Hobby color - fialová

Purple from the water-thinnable Japanese range

A modeling acrylic paint from the Japanese brand Gunze Sangyo, which modelers all over the world know under the trade name Mr. Hobby. The Aqueous Hobby Color range is built on a water-thinnable acrylic binder, so it does not load the workshop as heavily as lacquer paints and the tools can be washed with water or with alcohol once the work is done.

Where purple really comes into its own on a model

On the bench, purple tends to be a tool rather than a flat covering coat. Rubbed into the shadows it gives gray and olive surfaces a depth that black alone cannot, because where the shadow breaks, black looks cold and unnatural. Figure painters use it to underpaint the folds of cloth and the outlines of hands. In car modeling it forms the base of the transparent candy coats over a silver base. And on subjects from Japanese comic and game art it is a color for the body in its own right, not just a helper. It serves well, too, where a sun-bleached stripe on canvas or the cold cast of nighttime lighting on a diorama is to be suggested.

How to work with it

It is applied with a brush as well as with an airbrush. For an airbrush it is thinned with the thinner of the same range to roughly half the consistency, while for a brush it is left thicker and laid down in two thin coats with a pause between them. The bottle has to be stirred properly before you take any out, because the pigment settles to the bottom and badly mixed paint dries patchy. The dry film will take further lacquer coats and oil techniques, as long as a clear sealing coat is put between them. It holds better on a smooth surface than on a greasy one, so degreasing the surface is a sensible first step.