BASE COLOR ALTERATION SET

A mixing base for shifting shades

This set is not a finished palette but a tool. Instead of ready-tuned tones it offers six tubes with which the modeler shifts a color already at hand exactly where it is needed. The contents are Titanium White in the Snow White variant, Royal Yellow, Ivory Black, Intense Blue, Magenta and Paynes Grey. A package like this makes sense to anyone who gets by with a few bottles and prefers to tune the rest personally.

The trio of yellow, magenta and intense blue forms the mixing base from which practically any chromatic shade can be mixed. White and black then control the lightness. Paynes Grey deserves attention: it is a blue-gray tone that darkens without killing the color into dirt, which is why it suits shadows in places where black would look dead.

Because oil stays workable for a long time, mixing is possible not only on the palette but also on the model. A drop of yellow rubbed into green transforms a whole panel, a drop of magenta revives faded red, and a touch of Paynes Grey pulls an over-lightened shade down into a cool half-shadow. That is exactly why this kind of package is popular with builders who refuse to keep a hundred bottles on the shelf and prefer to mix a tone themselves. One tube thus stands in for several ready-made shades that would otherwise take up shelf space and age unused.

The paints are thinned with a thinner for oils, applied in thin coats and take layering wet into wet. Before starting, count on the fact that full curing takes days, not minutes. It pays to mix in small amounts and to test the result each time on a scrap piece of plastic, because the tone on the palette and the tone on the model are not usually the same.