OK, so I am building a ship model right now- the Orca in 1/87. Until now I had not needed to consider this question in my modeling life -but how on earth are you making a faded red color? Is there a paint option? (Dunno, like Citadel “pale virgin blood” or whatever) How do you go about fading/lightening the red without making it pink? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Faded like this?
The Volvo is more evenly faded, the VW looks more like a streaked wash.
It’s not that far away from pink but mixing red and white may not be the correct way.
A red base with a white wash?
Drybrushing white over a red base?
Airbrush very diluted white over a matte red base?
Try on some scrap material first.
I’d start with Testors flat red. It’s a tad faded looking right off the bat. Then use filters (what it my day were called ultra thin coats) of faded red) until you achieve the look you want.
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Don’t use white to lighten the base color; try grey or tan instead. As previously stated, you could also just overspray with very highly thinned white, tan or grey. That’s a good way to control the amount of fading and also achieve uneven fading effects. I use that method on weathered armor to good effect.
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It’s a good question, brace for colour equivalent of rivet-counting but there may be a distinction between colour fading (as per Robin’s email above) and colour weathering.
With the former it’s changed shade, with the latter it’s just not as intense as when first applied. Your call which best applies to the Orca. If the latter though, I’d use a very fine abrasive sheet (800 or 1000) veeeery gently on the red so as not to go right through it to the primer (unless you want to in places), then rub in pastel chalk dust of (say light grey? khaki?) randomly.
Worth experimenting on something that doesn’t matter, certainly the last thing you want is 50 shades of pink.
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Dear Tim,
Thank you for the suggestion- I think both fading AND weathering are to be done, but the fading part is the most pressing. I will try your suggestion on a pratice part, and see how it works.
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To me faded red often looks like weathered red oxide primer so taking a look at NightShift - Red Oxide Ferdinand maybe of interest.
Basically, paint it black, do highlights and the fog in very thin coats of the red color. This allows a gradual color coat build up of varying intensity.
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