Saturday, October 20, 2012

Painting tip

Some random notes regarding colors…
Leather comes in many different shades, depending upon the tanner who processed any given piece (visit a leather shop, and you will see what I mean); I do, however, try to be consistent within a given army, assuming they all have the same tanner processing their leather garments.
If you employ any type of wash (The Dip; Magic Wash; etc.), the finished color will be darker than what you painted onto the figure in the first place, and this may cause it to darken beyond what you wanted! If you plan to apply any type of wash, bear in mind how it will affect the final shade: if it will darken it (pretty much always…), start with a lighter shade of the base color, understanding that it will darken with the wash.
For caucasion flesh/skin, I use "Sunflower" in the ArtCraft brand line. It turns out satisfactory to me, after I use my black Magic Wash (Future/Klear + black craft paint). You can try that for a starting point, and move on from that.
As mentioned before, a color wheel is a really good idea. They are around $6 USD, for a 6" model, at Michael's, in the States. Mixing your own shades is not terribly difficult to do, nor is it terribly difficult to achieve the same shade at a later time -- practice will show you just how easy it is. I mixed up a darker red for my Goblins' skin color (based on E.G. Gygax's 1977 AD&D Monster Manual description for one tribal color of skin), which I have since reproduced many times, on many different models. They all look about the same (even after the Magic Wash).
It is not as challenging as you may think. Experimenting does not take a lot of time, and you will find it quite liberating to be free from trying to always buy the "correct" paint color (companies change their product lines, so today's "Goblin flesh", may change, or disappear, in a few weeks, months, or years. Blending your own colors is the only way to be safe from the whims of the market. Cheers

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