Author Topic: Painting uniform cloth with an airbrusch and more thoughts on paint  (Read 1951 times)

Offline GHE

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Messieurs !

Painting uniform cloth with an airbrush in 1/32 ?
As I experimented with Tamiya acrylics (flat) and Tamiya flat base to get a dead-flat look I noticed that the flat base does to the acrylics what in the heyday of Punk music was done to jeans by using oxydative toilet cleaners...
Depending on the amount of flat base the cloth colour will look used and worn out and above all: dead-flat .
To give shadows you may pre- paint the figure in a darker colour of the same hue or any other matching darker colour.
The colour-stream does not flow into the wrinkles of the cloth and if you do not airbrush intensively you may easily control
the shadow effect.

Enamels with paintbrush
To get a really flat look take out paint of the un-stirred (!) can via a tooth-stick, put it on a glass surface / porcelaine surface
(I use egg- cups ) and dilute them not with the dilute that comes with the can but with petrol used for filling cigarette lighters.
After a short while you will have to re-thin since gas evaporates fast.
This gives flat enamels a real flat look.

Semi-flat look
To get a semi-flat surface look you may polish the surface (leather boots for ex.) via Q-Tips, cloth etc. . This in some cases does give a more authentic look than using semi-flat colours and you can show wear and tear.
Especially cool on leather* items and barrels and  other metal items.
*The pro on this is that the flat part stays in the wrinkles and the polished part  are the highlights
Texture
In the digitalisized movie world programmers work hard to get the right texture to an object.
This is what a modeler also strives for: the "right" look of cloth. metal items (for ex.: a canteen), leather etc. .

In real life everyone instinctively knows what material an item is made of by subconciously judging the surface impression.
One may say one even "feels" the material more than actually "seeing" it.
Experience and knowledge may blend in subconciously, too.
If you see a Sopwith Camel and a Bf 109 side by side: both have a painted fuselage but you "feel" that the Camel is made
of fabric and the Bf of sheet aluminium.
An olive drabbed Sherman tank automatically looks hard'n'heavy, an olive drabbed wooden chair does not - unless you stumble over it.... - even a pink painted tank gives you the feeling of hard steel underneath the paint.

On an object differences in surface sheen will make it look right, even more than the 100% exact historic hue.

Paint
Flat paint is a relatively new invention.
Before and well after 1914 there weren't any real flat paints available due to the bases used (linseed oils etc.).
Real items  like steel helmets, artillery pieces, painted canteens or wooden ammunition boxes do not really look flat but
semi - flat.

Fabric
Semi-flat, glossy or flat in look ?
The Rumpler /see the photos at the forum showed matt cloth, the restored Fokker D. VIII had a glossy look .
Hard to tell !

Uniforms
Cloth always should look real flat; a sheen will make a figure look toyish.
Examples of Sheperd Paine quality figures I saw always showed real flat cloth.

Colour
What attracts the eye first will be the qualitiy of the paint job - not how tiny details are made but the whole impression of
an item.
Only afterwards thoughts on the skillful work will come to the mind.

bizz bald, Gunther
« Last Edit: October 09, 2012, 03:56:44 AM by GHE »
LZeppelin rocks!