Painting fabric on my 1/35 Soviet model tank crew figures

Tonight I have been working on painting the uniforms of two of the Soviet tankers and mechanics in my work-in-progress SU-122 diorama.

Shadows in fabric

The mechanic is in a blue coverall. In the below shot, I have painted the blue basecoat, and then using a fine brush I have painted in the shadows a darker shade of blue (mixed in some black with the original blue). It does look a bit glossy in these shots, I may need to spray the finished result with a clear matte coat.

Shadows done.

Shadows perhaps a little overdone!

Shadows from behind.

Highlights on fabric

Then I mixed up a lighter shade of the original blue by mixing it with white. I've heard that you should never use pure white and pure black for mixing shades, you should use yellow or brown or somesuch. Nah, white and black have always worked for me. I'm open to being convinced though, tell me why with photographic evidence and I can be converted.

Then I drybrush the lighter shade on to all the highlights, followed by an even lighter shade on the really upper highlight areas such as the tops of the shoulders, shoulderblades, breast pocket and thigh pocket flap.

Highlights done, it really pops now.

Highlights have been drybrushed.

I am a little worried it looks too exaggerated, so I will check it in normal sunlight tomorrow and see how it looks. I find artificial light can really play tricks with shadows on uniforms, painting at night you can be a bit heavy-handed and it looks a bit too extreme in the cold hard light of day.  I'm also concerned at how semi-gloss the blue looks, but with some dust and dirt that will be toned back.


I also worked a little on one of the tank crew, but after a quick coat of olivey-khaki I noticed that the very fragile moulded collar at the back of the next has somehow snapped off. So a quick repair with gloopy Hubrol Model Filler was called for.

You can see the repaired area here.

So that's it for this evening. It's 9:30pm, time to put the brushes away and relax.

Until next time,

Dave