Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Say you are doing 3 colors for a highlight, what do you think is the best percentage of brightness to add to base each time? or what do you think is the best?

Thanks all.

Also, is it normal that i am doing various types of highlighting instead of just 1 type on a model?.

Like for e.g Glaze blending / edge highlighting, layering etc etc etc


Thanks, all.

Colour really doesn't work that way.
Sorry to seem unhelpful.

It's perfectly fine to highlight with different techniques on the same model.

Colour mixing when it comes to painting is not a science you can really work out with mixing quantities and ratios. I do all my mixing by eye and by feel. It's much more of an organic process for me. A good place to start is to take your base paint and go down to black for shadow, and up to pure white for highlight. This will get you used to layering down your tones and shades.

Not to mention the little problem that no two paints are exactly alike in pigment strength and density. A perfectly reasonable highlight mix for one color could be totally washed out for another, and barely changed at all for a third.

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
Colour really doesn't work that way.
Sorry to seem unhelpful.

It's perfectly fine to highlight with different techniques on the same model.

Sorry i dont understand what you mean when you say "color doesn't work that way", what are you referring to exactly?


And thanks for all the help every one, i get it now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Colour mixing when it comes to painting is not a science you can really work out with mixing quantities and ratios. I do all my mixing by eye and by feel. It's much more of an organic process for me. A good place to start is to take your base paint and go down to black for shadow, and up to pure white for highlight. This will get you used to layering down your tones and shades.

Yeah, and i assume you are saying just mix the percentages that feel right until i get used to it. But i get it now.

Thanks for your help Anne and Every one on Dakka.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vulcan wrote:
Not to mention the little problem that no two paints are exactly alike in pigment strength and density. A perfectly reasonable highlight mix for one color could be totally washed out for another, and barely changed at all for a third.

Cheers mate.

I mean, how are you planning on measuring this? Do you have access to a spectrophotometer?

Got to be easier to just follow recipes for base/shade/highlight from the GW paint app or website while you're learning...

I would prefer to mix my own paints my self then spending the extra money. So i am sort of trying to add the same brightness that GW does by eye and feel like Queen Annes Revenge said.

But was hoping people could tell me what generally they would do, but what anne said makes sense so its all good.


Thanks !!

Learning to mix is a much better way to paint than relying on the gw paint system, which is partly just another technique to get you buying more of their products. There are plenty of colour charts online that will show you the results of various paint colour mixes.

Thats what thoughts i had anne. And yeah, i highlighted this Skull for example, and managed to get it to look the right brightness that makes sense with the bright metallics i had next to it by just using the feel of my eyes etc, so yeah thanks heaps!!



Thanks!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have another question.

Can some one remind me why its not correct to highlight or shade using just thinner and or different amounts of coats of the same color instead of actually changing the color with more brighter or darker tones of paint.

I cant remember why its important or what ever, some one said why, but i cant remember.

 Stormatious wrote:
Can some one remind me why its not correct to highlight or shade using just thinner and or different amounts of coats of the same color instead of actually changing the color with more brighter or darker tones of paint.

I cant remember why its important or what ever, some one said why, but i cant remember.

Because you just won't get much of a highlight. If you did a sufficiently dark wash across the entire surface the first highlight step will likely be reapplying the original base color over most of the surface, but even with extremely thin and translucent coats you're going to have a hard time building up much contrast because the color you're using is so close to what's already on the model. And to get your layers that thin you're probably going to have trouble with the paint being diluted too much and starting to separate or go on as a patchy mess. Using the conventional approach of highlighting with brighter and brighter shades of the original color makes it much easier to get the range you need, and TBH it's so much more straightforward that there's no reason to do it the other way.

You can do something like that, IF you are using very thin coats over a dark base color. But the coats have to be thin enough that the dark base shows through, otherwise you're just painting the same color over and over again and not building up any highlights.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:
Can some one remind me why its not correct to highlight or shade using just thinner and or different amounts of coats of the same color instead of actually changing the color with more brighter or darker tones of paint.

I cant remember why its important or what ever, some one said why, but i cant remember.

Because you just won't get much of a highlight. If you did a sufficiently dark wash across the entire surface the first highlight step will likely be reapplying the original base color over most of the surface, but even with extremely thin and translucent coats you're going to have a hard time building up much contrast because the color you're using is so close to what's already on the model. And to get your layers that thin you're probably going to have trouble with the paint being diluted too much and starting to separate or go on as a patchy mess. Using the conventional approach of highlighting with brighter and brighter shades of the original color makes it much easier to get the range you need, and TBH it's so much more straightforward that there's no reason to do it the other way.

Hey Peregine, thank you so much. Yeah i was trying to get it to make sense in my head and needed a reminder from some one like your self to know why what your saying make sense.

So im glad you have that issue cleared up for me, thank you so much, have a great day and night!!!!!,


Stormatious.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vulcan wrote:
You can do something like that, IF you are using very thin coats over a dark base color. But the coats have to be thin enough that the dark base shows through, otherwise you're just painting the same color over and over again and not building up any highlights.

Im assuming you're saying, you can do it, but really it would look more natural and better if i did what peregrine is saying and actualy used a different shade / highlight.

Because i have done it. And yeah it looks fine ( only because i added a red/ purple glaze to make it more colorful ). But before that it definityl looked way too bland and was missing some thing, so yeah what peregrine is saying definitly makes sense now. I just wanted to re confirm this to make sure etc etc.

Thanks!