dark blue

[scooterdog]

I am painting a napoleonic engineer of the guard. I would like some suggestions on the dark blue uniform. The base coat will be in acyrlics, highlights and shadows in oils.

Also, any info on there duties or involvement in engagements would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Chris C.

 

[megroot]

Chris i think you are mixing some things.

First when you have cleanup your figure, remove the mouldline's if there are some, you got to prime your figure.
After the primer is dry you put acrylic paint on the figure as close to the colour you want. You do this because oilpaints are opaque. Not all of them.
The base coat is the colour of the paint you putting over the acrylic paint an that is in your case the blue paint.
Windsor & Newton has a great Napoleonic blue. Use that for your base coat.
To darken (shadowing) the blue you can use a complementaire colour. I am a stupid men because i always must look in my book. I thougt it was red (or is it orange). With red you can darken the blue. Put some tinny spots red on the deepest folds of your figure and with a dry brush you paint the red into the blue so that you have a smooth transition between the shadow and the base colour.
To highlight you can put some white on the blue, but better is some naples yellow. The blue is gonna look something weathered. You do the same as with the shadows.
I hope this make sense to you.
Really hope that Einion is reading this, because he can correct me with the red.

Marc

 

[Mark Mindeman]

Hi, Chris!
You might try an acrylic base coat of (50-50) of black and a dark blue.
I have found success in oils using a mix of Ivory Black and Prussian Blue (4parts black to 1 part blue) and highlight with titanium white with a touch of your blue/black mix.
Keep Painting!
Mark

 

[Blind Pew]

Chris, welcome to the madness mate!

Blue, especially dark blue has been the bane of figure modellers since the hobby started. This is principally because the blue can end up shinier than a very shiny thing that's just been shined by champion shiner.

This is even more so if the figure is rendered in oils, which is why many modelers have jumped ship into the current trend of using acrylics, which are dead matt.
I use oils myself, and have (had to) become almost obsessional about keeping the colurs matt where they need to be.
What I do is the stick the paint onto a piece of paper or card. This will suck out the excess oils in there, you'll see a stain develop around the paint after a couple of minutes. Whilst this is happening I make orange and do the same with this as well. Marc rightly points out that as the opposite of blue, it make the blue darker. When I'm ready I mix the two. This gives a VERY dark blue, which I sometimes add Windsor & Newton's matt medium to. I then brighten the shade to the colour I'm after and go from there.
Oh, and I undercoat in matt black as well.

All this seems like overkill I know, and it's no wonder people go for other paints. But this works for me......
Have an experiement and enjoy the process while you're at it, that's the main thing

 

[Mack]

First of all my base is the acrylic napoleonic blue from the Andrea's range, it is absolutely more and more matt than the Valleyo's one.
Then for the blue oil tone I use the indigo from W&N or from Schmincke thinned a little with petroleum essence and in this way I can guarantee you that the final result will be a matt one. For the hihglights you can use the base colour plus a flesh tone that gives a good blue-grey colour and for the shadows the indigo plus black or directly the blue black from W&N.
Good work.

Marco