what you are doing and why you are doing it. Brings a fresh insight to painting skin tones.

Ciara's presentation style is spot on.

Great work. Really informative and strangely relaxing to watch said skilled paint smooshing. The Bob Ross of fleshtone blending. Other skin tone how to's (olive, Mediterranean-y etc) would be cool

Can't hear smooshing without thinking of Doug Judy 😅 Lovely job though Ciara, well impressed

Ciara guides are so good!

Great work! I usually have issues with skin tones, so this will help immensely.

Just “smoosh it”…yes! 😜 you have come so far with your painting in a year, truly inspiring! Happy New Year to you both!

This was awesome; practice geared for a person like Ciara (who's definitely better than me, by a ways!) was *exactly* what I needed. Thank you!

Your nails are on point! When you're zooming in on the mini, you gotta rock those nails, and you do!

this was very fun and relatable as others have noted it is easier to understand than other videos

A very insightful video, really turned what is a tricky subject into easy steps. Great job Ciara

I waited the whole video for the moment when Ciara would say something about chest muscles) By the way, the video was really helpful for us, thus thank you so much, merry Christmas!

I confess bemusement that I have not seen this channel before. Very enjoyable. I’m nowhere near good enough to criticise anything and it looks good to me.

Your skill has really improved in a short amount of time. I also kiss my minis. They have such hard lives, and they can use the love.

Great video,thank you.I always struggle painting flesh tones so this was a great help.

Always great to see Ciara in action! Thank you Oliver for the name of the "The Grimm Gripp". I was going to ask about it but I saw that you put it on the description. Keep up the great work you two!

Ciara has no right to be painting this well in such a short space of time since starting lol!! :) Great job with the mini, looks awesome :)

Aww great work ciara! If only I knew this when I started out :)

This is cool. I always struggled with blending flesh colours.

Nice video. Keep up the good work.

I'm facing the daunting task of putting together and painting my first army. It's quite a lot to take in, and Tau has a lot of variety in its materials, even if there aren't a lot of complex details (thank goodness). I'm looking forward to watching the rest of your tutorials.

Thank you , Mr and Mrs Broadsword . 🌲🎅🌲 All the best for next year . 🐺

Zenithal highlighting is a simple type of under-painting that quickly establishes tone and lighting and is supposed to show through the other layers. That means for it to be effective you have to use transparent or semi-transparent paints or else thin your more opaque paints with some kind of medium to give them transparency. Citadel confuses a lot of beginners by labeling their more opaque paints as "base" colours and their semi-transparent and transparent paints as "layer" paints instead of using the more obvious and traditional artistic terms, but they are trying to describe their use instead of their properties, so once you know that it's not a problem. When doing a lot of flesh you can use a cool or warm reddish brown can of primer or manually painted base coat and then do a zenithal highlight in a cool or warm tan, peach, or yellow ochre and then model in the midtones and highlights manually, using that process as a time saving strategy. Priming in black and then zenithal highlighting in white as you did, only to have to base coat the flesh tones again, wastes time and clogs the details of the model more than necessary, but you've probably seen it done since sometimes the rest of the model needs a black under-colour anyway and often the model will have less flesh exposed than say black armour or whatever. Also many artists find that a zenithal highlight helps them to understand the way the model should be lit even if they just end up covering it with opaque layers later so will sometimes do the unnecessary. Again terms can confuse people. A zenithal highlight is just one type of directional lighting. But it isn't true directional light because it's done around the entire model in a circle so that the model has no true shadow side. Another kind of lighting used for model painting is actually just what Hogarth called sculpted lighting in his book. It's meant to express the volume of each geometric form so most miniature painters call painting that way painting "volume," but 3d artists call it "volumetric lighting."

Oh wow, I wasn't expecting an Irish accent. Galway or Mayo I'd guess (from Galway myself, and in fact see my own first name on the wall). Kinda new to wargaming/mini painting and have no idea how popular it is in Ireland, so this at least gives me some hope! Looking forward to checking out the rest of the channel after this as I'm loving this tutorial so far.

Love that paint handle!

Try zenithal undercoating in colours other than black and white! Dark reddy brown with a pale flesh or ivory zenithal is really good for "natural" stuff, like skin, leather, warm fur tones. I think zenithal undercoating is still in its infancy as a useful concept, but using it as a form of understanding or value sketching makes the final steps really snap together

Great explanation of wet blending. Without the "scary" stuff. You sound like the female version of Duncan 🙂 (and that is a compliment)

Amazing to see how far you've come along since your first few videos! This looks amazing!

Great stuff friends 👏 👍

Thanks for the video, you made something which i had trouble wrapping my head around easy to follow. Keep them coming

Good job Ciara. Been great watching you develop and level up your painting skills

I have had parkinsons most of my life. I just had 2 operations this Christmas. It is a pleasure.

Very nice! And that Grimm Gripp looks deadly!

Useful tutorial, good A/V quality and a competent and adorable host. Good tutorial will watch more.

Great work on the vids, nice easy articulation of the method and you make it accessible for all 👍

This also works on armour!, currwntly painting some CB Infinity models, and using similar technique.

Really great video! Thanks y'all!

YAY for a Ciara video! Your painting has moved along very nicely in a short time.

Wow. Just wow

A beautiful redhead chirping away at the camera in a charming Irish accent and doing a rather good job painting up that miniature was a great thing to watch before bedtime, tonight. Good job, Miss Ciara, and I bet you do rock the elf ears if ever you wear them?

