Hi,
I'd like to pick your brains about painting sweat on to my figures.
I'm painting a couple of 1/35th figures during the war in Vietnam & wondered if I could show their sweaty clothing around the neck & under the arms, etc.
What would be the best method to achieve this? I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Thanks.

Joe.

I'm not sure how visible "sweat" would be in 1:35. That being said; paint a slightly darker shade of the clothing base on the "sweaty" areas.

Wow! Really interesting Q, this!

I would think that sweat-darkening of clothing could be quite visible in 1/35 - all depends of course on what the fabric is and colors are! When I look at color pics from 'Nam or other sweaty places, the sweat-stains on those green utilities are often "obvious" - and the "figures" in the image on the screen may be an inch or 2 - so about "in-scale" for a 1/35 figure. But not so obvious on some other uniforms, where you just know the guy was dripping, but the fabric didn't show as much color-change under his pits...! This may be particularly true of woolens - where sweat may diffuse more or the fabric just doesn't discolor as much as that green cotton-blend of those 'Nam duds. I can tell you that my current field shirts (LL Bean cotton-blend khaki-colored things) show some "obvious" darkening when really sweaty.

Just my opine and observation, of course!

I would think some light oil wash of something like Mars Black or maybe burnt umber dabbed into the suspect area would work on a greenish or brownish uniform. It would create a local darkened shadow or patch.

Bob

Deffinatly a darker shade of your uniform color, so long as it's a one color uniform. For cammo, use a dark wash of black but very dilluted, you don't want it totally black, just a darkening. Just check yourself out after a sweaty day, almost everything turns darker when wet.

Thanks for your replies.
I'll have a go on my figures & let you know how I get on.

Joe.

I couldn't disagree more. Not sure which photos you have seen, but almost all of them I come across show very little sweat. I did find one or two in black and white that may disprove this. However, I am basing it on color photos at a 1/35 scale. If you want to paint sweat, you need to paint the entire uniform below the helmet and above the waist.
Pro sweat

No sweat

@Matt:

I admit to certain surprise!

I'm sure that you are not suggesting that sweat-stains don't occur or are not visible on folk's clothing at real scale. So... are you suggesting that these stains would not be visible at 1/35 scale? What about a wet stain or other dirt stain on a figure's knees? What about a figure of a G.I. wading a shallow stream? Maybe a line of such troopies across a small stream with someone up out of the water? Wouldn't you "wet" his lower pant-legs?

I'm no figure-expert. heck, haven't done any since the days of painting those lead and cast-metal things back from the '70s. My attempts were pretty plebeian, but my wet and soiled dreary Volksgrenadier from the Bulge still looked, well, stained and wet and dreary. But just because I wanted to depict his uniform rather soggy and stained doesn't mean anyone needs to do so - nor that mine was very convincing!

But now that this question has popped up, I'll be asking some of my more figure-centric pals in the club about their approach - if any - to this!

Cheers!

Bob

Hi Bob,
I'd love to hear what your figure guys from the club have to say.
Keep us posted mate!

Joe.

My club meeting is tonight and I'll be asking our figure guys the same thing.

Hi Matt,
I look forward to hearing what you find out, too!
Please let us know at your earliest convenince.

Joe.

The IPMS Region 6 (USA) show is happening this Saturday (15 SEP 12), "down the road from me" in Covington,LA. I'll be going and will take a more-careful look around in the figures and dios categories and will try to break into the figure-guy seances and see whatever someone might opine!

Bob

OK! Just got home from IPMS Region 6 Convention! I did get a chance to look at several nice figs in both stand-alone and dio / vignette contexts, and chatted with various figure guys about the stains and sweat issue.

Here's the "poop": There were no stand-alones showing clear staining or sweat. Some of the dio / vig figs were muddy and dirty, so...

In chatting with the "experten", I got a verbal expression of the split we see in apparent opinion right here. Some thought it not mostly worth their time, others thought it "obvious" to show those wet cuffs and pants, wet knees, and possible wet spots under arms. These latter all figured that the way to go was with dark washes, and also shared my notion on different fabrics looking different when wet - not just simple darkening.

So there you go! I think you should try it out and see if you like whatever look or effect you get. I'm actually thinking of trying a figure just to try this question on!

Bob

Hi Bob,
It would seem I've opened up a real can of worms with this seemingly innocent question!
Well, for me, I'm going to try it out & use some slightly darker colours than the uniform colour to see how it looks & go from there.
I'll let everybody know how I do.
I'm painting several heads at the moment so if anybody does try the sweat staining out before me then please let us know how you get on.

Joe.

Joe G.

It's an interesting question you have opened, for sure - no can of worms, IMO, but rather a very interesting extension of the interest and experiences we-all share and contrast in with "weathering" of our plastic panzers!

Actually, I'm very glad you brought this one up HERE - there's a figures page and threads, which probably most of us "do mostly vehicles, maybe bases, seldom figures" folks rarely visit - and over "there", this would likely ring deeply and widely... But the likes of me would never "hear" of this cool topic unless we had even more available time to browse yonder pages! As if we do!

So Thank You!

I'm Looking forward to see anyone's pics of trials and visits with this reality of being a soldier!

Bob

@JoeG
Was out of town this weekend, but had a chance to chew on some of our figure guys' ears about sweat and they were in agreement that anything under 70mm or so would be too out of scale and hard to show. What they did suggest was to use some full strength flat coat and let it dry leaving a chalky residue behind that would look like dried sweat. They also agreed that unless the figure only had one layer of clothing on, you generally wouldn't see the sweat. Hope this helps some.

Many good replies on the issue. But there are areas on a 1/35th scale figure that will show sweat or discoloration. One area that will show up is on a cloth hat depending on how often the wearer is in a hot hummid area. If you live in the mid western zone of the U.S. then you might notice that the ball caps we wear out at work show a wide area of discoloration, as sweat spreads out and leaves a stain. Some things like leather will leave a strip of whitish color stain from sewat, boots/belts ect. Cloth clothing which is hopefuly washed after one day will show none. During the wear in hummid weather a single shirt will usually show a darker area where it is moist from sweat. like around the arm pits, lower back where it tucks in and lower front. I guess it would just be up to the modeler as to whether or not to include this feature on the figures. Personally I would show it as it adds artistic flavor to the figure and conveys the hummid heat in the area of operation. For a sweaty face I might even try gloss coat over the finish, though I haven't tried it yet, I will try it on the marines I am doing now.