hi all, for my next dio, its going to be my first vietnam dio, i am going to have us troops on patrol, however one of them falls into a "punji" trap, i am going to have the figures with a guy having the injured pnji trap guy over his shoulder, how would i have freshly painted blood, i mean i cantr just paint candy apple red on, i need something that would look real and likes it soaked into the uniform, all help is emmecly appreciated

matt

A word of warning to all : careless handling your X-acto knife can result in blood on YOUR uniform !

There were posts on this subject before. You may find them by performing a search on keywords 'painting blood".

From what I read in the past and my own experience, the candy red won't do the trick. Neither will the reddish browns of "dried" blood. The solution lies somewhere in between : bright red with a touch of brown. Just start mixing a few drops and see what you think of it. Smear a bit on your fingers (next to the accidental cut you just made with your X-acto) to compare.

Vallejo paints now have "gory red" as a separate color in their "game color" series.
Check your own paint jars collection first, though. Grab the reds and the browns, and start mixing a few drops of the one and the other, till the mixture pleases you.

Don't forget that the human body only contains about ten liters of blood. From this you can conclude two things :
- have that x-acto wound stitched when you are ready comparing colors. You may need some for other purposes.
- some modelers like to splash blood around vigorously. Don't. Try to use enough blood to make it clear that your soldier is wounded, but not too much so your model can't be mistaken for a victim of a horrible accident at the production line in Heinz" ketchup factories.

Matt:
I use Tamiya XF-9 Hull Red mixed with a little XF-7 flat read for blood on bandages. GF is correct mix it till it looks good to you but DO not use 1960s Hollywood movies as a reference!!!

I'm no colour expert, but I CAN give you one advice : DON'T OVERDO IT !

Go to a red-brownish colour instead of using a plain red colour....I find a lot of modelers using bloodcolours that are way too red.

Just my two cents.

Ola Matt

My suggestion is that you Mix the green of the Nam era uniforms with red or brown. So it gets darker. This is only a suggestion as I have never painted an injured soldier, but when a guy gets wounded the blood will soak it`s clothes. So I think a Mix of Green and Red (or brown) will result in an almost black if not a really dirty version of brown wich I think is ok for showing blood on a fig

I would go for Model Master Enamel "British Crimson". It is the darkish red, and it looks pretty real.

~Chip :-)

I like using Tamiya clear red and smoke mixed about 50/50 for blood on uniforms and that mix over a little hull/mineral red for blood on bandages

For wet/fresh blood on skin, I use the hull/mineral red with a little bit of the clear red over the top.

my US$0.02 before whopping upper class tax cut.

Mike

Do you know "warhammer"?? well, they have some great paints and I use "Red wash" and "Brown wash". 2/3 you use the Red wash, 1/3 the Brown. If you do it the right way you will get a nice dark blood color.

Laurens

already said by the above buddies , the rules for blood painting are a must :
dont over do
dont make a splatter around the injured guy cause there is never much blood around the point unless the body is left for long time to empty the "bottles".
when blood comes in touch with clothes will darken enough the clothe colour, so the usually seen tomatoe red painted over the uniform is all wrong
Lively coloured blood can be seen on fles parts as face or hands but this also as it goes dry will darken enough
The blood does not always come out like a fountain from a certain spot but blurrs a whole area around the wound
if another guy handles the wounded he will have some blood stamps on him also , and if he treated the wound will have blood on his hands.
could say more but i think that with experimenting you will make it much better.. so have a nice try and shows us

Hi,
The only thing I would add to the above is that the average human has 9.5 - 10 pints of blood, not litres. I'm not trying to be picky, but it is a big difference. Also blood will "spurt" if a main artery is severed, but I don't think we need to go into that detail for 1/35 scale and below :-)

HTH
Sam

Sam, the only pints we know are a volume to measure beer, not blood, so I can't really compare. A 75 kg person holds 5.7 liters of blood. Without giving away my own weight, I can assure you that the volume comes close to 10 liters. Except after unfortunate x-acto incidents...

If the idea would cross your mind: don't use REAL blood to paint your models (not even someone else's). Once dried, it will start to look unnatural for your wounded model soldier.