ATOM Gravity Set 3 - Red

Red in six steps, from scarlet to rusty

Red is among the hardest colors on a modeling palette. It covers weakly, on a dark base it loses saturation, and with a single shade a surface reads flat and crude. The answer is a ladder of several tones, where each further step moves the surface a little deeper.

This selection offers exactly such a ladder. It begins with a bright scarlet, continues with a pure red, a more saturated imperial and a dark blood red. Crimson adds a bluish undertone for the deepest shadows, and the sixth bottle, a red-brown, holds the end of the scale where the color passes into rust and dirt.

The procedure is simple. You lay the middle tone down as a base, lighten the surfaces turned toward the light with the lighter one, and run the darker ones into the joints, under the edges and into the corners. Because the neighboring shades are close to one another, the transitions can be blended out with a damp brush without visible boundaries appearing.

The uses are wide. It suits fire equipment, sports cars, cloth and banners on figures and fresh rust on ground equipment. In wargaming the scale will serve on cloaks and armor, where a clear sense of volume is needed on a figure of small size.

The paints thin with water and will take brushing as well as spraying; when spraying it is advisable to work in thin coats, so that the red does not lose its saturation.

For the deepest places it pays to add a drop of black to the crimson, and for the lightest, on the contrary, to let the scarlet work on its own on narrow edges. This range will give even a small model the depth one bottle can never reach.

A flat varnish helps to close the work off, as it evens out the differing sheen of the individual coats and keeps the lighter highlights from standing out more than was planned.