Damn this is some skill

Really great work Ciara! :D

Great vid. Very informative. Thanks

Loved the simplicity of this video. I've been painting minis for a bit but blending was always intimidating. This vid made it seem more manageable. Btw interesting painting handle never seen that before.

Ah yes Smooshing 101, very nicely done.

Excellent tutorial - inspiring!

About to paint some humans and dwarfs and have only done lizards which I think are a bit easier so this is very helpful thanks!

Im staring at those nails...how on earth you manage to paint with those! :D But anyways good job Ciara and good to see you take over Olly on this channel. :P You manage to paint more in past year than he has :D Nooo...just kidding. Waiting batreps from Olly for games like bolt action and warhammer fantasy :P

Good paint job and tutorial, one thing though, the sponge on that Redgrass games wet pallette you're using has mold retarder in it, you don't want to be putting your brush in your mouth even after cleaning with that pallette.

A beginner bah, I've been painting for years and Ciara's already better than I am 😂

You are so helpful and making me feel like having a go. I'm still on starter kits. I will keep watching.

Best flesh painting tuto i have ever seen. You rule ! I hope i'll get there someday.

Awesome stuff, adobarle intro haha.

Love this! Your steps are easy to follow and makes sense. poking with dots = stippling the part under the cheekbones = the hollow of the cheek smooshing = yep that's a great word for it

Looks great. Feel like people sleep on the opposite approach too. Faster dirtier highlight layers washed with a 50/50 flesh shade/lahmian medium mix. Ties everything together and might be a bit faster. Not sure.

This was super helpful. I cant really articulate what made the difference, but I've watched several guides on wet blending and never really understood what to do, and within 10 minutes of finishing this video I've got some very nice hair on a model in front of me... sorry I didn't use it for skin tone, I'll get to that next :)

Most times when I get zenithal highlighting to work is when I thin my paints with contrast medium and then do a evenly distributed glaze. That usually leaves the lighting from the zenithal coat intact but at the cost of the model being somewhat desaturated.

This was extremely helpful! Thank you!

More painting videos! You’re REALLY good,

"Stippling" was the term you were looking for.

Old painters will tell a newbie, blending is simple but strangely it's not . Not when staring at your model and thinking "Oh No what if I screw this up?" But fear not fair maiden, for there is a trick to painting and I always have a mirror at hand, so that I can view my own face and see where the light intensifies and shade develops. Your doing okay Ciara, just practice, maybe even on Ollie when he is asleep?

Really nice tutorial, thanks a lot! It was clear with a good demo, thanks a lot

OLIE .......GREAT.THANK YOU ...CIARA.WELL DONE.I PAINT THICK SOME TIMESSS....

Looks good, I've been mostly using vallejo skin tones but only because GW stuff is a whole lot harder to get in NZ. (and quite overpriced here)

So glad to have a couple of videos in the last few weeks. Love how dynamic you guys are…. Also on a totally childish level, Ciara, you are super cute lol

wow thank you so much what a great video this is beyond helpful! merry christmas! :D

Zenithal works best with glazes and other transparent paints/inks. Good job by the way!

The smooshy method is the best! #smooshymethod

Stipple, great tutorial. Happy holidays

Very handy and helpful. Cheers

So good. Enjoyed it

I agree with you 100% on Zenithal highlighting. I've been painting on and off for over 20 years. I'm mostly a 40K army painter and I am currently working on my 9th 2000 point army. I've watched loads of painting tutorials from painters that I respect that swear by Zenithal. I don't get it. Its such a waste of time for me. I don't understand how laying down two colors that my model isn't going to be to help my result in anyway. Perhaps if you were going for a model that is mostly white or mostly black it would be useful. BIDK. If you are using proper lighting, you shouldn't need to trick your eyes into knowing where to paint what highlight. I'd love to see a video where two identical models are painted, one use zenithal and the other without it and compare. I bet they look identical and the one without the zenithal would finish about 15-20 minutes quicker.

Amazing as always :)

Thanks for these videos!! Always find them very useful. Happy holidays.

Zenithal is nice if you are purposefully painting extremally layers so you can keep the shadows. I paint similar to you in the fact I paint thicker coats that it loses the pre shading you get. It is a way of painting, not THE WAY of painting.

" constant smooshing is the key to painting" < will use this excessively

That's one way to start a video^^

Thanks for this! I find painting flesh very intimidating and have yet to try wet-blending. I’ve saved your video for future reference and will be watching again and again when I finally bite that bullet.

Unless your zenithal is extremely stark, chances are you're gonna cover that shit up. Some people just use it as a reminder to be use darker paint or lighter depending on where. Aside from that you can do the zenithal and then basically glaze the colors on. That's where zenithal shading really shines. Pack a lunch tho cause it's gonna be a loooong day. Lmao.

Honestly, the best use I get out of a zenithal undercoat is from taking pictures of it from several angles around the model to get a good reference and better understanding of the contours and volumes of the model.

Zenithal is usually for use with transluscent paints, so inks or contrast type paints. Otherwise just helps see the volumes.

It's good having a females perspective referring to makeup. Makes a lot of sense

Superb. Really helped a lot. Thanks.

Great work! Keep up the great work.

Great video. Easy to understand and makes me wanna paint some naked people. Got a Gotrex model sitting on a shelf that will do.

thank you for the presentation. It was very very nice to see it done. Indeed learned something. Also, love that magnetic mini holder. Is that scratch built or a product?