Dark Green

A dark green makes depth on a model

The darkest tone of the whole color range is used differently from the others. A whole stand is rarely built from it; its task is to create shadow where an ordinary green would give a flat color. Under the crowns of trees, in the thickets by water and on northern slopes the vegetation is naturally darker and the eye reads this difference as space. Without a dark tone even a carefully built landscape looks flat.

Where the color is used

Besides shadows it suits coniferous stands, ivy growing over a wall, a dense hedge or the overgrown wall of a trench on a military diorama. The large package carries 945 cm³ of the mass, so a continuous band of forest at the edge of a board can be covered from it. The coarser grit holds its shape once torn, which matters with dark parts: a flattened clump would lose its shadow and only a dark mark would be left of it.

How to work with a dark green

It is applied first or on the contrary at the very end, according to the technique chosen. Anyone building from the bottom lays the dark layer on the terrain and merely dusts the lighter tones onto it. Anyone painting from above adds the dark mass into a finished stand with tweezers in the places where the crowns overlap. Both work, only they must not be mixed within one area, otherwise the transitions harden.

A note on color

Dark shades always merge in a photograph, so the result is best checked by looking against the light. If an area goes completely black, add a few light clumps into it; the eye needs a point of reference in order to read a shadow as depth and not as a hole.