69.012 Purple Matt

Purple as a color and as a shadow

Purple Matt leads a double life on robot models. Either it is a full shade for a hull and limbs, of the kind the subjects of this genre commonly wear, or it turns into a tool: mixed into another paint it shifts that paint's shadow toward the cold, which looks markedly more interesting than simply darkening with black.

This is exactly how color modulation is done, that is the procedure in which a single area is divided into a lighter center and darker edges. The purple component in the darker mixture holds on to chroma, whereas black sucks it out, so the model does not look drab but three-dimensional.

Working with the shade

It is applied with a brush as well as with an airbrush. With a brush, watch the thickness of the coat: matte paints dry faster, and a stroke gone over a second time once it has begun to set leaves a visible scar. It is better to wait, let the area dry through and only then add another coat.

When spraying, work from light tones toward dark ones. Lay the purple down after the base color, then, not the other way round, because lightening a dark base with a matte paint means many coats and a loss of detail on the edges of a part.

A dropper bottle lets you measure out drop by drop and mix repeatable ratios. That is useful above all with modulation, where you usually prepare three or four graded tones and need to come back to them several evenings later, when you are touching up places damaged in handling.

The shade also holds together with the dark metallic areas that appear on the joints and the plumbing of these machines, so the whole cold end of a palette can be built from it without buying further paints.