"Stop Sign" rule applied to painting vehicles, a/c, etc.

Thanks DJ I'll look around for the book!

Chris and Chris,

From what I've read it is important to highlight and shadow because the room light is not to the same "scale" as the scale of the subject matter. The whole principle is probably much more complicated than that, but if you just paint a figure in base colors without highlighting or shading, the figure will look flat. I would think that with a model you'd probably want a little more subtlety in the range between highlights to shadow, but since it is a scaled-down model it could benefit from a well done shading and highlighting job. I can't recommend "Building and Painting Scale Figures" by Sheperd Paine enough. Kalmbach now has another book on painting figures, and perhaps they discuss the stop sign rule and other principles of highlight and shadow.

DJ

DJ, that is a good idea that I had not heard or thought of. I think with vehichles if doing a diorama it would be something that would bring it out more if all the items in it were done that way. Seems like then shadows would also need to be done on ground and such on the opposite side of the highlighting. If I can better my paint skills I would like to try that out. Thanks for bringing it up.

Chris,

If you can find it, get this book: "Building and Painting Scale Figures" by Sheperd Paine. Kalmbach used to publish it.
I used the stop sign method on the figures of a 1/72 scale diorama of Celts fighting Romans. It really makes the figures look 3-dimensional and more realistic. I'm looking forward to using this method on larger figures.
And curious as to how many modelers out there highlight and shade their' models with respect to the surface's angle with respect to the sun. Or how many outright use the stop sign rule for painting a/c, vehicles and ships?

DJ

I have never used this...and your the 2nd person I know of to mention it that I have seen...Our LHS figure authority Bob mentioned it to me...and it will be one of the things he discusses in his figure painting workshop which is free. My LHS does a lot of free neat workshops like this usually 2 a month...I just recently started going to them(they've done them for years)...So Im looking foward to learning this technique.
Chris