Advice on Painting Denim

[Mospaeda]

I'm starting an Ortega crew and want to know your best methods for painting denim. I usually use Vallejo and Citadel paints, occasionally the Privateer Press ones. Thanks!

[dapatrick]

I would start with a black and add successive bits of blue to the black mix until you have a really deep navy blue. I would then take a grey of about the same tonal value, not lighter, nor darker than the blue that you have down and water it down a bit so that it is thinner, but still holds together. I would then do tiny cross hatching on the higher areas where the light would hit it more.

After this was done I would do the slightest of blue washes over the whole thing to really pull the two tones together.

Hope that helped.

[rbiddle]

I did the opposite and was happy with my results on Lady Justice.

I started with a gray basecoat and then gave it a very heavy blue wash followed up by a fairly heavy 50:50 mix of blue/black washes and the finished it was a light black wash.

I thought he end result looked pretty good, but I may try the above suggestion and go from dark to light next time.

I'm not brave enough to do the cross-hatching for the details though; that's a bit out of my league.

[Berman]

Reaper Master paints.

Midnight blue -> drybrush heavily on Twilight blue -> lightdrybrush on Misty Grey

Gives a very nice denim coloring.

[macgowan]

Cross-hatching would work if you're trying to paint fishnets. Denim ridges all go one direction, and they are way to fine to try and paint on.. I'd have to second Berman; tried something like that years ago for Deadlands minis. Just make sure to do VERY light drybrushing on all layers. Especially lighten the butt and front of thighs, which get the most wear:

Crusty muddy brown looks good too.

Best way to make them look like denim is to outline the seams, if you can get the line thin enough.

Good luck!

Edited May 1, 2010 by macgowan

[Mospaeda]

Thanks for all the replies guys! And the picture too, Macgowan.

[RudyHuxxxtable]

A nice guy from Germany painted this Perdita up with denim.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/241104

I wrote to him to find out how he did it and this was his reply:

Concerning the jeans on Perdita: I used Bleu Abyssal from Rackham Color as base color. It is a very dark rich preussian blue (darker und more intense than regal blue from gw, but that would be the closest of their range) and I used bleached bone or something similar to highlight that color (might have been as well a mix of fauve and jaune parchemin - somewhat darker than bleached bone with a bit more of a yellow touch in it). I didn't bother too much with very clean blending (this created parts of that slight texture to the jeans), however I didn't do any 'drybrushing' - as you mentioned it tends to lead to somewhat 'random' results, instead I painted fairly thin lines with the tip of the brush and used a second slighty wet brush to smudge the start and ending points of these lines (you can usually somewhat erase paint if it is still fairly fresh ~ 1min). However the paint below should have been left to dry for ~5 minutes

So I'll be using that technique for practice and, if it comes out as good, probably for all time hehe!

[Melnibonean]

Off Topic - RudyHuxxxtable... That is an outstanding name and avatar. It gave me a good laugh. Thank you.

[RudyHuxxxtable]

haha! You're welcome, Melnibonean! Heh, Find me on Cool Mini or Not, too!

Jens, who painted the Perdita was super nice and answered a lot of my questions.

CMON is such a great resource for getting inspired, and inspired to paint better. If anyone hasn't heard of Cool Mini or Not, yet:

Cool Mini or Not

-Rudy

[EricJ]

I agree with Jens on a key point, he uses a highlight of bleached bone, not gray. The gray is usually neutral or bluish, while a bleach bone or tan has a more brown/yellow feel to it, which creates the nice contrast that you see in worn jeans between the dark blue denim, and the light tan/earthy tones of the other threads in the fabric. Remember, denim is fundamentally different than other cloths in that it's really made up of 2 types of threads which are very different colors, and this should be remembered when trying to paint worn denim, because you have to take into account the blues and the tans of those different types of threads. So while the highlights on most cloths are done with different hues of one color, denim works different to get to look just right.

My thoughts on it

[Melnibonean]

I'm reading some great advice here.

I'm a regular user of bleached bone (or equivillant) when toning downward. Some colours can take on the atributes of one of their pigments when toning down with white. I've found this for instance with purples. They tend towards pink when toned down with white and become muddy with grey. In my opinion bone works best in this instance.

[RudyHuxxxtable]

I agree with Jens on a key point, he uses a highlight of bleached bone, not gray....

Hey Eric, I actually wrote to you on CMON about the jeans by accident when I meant to write to you about the Viktoria model you painted. It was very early in the morning when I sent the two messages and I got em crossed!

The Viktorias look wonderful and I wanted to know what colors you chose for them, etc. They were inspiring.

More about the denim, though:

How, then, would you "shade the fade" for lack of a better term? Not bother because of the scale?