PAINTING GRAY WITH COLOR

For this experiment, I am painting Gandalf the Gray, from Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings line.

I wanted to paint the overcloak a different, lighter, gray than the inner robes and hat, and I had two different ideas of how to go about painting gray, so I decided to try one method for the overcloak and the other for the inner robes and hat. The two are opposite methods, meaning their base and shadow colors compliment each other. Putting them together, therefore, on the same figure, turned out to be a mistake, but I learned a lot about gray, and came up with a formula I plan to use again on future pieces.

Overcloak:

Base color:  orange + gray = dull brown Shadow:   teal + little black = dark teal Highlight:   white + gray = very light gray   I am very pleased with the way this looks.  It has enough color to bring it to life, while still maintaining an overall impression of "gray."

Inner robes and hat:

Base color:  blue + gray = bluish gray Shadow:   orange + little black = rust brown Highlight:   white + gray = very light gray   This, in my opinion, doesn't look nearly as nice, or at least it would look ok by itself, but next to its color opposite (above), it looks terrible.  I wish I'd painted all the gray robes with the Overcloak recipe, but this was an experiment, and you can't expect all experiments to succeed. On the bright side, the hat looks pretty nice with this scheme, I think.

Some more photos of the Gandalf WIP: