Acrylic Color ABYSS BLUE

The darkest blue instead of black

Abyss Blue opens the blue group in the maker's numbering and does so from the very bottom: it is a tone so dark that at first glance it looks black, and it reveals its blue color only against the light or beside a real black. That is precisely where its value lies. A model whose shadows are rendered in black looks flat and without depth, whereas a dark blue shadow holds space and the eye reads it as real volume.

The practical use is wide. It serves as the base layer under night scenes, as deep water in a diorama, as the shadow in the folds of a dark cloak, as an underpaint beneath a blue uniform and as the color of openings and viewports where no light is to fall. In ship building it is used on the deep-water parts of a hull.

• Amount in the bottle 17 ml
• Character extremely dark blue, practically indistinguishable from black
• Surface finish matte
• Mixing by shaking, there is a metal ball inside
• Working with the paint with a brush, and with an airbrush once thinned

When mixing with other shades the tone is exceptionally strong and very little of it is enough. A drop into a green tone creates a convincing deep sea green, a drop into a brown shifts skin toward a cold, wet impression. The dropper neck is a necessity here, because at this saturation it can be overdone with a single careless move. Anyone who wants to be sure should try a mixed batch on a piece of scrap sprue before transferring it to the model.