Shades, In perspective.

So it came to light (pun intended) this evening as a friend was visiting, that shades can make all the difference to a colour in some very subtle ways. The point arose when he sighted my Stormraven in progress and the blood red I had liberally coated it with, he then said to me "Why did you paint this model in a brighter red than the rest of of your army?"

Well I hadn't done so of course, what I had done or more like hadn't was paint the special grey blend over the slightly darker Codex Grey base coat. Now that grey is very close to white and when painted on next to the blood red makes the colour pallette look in proportion, but of course this trick has some very subtle uses in your own painting some of which im sure you already use without knowing it!

Now as you can see from this picture the two squares marked 'A' and 'B' appear to not only be different shades or saturation but drastically so! Well as you can see in this next picture that I have taken the liberty to modify that both the colours are in fact the same, not only that but the dark grey squares are in fact almost black!

So where does this leave us? Well not all of us can be masterclass painters, but many enthusiasts win awards and even the coveted Golden Demon with not to much more skill than us. What they have is a good understanding of the human eye and well... tricks of the light!

So take a moment and think to yourself, was that model you drooled over last time actually that well painted? sure I wont deny that some people slave over their work, and hell some people are just dumb lucky enough to be some sort of paintbrush savant, rocking backwards and forwards while they shit Tiffany cuff links but more often than not they have slaved over one detail on the model (usually the face or head) that catches the eye and filled the rest with the right shade to make the details they want "pop" from the mini!

So give it a try sometime, you dont need blue to make that yellow pop if the colours around it have a little touch of black mixed in, the shade will do the pop for you!

As always, Good Gaming!

Von Drakin