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So after painting some models in a bright red, I've been trying for more of a dark red, wine, burgundy, or maroon armor scheme.
Base-painted images with VMC Black Red and VMC Dark Red:


I can shade the armor just fine to a darker red using a VMC Hull Red which looks great. However, when I try to airbrush a spot highlight, it either looks like a poorly transitioned white blot or, if color-mixed, pink.

Does anyone know of a decent tutorial or something on what colors can highlight well onto dark red or maroon without making it look too red-red?

Examples of what I want to achieve below:

Yep, you go to a pinkish shade on the edges, even whiter closer to top corners, and then spot the extreme top corners with just-off-white.

You've not shaded down nearly enough. Shade down with blue/black to keep it saturated, or black if you want to dull it slightly.

Highlight by adding tan yellow / bone colours to desaturate a bit, keep a bit redder if you want to keep it warm.


It's ALL about the contrast. The example marine you've shown is shaded down to just off black.

You could try mixing the red with some lighter flesh tones (try some of what you have available) for highlights. That should reduce the pinkness.

Yeah, it seems that pink->fleshtone->white seems to be the common way to shade red in general according to a bunch of videos. I was just apprehensive against using those colors considering I wanted a darker red.

winterdyne, thank you for the help especially. I guess so long as I maintain the primary colors to be maroon and dark red, the pink and ivory will show up more of a highlight and not an actual color on the model.

Time to experiment.

Found flat red a good highlight over deeper reds, possibly with a hint or orange

As above using pinks is fine as long as you keep the area small. Some of the vallejo reds are fairly glazey too which helps rescue it if you go too far.
My attempt