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As the title says, I'm wanting any and all tips on how to paint Navy Blue Cloth. I'm starting on a regiment of British Light Dragoons from the 1808-1814 Peninsular War, and I'm really struggling with how to get the Navy to 'Pop'. Currently, my attempts really lack the definition and being a dark cloth, I'm not sure how to go about getting the cloth to jump out at you, but stay the correct shade.

Just for reference, this is the type of blue I'm referring to (Apologies for the large images ):




(Not my work unfortunately ^)

Should anybody be able to assist me in reproducing this shade of blue, I'd be much obliged.

I've been looking at vallejo's colour chart (please note that the chart colour does vary from the real paint!) and 4 colours you should look at are; 899 Dark Prussian blue 965 Prussian Blue 925 Blue 930 Dark Blue.
The model looks like it has been basecoated with a mix of navy and black with successive layers of navy with a lighter blue added,and to be honest the extreme highlights look like Ultramarine blue. There is only one company I know off that does a really dark navy blue(it is dark,I've got it!) and that is Gamecraft's miniature paints which are available from Ralparthaeurope.co.uk
I would also drop an email to Wargames Foundry and tell them what you need and see if they can help,or even Perry Miniatures.

I think the trick to painting dark colours but still having them pop is to highlight them with quite bright or pale colours, but make sure the majority colour is still dark. So focus on fine highlights.

It would help if you showed a picture of what you currently have though, it's hard to make suggestions if we don't know what you're currently doing and why you're not happy with it.

@ Slipstream - Thanks for the suggestions. As I've only got Citadel colours to hand, having never ventured into other companies ranges, could you suggest which of the citadel paints are closest to the ones you've mentioned? Simply Kantor Blue, moving up through the blues?

@AllSeeingSkink - Unfortunately, I've not got a decent Camera or light-box, so I'm unable to show you how far I've got so far. That said, it wouldn't really be much use showing how far I've got, as it'll be entirely re-done anyway. Thanks for the advice regardless, I shall take on board the advice of final highlights making the colour pop.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
@ Slipstream - Thanks for the suggestions. As I've only got Citadel colours to hand, having never ventured into other companies ranges, could you suggest which of the citadel paints are closest to the ones you've mentioned? Simply Kantor Blue, moving up through the blues?

I usually use the paint range comp chart here on dakkadakka to check which colours are rough matches to eachother. http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Paint_Range_Compatibility_Chart
Hope this helps a bit.

I think you want to use a light grey or light blue-grey as a highlight rather than a lighter blue, using a lighter blue as your highlight will certainly make it pop, but I think it will look too cartoonish.

I don't own Kantor Blue so I can't really help you there to know if it's the colour you want.

If you take that image (the 2nd one) you posted in the OP and open it in an image editor and use a colour picker to see what colours the original painter used, you can see they're all rather greyish blues. It's a pretty common thing to do with historic models, adding grey to mute the colours and making them look more gritty and realistic rather than pure colours which can look a bit comical, especially at scale on a static model.

There is also something called "scale effect". Where if you take the historically correct colours and paint them on a downscaled model, the further down you go they'll look deeper than they should. Modellers compensate by adding small amounts of typically light grey or white to fade colours at reduced scales. That may not be important to you, but I thought I'd mention it since you're painting historic models you may find that a paint that is supposedly a match ends up too dark.

http://www.cybermodeler.com/color/scale_effect.shtml

@Alathia - Thanks I'll check that out

@AllSeeingSkink - It's funny you should mention the fade. It's hard to put into words, and in the absence of a camera I can't really show you, but the main problem I'm finding is that the Citadel colours are actually too pastel. The regiment I'm trying to paint, the 11th Light Dragoons, went out to Spain in 1811. By the time of the period I'm painting them to represent, they'd not even been in the theatre for a year - so their uniforms would have been relatively fresh. However, the citadel colours aren't giving me the correct saturation - as I say more of a pastel shade. If you can picture, the final highlight should be around the shade of an Ultramarines armour. However, the new 'Altdorf Guard Blue' (aka old Ultramarines Blue') winds up as more of pastel sky blue - it lacks depth.

Currently, my scheme is 50:50 Kantor Blue:Abaddon Black, then Pure Kantor Blue. Then possibly 2-3 shades of Kantor Blue with Altdorf Guard Blue mixed in increasing quantities. Finaly, I go pure Altdorf Guard Blue. However, it just still doesn't pop :(

Yeah unfortunately I don't use many of GW's current colour range so I have no idea what those colours you are talking about look like

In general if the colours you are using lack saturation, the only option is to buy new colours. You can dull a colour down, but if it's not vibrant enough then you can't really do much.

You can also have the problem that the colours you are using (Kantor and Altdorf) are maybe different hues? (I don't know without looking at them) So that when you try and shade/highlight that aren't giving you the effect you want.

But are you sure lack of saturation is your problem? Because the 2nd image in your original post the colours aren't very saturated at all. Load that image up in an image editor and check the colours and you can see most of them would be described as "blue-grey", not "blue".

Vallejo's Model Color range has a few reasonably saturated blues of varying tone.

@AllSeeingSkink - Perhaps you are right. I think the best course of action at the moment is simply to muddle through and try a variety of methods. If I'm still not happy, I'll perhaps move to a different paint range. I think I'm possibly being a bit too picky and, considering all information on period uniforms is 2nd hand anyway (Owing to a lack of colour photography), I think 'next-best' will be good enough. Many thanks for your all your help AllSeeingSkink - I shall be sure to give it some thought.