Painting in classic Black and White for tv/movie Characters?

Neat idea!

I have never done that myself, but I have done something similar.  Most hobby paints are far too saturated in color to represent cloth or skin well.  What I do when I paint a figure is come up with a collection of shades of gray that would represent all the colors I am painting on the figure.  Then, I mix those gray shades with the color for that area, to reduce the color saturation.  For shades of gray that I cannot find commercially I mix white or black with the closest shade I can find.

Thanks for the advice. I'll certainly take that into account.

I figure what I'll do is watch the movie and pause it on that scene and make notes of the color variations of grays and the variation in dark to light.

I'm tinkering with the idea of black and white figures with my current build and experimenting with a technique I read about in a garage kit 'zine a long time ago. It starts with undercoating in black first and slowly building up with very thin layers of white. Hypothetically, if the white is applied lightly enough, it will allow the black to fade into different gradients of grey. Building layer after layer will eventually shift to purer tones of white over time. Final highlights can be punched in with a brush loaded with pure white.

Try to grab a screen shot of your subject for reference - it's a lot easier to work from a still print taped over your bench.

KnightTemplar5150

I'm tinkering with the idea of black and white figures with my current build and experimenting with a technique I read about in a garage kit 'zine a long time ago. It starts with undercoating in black first and slowly building up with very thin layers of white. Hypothetically, if the white is applied lightly enough, it will allow the black to fade into different gradients of grey. Building layer after layer will eventually shift to purer tones of white over time. Final highlights can be punched in with a brush loaded with pure white.

Try to grab a screen shot of your subject for reference - it's a lot easier to work from a still print taped over your bench.

 

I pretty much come up with the same answer. I have never tried it, so I can't speak of any results. I do think using shades of grey would just make it look like shades of grey (color) more so than black-n-white. I think if I were ever to try it, I would start with a solid coat of black. To lighten things up, I'd go with a clear coat that's mixed/thinned to the liking of the airbrush and add a few drops of white to it. This gives a lot of control over the amount of white being added. It builds up very slowly, without having to be ridiculously thinned down (which has its own set of potential problems).

 I have seen one black-n-white model that was very impressive. It was a copy of a photo of a bombed out B-17, from when the Japs attacked Hawaii (not sure which base it was on). I can't remember where I saw it...may very well have been in FSM some years ago. That may be worth some digging into, for techniques.

This was the photo...maybe someone else here knows were to find the model???

I recall Marc (wingnut) did something along these lines with his Creature from the Black Lagoon:

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/29/t/155560.aspx?page=26

If you have painted figures before, this should be really easy to paint for the prosposed finish, as all you are doing is working in tones of grey (adding white to lighten/black to darken as opposed to dealing with colours and a lot more combinations).

The technique KnightsTemplar is alluding to could be the spraying of gradual lighter colours over a dark base, and mainly holding the airbrush as if it were a light source?  This is something I do with scale figures, but finer details and particularly the face, I still brush paint.

regards,

Jack