Okay, well that's quite a red-orange, and will need a little colour mixing I think.
I would start with a good basecoat colour, shade down, and then highlight up.
1) Vallejo Game Colour Hot Orange with a little Elf Skintone added. It may look a little bit pastel-coloured, but it will cover better over dark colours. Thin your paint down about half-and-half with clean water, and apply several coats to get a solid colour. Make sure these are fully dry in between layers, and note that you'll probably need something like three thin layers. You can use a small hairdryer set to a cool heat to speed this up.
2) Mix some Hot Orange with matte medium and glaze medium in a 2:1:1 ratio, and add some water to get a runny mix. Glaze over the banner, letting it pool just a little under the folds in the flag. Let this dry on its own, but after ten minutes you can use the hairdryer again if it's still tacky.
3) Repeat (2).
4) Add a little bit of Hexed Lichen to the Hot Orange glaze above. I'd put a little spot on the palette, and then add it in tiny amounts with the tip of the brush to get a nice deep orange-brown. This needs to be thin, so you may need to add a bit more water again. Glaze into the folds to achieve the darkest tone.
5) Return to your original Hot Orange and Elf Skintone mix, and add some matte medium to make thicken up the paint a bit but still keep it translucent. Using this mix, start your highlights.
6) Add a little more Elf Skintone and matte medium to the mix in (5), and add do a pass of small highlights.
7) After (6) has properly dried, you may want to do another pass with the same mixture, but keeping the highlights very small where the creases and folds are prominent or sharp.
Using the matte medium stops the paints getting too runny, gives you a totally matte finish, and still lets you paint transparent layers easily.
As an aside, adding matte medium to colours can make them look a bit brighter initially. As the matte medium dries over 24h, it gets more transparent and can leave the colour steps emphasised a bit more than you intended. I would therefore advise mixing the plain paint colours first, and
then adding in the medium. You may also want to add a touch more shading or highlighting the following day if you feel it needs it.
If you feel that the orange needs to be a bit more yellow, you can either add a touch of yellow to the Hot Orange, or you can apply a really thin glaze of Yellow Ink and matte medium at the end (1 ink: 1 matte medium: 4 water, and don't let this pool anywhere!).
A quicker and dirtier method would be:
1) Apply hot orange to get an even coat. Maybe two slightly-thinned layers.
2) Shade with Sepia Ink
3) Shade again with Sepia Ink, mixed with a
tiny dab of Violet Ink.
4) Highlight with Hot Orange.
5) Highlight with Hot Orange mixed with a little Elf Skintone.
I think that the first method gives you smoother colour transitions and better control, but the second method may suit your painting style better and allow you to get a good colour contrast quickly.
Hope this helps you!
18 January 2007, 12:11:00 PM
