Learn How to Use Liquid Green Stuff the Right Way (Tutorial)

Liquid Green Stuff is one of the best technical “paints” (not sure what else to call it), that Games Workshop has produced. In the old days when we had to fill in gaps we would mix up traditional Green Stuff, or whatever your preferred medium was, and smash it into the gaps and then work on blending it into the model.

It wasn’t terribly hard if you were working on a tank or something with large flat areas, but if you were working on small, fiddly infantry then it could be a huge pain. For example, these Bloodletters I’m working on I figured would be a great showcase for Liquid Green Stuff and how to use it.

I’ll walk you through the process of filling in gaps with Liquid Green Stuff. There’s a few simple trick to using it to get great results and that’s what I’ll show you.

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The Models

I personally find the Bloodletter kit to be a bit of a chore. There are a lot of parts for something so simple and despite the fact it’s only supposed to go together one way, the fits aren’t always perfect. Here’s a shot of the five Bloodletters I’m working on.

You can see the infamous gaps where the two parts of the head goes together. On the backside you can see some gaps where the legs join the torso. Try as I might, this always happens to me when building these guys. Enter Liquid Green Stuff to fill in those gaps.

Enter Liquid Green Stuff

You can pick up Liquid Green Stuff in a local gaming store if they carry the Citadel line of paints, or you can find it online at places like Amazon.

First of all the only thing you need beyond the Liquid Green Stuff is a brush. I would recommend an old brush, but one that’s not all frayed. You want control but you don’t need precision.

Time to Do Some Gap Filling

Make sure you’ve shaken up the Liquid Green Stuff, and then dip in your brush. You want to load it up and get a glob on the end, but not too much. You can always get more as you need it, but starting off with too much to begin with can be messy. Plus, you will do this process a few times, and build it up instead of getting it nailed the first time; at least in most cases. The idea is to make this seamless and that’s far easier by building up thinner layers.

First I glob (super technical term here) the Liquid Green Stuff into the gap. I had to do this a few times to get the gap filled as you see it here.

Smoothing it Out

Once I’m satisfied with that, I then clean off the brush. I wipe off the excess water but don’t thoroughly dry it. I want the brush a bit wet for blending in the Liquid Green Stuff. You don’t want the brush so wet that water runs off it when blending, just moist.

I blend by placing the brush below the gap I filled and pulling down gently. The brush should glide, and not be so firmly on there that it just removes the Liquid Green Stuff.

I do this all along the gap, and with the wet brush it thins out the Liquid Green Stuff the further from the gap. I then do the same above the gap: wet brush, pull from the gap upwards to thin it out.

Next I clean up the part over the gap since it’s a bit globbed on there. I start by pulling the brush towards the gap’s high point.

See, the lower half of the head (face), sits a bit higher than the upper half so I want to pull towards that point, and in turn move the excess Liquid Green Stuff into that point. So, I place my wet brush above the gap on the upper half of the head and gently pull down towards the face over the gap.

I then went ahead and did the same on the backside.

Aside: It’s worth noting that having a good hobby light helps a lot with this process. When you’re dealing with a crack that’s maybe a millimeter, it’s not easy to tell if you’ve got enough Liquid Green Stuff in there, or maybe too much. Of course, a good light is something you want in general for this hobby too.

Letting it Dry

I’ve found the drying time for Liquid Green Stuff to be only about 5 minutes; sometimes less, depending on how thick you’re putting it on. For what I am doing here, 5 minutes to dry is plenty.

Once the Liquid Green Stuff dries, it looks like this.

Repeat & Rinse

The first layer isn’t bad, but there’s still a gap there, so I go back and repeat everything I already did to build up another layer. The Liquid Green Stuff will shrink some when it dries so this is expected.

After that second layer it’s close, but not quite done, so I do a third layer.

Much better!

I also had to do three layers on the back until I was happy with it.

On the back I’m less concerned with a perfect smooth transition from torso to the butt. The model is moving and there will be natural crease there from the movement, so I really just want to make sure the gap itself is filled. The head though, there’s no reason for that gap I was filling so I wanted a much cleaner transition there.

Priming the Model & Fixing Gaps

Now that I’m happy with the gap filling it’s time to prime it. Priming the model is where the real test is. Once everything is a single color you can see how the blending worked out.

Here is the Bloodletter primed. It looks pretty good from this angle.

Then when you look at the side you can see a small gap still. Normally this is something I would be OK with. It’s not going to stand out once the model is painted, but for the sake of this tutorial I’ll show you what you can do at this point.

As I’ve been doing, I fill in the gap, smooth it all out and let it dry.

Re-priming the Fix

Since I spray primed the model, I don’t want to re-prime the entire thing for this small section. So, I use a brush on primer for the area. I use the GW Imperial Primer, but any brush on primer will do. All I do now is prime over that area and it’s done.

Here it is complete.

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It’s not quite perfect still, and if I were being really picky then I would keep at it. However, like I said, once this guy is all painted up it will look fine. He’s one model in a larger unit of really cheap troops. So, I don’t plan to spend an hour on it. Still, it’s looks way better than when I started.

Pot Drying Out Annoyance

The one big downside to Liquid Green Stuff is that the pot will dry out on your – without fail. It doesn’t matter how well I take care of the pot, how tight I close that lid, it always dries out on me. Generally it takes a few months after opening, so be forewarned.

Conclusion

I know it might seem like a lot of work repeating the process over and over. However, once you get good with it then it only really takes around 30 seconds each layer. If you work on a group of models at once, like the unit I showed, then once you get to the last model then first model will be nearly dried, and you can just run down the line again.

Going the traditional method of Green Stuff gap filling would let you get it right in one sitting. However, then you have a longer dry time before you can prime, and usually excess Green Stuff that gets wasted. Both methods have their use, and I find Liquid Green Stuff to be great for small organic things like this.

Liquid Green Stuff is on my list of must-have hobby supplies. You should see what else is on the list. The article covers everything from the things you really need to have, as well as some upgrades for down the road to make hobbying easier. You may find something you hadn’t thought of.

I also have a great article on the painting supplies you’ll need, seeing as once you got that model prepped it’s time to paint it, right? Same idea as the modeling one where it has the basics you need, and also stuff you don’t need but is damn nice to have.

I hope you found this useful. I enjoy doing these tutorials so if you have something in mind please let me know.

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