Shading & Highlighting Off-White/Lt. Grey

[Dan Morton]

I have an off-white winter uniform coat on a figure that needs to have shadow and highlight added.

The illustration I'm working from shows a combination of light to medium grey and tan shadows. The coat shows soiling, blood stains, bullet and sword cuts. The uniform has gold and red epaulettes and a belt of white and orange stripes. Brass buttons on the double-breasted coat. Some gold and uniform danglies. Cross of St. George (?) worn at the throat. There is a brown leather binocular case with a strap across the chest and back of the figure. The base will be earth tones and some wood. The figure is carrying a sword and scabbard. I'm painting with Vallejo acrylics.

I thought I'd basically follow the illustration's shading and highlighting, but that's going to mean that not really much of the coat will remain plain off-white. For shadows, light tan, light to medium grey. For highlights, it looks like a brighter shade of the off-white or maybe just white was used.

Any thoughts/suggestions on the shading and highlighting?

all the best,
Dan

 

[PJ Deluhery]

Hi Dan,

I can't really follow the description of your figure, but I am assuming you want a "warm white" with tanish shading.

If this is the case, I have had success (I"m an oil painter!) mixing yellow ochre with white to get sort of a light tan. I use this as the base color. For shading down I add more yellow ochre to the base color, for highlights, more white to get a very light tan. The final high is almost pure white.

Hope this is helpful.

 

[Dan Morton]

Well, you're right about the "warm white" or more accurately "warm very light grey shades of white". The illustration I'm working from [Osprey MAA 277 Russo-Turkish War 1877, Lt. Gen. Skoboleff, by Raffaele Ruggeri (one of my favorite Osprey illustrators!] shows the coat as off-white/very light grey with the grey and brown shades and brighter white highlights mentioned in the first post. See my vBench for pics of the figure and a small portion of the General's head. If you don't have the book, the General is on the cover and I believe the cover is still on the Osprey web site.

I've painted the entire head, the brown leather, and I've put a thin coat of Vallejo 820 off-white on the entire coat, but now I want to hear some advice before carrying this further. Would it help if I post the partly painted figure on my vBench?

I received an e-mail offline recommending an approach used by one of the master painters. This involved painting the shadows and highlights and then painting white or off-white on top of that. This sounds pretty strange to my novice ears, but I guess it might work with white as the top coat. Probably with no other color, but maybe with white. Opinions?

OK - painters what should I do?

all the best,
Dan

 

[Major_Goose]

I usually make a basic mix of White, some minimum prussian blue and also some earth color. Then bu adjusting the 2 darker colors u get the shadows and by adding some white and some drop of yellow u get diffferent shades of highlights till the final high that is total white. The basic mix can have some reddish brown or even some medium green inside, depending , the material, the time of day, the lighting, the reflecting enviroment around the figure and anything else. If u stare whites at real life the make unbelievable shades and highlights from total white to almost black and with many intermidiate coloratiosn. But bluish and grayish tints give nice options.