Hi all

Long time no post...

I am working on a 1/12 Airfix Beefeater (well, on and off) and having a bit of trouble shading and highlighting the red tunic. This is using Vallejo acrylics with a brush. I find adding flesh tone to the red works well on highlights but I am struggling to come up with a suitable shade tone. Black is wrong, if I use brown the red stops looking like red, and likewise if I use blue it changes the colour. What do others do?

I can only speak for oils, but the principles are the same.
Shading red is done with green.
Highlight is done with yellow.

Marc

if your using acrylics, use a dark red brown for shading and with a little black added for the deep creases. the highlights, I use red with a little yellow almost a yellow scarlett.
Hope that helps. or use these.


I can't speak for the AK set but I have used the Andrea set and have had good results

I came across this old post on PF, which you may find useful:-
http://www.planetfigure.com/threads/shading-and-highlighting-red.20246/

Cheers,
Andrew

Being an oil guy, I'm with Marc with shading using green to green+black. However, for highlighting I use W&N Scarlet or Flesh if I want a more faded/worn look

I cheat and do it with the airbrush then go in and tidy up with oils or acrylics depending on the size of the figure.

I used to mix in a bit or prussian blue with the red. The amount used depends on how much shadow you want with the transition from the darkest point to the outer lighter point. I now use the Andrea red paint set and although seems lazy everything works first time for me.

Cheers
Tommi

I use acrylics and have had success using dark green for shading. Bob

The difficulty with red is highlighting it without making it look faded or washed out.
I tend to start off using a darker shade than you'd expect for my 'base' shade. I then add red getting light as starting off darker gives me 'some where to go'. I hope this makes sense.
When shading I use Manganese Blue Hue.

When you mix the darker shade or lighter tint try to 'warm' the colour with a touch of brown or ochre . Shading and highlighting
red is always tricky so keep your shades and tints on the 'warm' side so they balance tonally against the main colour.

This isn't really relevant to 'Beefeaters' but I think it's worth remembering for other projects.... Humble rankers invariably
wore tunics of a different 'red' to Officers. The cheaper, inferior cloth used for their stuff tended to have a brownish caste - more
of a brick red compared to the Officers more scarlet tint.

I agree with Blind Pew in that mixing a darker basic colour is always advisable regardless what the colour straight from the tube or bottle is. Escpecially with red.

Working in oils (and painting mainly Ancient and Medieval subjects) a typical red would be composed of cadmium red to which (according to need) quantities of crimson, burnt umber, gold ochre or naples yellow are added. For highlighting I would probably add naples yellow but also a small amount of white. For dark shading quantities of green work best.