highlighting camo

[primus]

How do you highlight camo uniforms? Do you highlight the most seen color? For example you have to highlight german WW2 figure in spring camo; there are three colors on his uniform- so how do you decide which color to highlight or to darken? I hope you understand my problem.

 

[Christos]

I shade and highlight the basic colour first.I place the secondary colours of the camo and then I deal with each colour seperately.The lights and shadows of the basic colour will lead you to do a proper painting on the smaller parts of the camo.It depends also from the size of the figure but I deal with each colour seperately.

 

[primus]

thank you Christos!

 

[Einion]

Hi Primož, what scale are you working?

Einion

 

[primus]

Hello Einion! The scale is 1/35

 

[thegoodsgt]

The real challenge in my experience is to shade and highlight using subtle colors so that the shadows and highlights don't look like their own, distinct colors within the camoflage.

 

[Einion]

Highlighting and shadowing each colour individually is the best method overall but in small scales it can really be almost impossible to do, luckily 1/35 scale is just small enough that you can use a single highlight colour and a single shadow colour and get pretty decent results with most camo patterns, if you pick the two paints carefully.

Stefan Müller-Herdemertens's method, which is of this type, is explained with some pictures in Tony Greenland's armour book, using a light 'warm' grey for highlighting and a sepia for the shadows. I don't remember which two paints exactly (they might be in a prior thread if you want to try a search) but the exact ones aren't important since one can mix something yourself and use that, and you may not be using oil paints anyway.

Try a light mix of white, yellow earth and dark brown for the highlighting colour, black + brown or black + green for the shadow colour and work slowly and carefully with a fine brush, see how you do.

Einion