Engine Glow - Help me resurrect a failure!

[aussiekirgan]

Hi All,
After a bit of counseling here if possible.
I've done a few smaller engine glows with no worries in blue.
My little kitbash here has a big-ass engine bit on it, and figured yellow would work better with the red. I'm wanting to have four main sources of thrust the 2 round bits and the smaller upper vents.

Sadly, I've not done well. I'd really appreciate a few tips of how to bring this back from the grave if possible - I know there is are many high caliber painters on here, sadly I haven't found any tutorials out there to make this a little more idiot proof (for me anyhow!)
Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks,
Rob

[Vaaish]

For engine glow I start by using pure white and fading it out as I get to the edges of the area I want to glow. The I just use very thin glazes of the glow color to build up more toward the edge. last of all I'll go back in with white to clean things up.

Just make sure your glow color is a high pigment, intense color like GW Doombull Red or Enchanted Blue or Sunburst Yellow or Goblin Green.

Colors with less pigment and color intensity don't work well for glows.

[mangozac]

Did you add the glows over the top of the red? It feels to me like the glow does not fade very well - it just stops with an abrupt colour change. The edges of the glow should gradually fade out to red. Perhaps red could be applied to the outer areas in a very transparent manner?

[aussiekirgan]

it was over black to begin with which probably didn't help..
i think i definitely will go for a few more soft shades to fill them out.
Cheers guys.

[mangozac]

Ahhh yeah I think that is one of the keys: you need to paint the glow over the top of the colour it's shining on. When you shine a yellow light onto a red surface the resulting colour will be more of an orange. Just as importantly though, areas of shadow will be more red. By drybrushing (or airbrushing) the glow colour over the top of the hull colour you create those kind of subtle effects.

So perhaps getting in there with some red will help things out a bit?