Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 6 The Blues - Jackets

For some reason I thought the jacket colors might be different but it seems like the only color photos I find have everything in blue denim. So more blue. the tricky part here becomes the need establish and maintain a blue jacket that is going to be a different blue from the overalls and cap.

To start things I off I went with Reaper's Nightmare Black (9280) which really seems to be very deep, dark blue. Now I need to tone it down with a different selection of blues than I used for the overalls and I think I want to lean towards a darker end result, the overalls ended up being a bit more "faded" than I was anticipating. Sometimes this is just a learn as you go process.

Its pretty dark but I like the contrast

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 5 The Blues - Overalls

Rather than post each successive layer I figured it would be better to just show the finished product.

Let's start the beginning though, and some of this is probably excessive, I pulled three blues from Reaper to work on these overalls. I'm keeping these all at the same level of "wear" just because I want to keep things simple. If I do another batch I'll try some fading.

Reaper Ezren Blue (89528), Ultramarine (9188), Ultramarine Highlight (9189) and Moonstone Blue (9317)

I started off with the Ezren Blue in the last post but I had to go back and paint the caps so it was one step back to catch that little detail.

Next was a 

50/50 mix of Ezren Blue and Ultramarine. I thinned this down a bit and covered most of the overalls and caps with this, trying to keep the Ezren visible in the darkest areas of shadow.

I followed that with Ultramarine with just a hint of the previous mix in it. I try to keep working the brush in in downward direction as I go. In theory, this should keep this base color away from our shadows. This is the midtone the base color for the overalls.

Working our way up is a 50/50 mix of Ultramarine and Ultramarine Highlight with just a hint of Ezren blue added. Again, I went from top to bottom concentrating on just the higher areas of the clothing at this point. I managed to get a little enthusiastic with this and went a bit deep. I made a glaze of the Ezren Blue and toned down this highlight. It also helped to deepen the shadows and basically pull all the colors back together. I repeated this highlight and didn't get quite so enthusiastic with it this time.

I followed this up with Ultramarine Highlight with a bit of the previous mix in it and just kept hitting the highpoints. I thought this would be the final but things were still looking a little dark so it was off to one more color.

I had Moonstone Blue nearby from doing the study in blue so I mixed it the the Ultramarine Blue for one last highlight using it on the highest points. 

They look a little rough but its time to move on I think.

At this point I'm finding the details on these miniatures to be a bit to fine. While I'm not a huge fan of exaggeration there is a point when exaggeration is absolutely necessary. While the folds in the clothing is excellent, any other "softer", "smaller" details are lost at this scale. In particularly all the definition in the face has been lost. A sculptor would be able to exaggerate facial features to give the face depth and character. Difficult at this scale but I have seen sculptors do some amazing things at this scale (I have also seen some abysmal failures).

Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 4 The Blues

Carol Highsmith photo from the Library of Congress

Sometimes you just come to a crossroads and you need to stop over thinking things and get some paint on the models. I picked Reaper Heather Blue (9231) for the base color on the shirt and Reaper Ezren Blue (89528).

I thinned them just a little bit and went to work. Pretty pleased with the result, the Ezren Blue dried a little darker than it was looking. Looks like a reasonable shade for newer denim. The Heather Blue isn't a bad start for a blue shirt color. I want to try a wash at this point, put haven't quite decided what color to use yet.

Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 3

A study in blue. I'm trying to figure out the next set of colors for the transition era clue and without a doubt blue is the color to use. Between shirts, jeans and overalls it all just screams to be some shade of blue.

I grabbed a bunch of Reaper paints and decided that the easiest way to figure it was to do some swatches. Here is what I came up with.

After all that, I'm still not sure what I'm going to use. I guess I'll study it for a bit.