Painting Power Swords!

I'm pretty excited to show this one off, it was quite successful. This is the first power sword that I've done. Originally I was thinking I would make the blade look like it was very hot like an oven element. Then I was thinking I wanted something that looked like extreme heat on just the edges. Ultimately I went a different direction though because a) the hot blade just looks hot not like power and b) didn't see any good how-to examples.

I did a google image search to see what other folks were doing. Looks like a lot of people like a lightning style with either blues, purple, or sometimes green. I also found one in red that looked a little like lava or magma and I immediately liked it. Also, red is one of the secondary colors in my army so off I went trying to reproduce it.

First step I tried a new technique I found online called "glazing.". For this I took one part of the bright red color and about 3 or 4 parts of the blending medium plus some water and made a very thin glaze. Next I applied coat after coat to the blade first doing 100% of the blade, waiting for it to dry, then painting 95% etc. the goal was to make it look like an energy glow coming from the contact on the blade surface so each layer of paint would do the % for that layer around that point. It worked pretty well, had to put the model up to the lamp to get the paint to dry faster. Usually the slow dry from the blending medium is good, but here it was slowing me down a bit.

Next I freehand painted on the "lightning" starting first with dark red up to bright red, then orange, then then yellows, and finally a little white. The trick is to get thinner lines by orange and then start only doing spots in the most concentrated areas for the brightest colors. By the time you get to white which is really high energy it should just be a few dots.

I like how it turned out and am looking forward to doing a power axe the same way.

Found via Google Images and it appears to be from chestofcolors.com, used without permission.

Results after numerous layers of Blood Red glaze.  Each layer would extend from the little contact in the center of the blade by lesser and lesser amounts.

I'd hold the blade up to my lamp to speed up the drying process since I use a blending medium.

This is the first layer of the 'lightning' with Scab Red.  Used a thicker line which is important.

Next layer on the lightning with Blood Red.  I may have used Red Gore. Again the lines are thicker.

This layer is Blazing Orange, I started using a thinner line.  I could have graduated the lines better, but on my first try I ended up with just 2 thicknesses with the step here at orange.

It's starting to really come together, this was golden yellow.  The color is now applied only in the 'hot spots.'

Sunburst Yellow in even lesser quantities.

I did a layer that was a mix of Sunburst Yellow and Skull White in the very hottest spots.

I of course did the other side of the blade.  You can't quite see all of it due to the shadow but actually I think the lightning pattern was better on this side.

Finally I did some spots of pure Skull White since the mix was still too yellow.  It was literally only 3 or 4 spots.