Hola !

Working on painting Black fabric uniforms for Panzer crew... Any Ideas about highlighting/washing black? Tried white or grey but it doesn't look very convencing.

Any Ideas would help...
Thanks

Hola!

The trick in painting blacks are to paint the base mix an off black. I usually mix my blacks with flesh tone for the base coat, making it a nice dark gray. Then I build the highlights up with more flesh added to the mix, and for the shadows I use same mix just with more black and leave the pure black for the deepest shades. Hope this is of some help.

Selrach,
Anders is correct. You really cant just start off with straight black and then add white to lighten it. I use vallejo paints, and there are several different shades of black in that line. I like to use there black grey for high lights and another dark grey. I aslo heard of guys mixing blues in with the black or just using dark blues. This is not a WWII german figure, but it does use the blacks I mentioned. I hope it helps out a little bit.

one leg at a time?... sorry I could not resist...

LOL Delbert

I'd rather have a beautiful lady trying to take mine off

LOL Del, But which leg first ??

Ok, I see what I'm doing wrong now, I should start with a not so black color?
Thanks for the input everyone :-) Gives me something new to consider and try .

Thats why I love this site

The drinks are on me

Another thought about the "black" panzer uniforms... first, black is one of the fasted fading colors there is in cloth. Within a few washings they begin to actually turn brownish-black.

I have a friend (Shawn Southern) who owns an EXTENSIVE collection of WWII uni's, from around the word. These are displayed on mannakins in his den, under good "Natural Color Bulb" lighting. He has two Panzer uniforms from the French (officer with the funky slouch beret) and Polish campaigns (NCO with soft field cap), and both are dark black near the seams, collar, and cuffs, but everywhere else, looks like a charcoal to dark-chocolate color. The trim is a dark salmon color pipping.

With this in mind, i now do my priming in PURE BLACK, then mix medium brown with EBONY BLACK (a slightly brown tint of black) to make my BASE coat. Myhighlights are created using a tan mix with black. In this way, i most closely get what I have actually seen with my own eyes.

Awhile back I read in Fine Scale Modeler to mix in some blue-dark I think to the black for when you go to drybrush I haven't tried it yet I'm still trying to work up the courage to build and paint some figures