Tutorial: How to Paint Red

Red has been known as a notoriously difficult colour to paint well. It can be a daunting colour to get rich and bright -- too much white in your highlights and it turns pink, too much yellow and it turns orange. What to do? I've tried a lot of different methods for painting red before finally coming up with this solution. I don't claim that this is the end-all, be all of "how to paint red," but it works for me and results in deep, rich red.

After cleaning and basic assembly, the figure was primed white. A nice zenithal prime would also be perfectly acceptable!

The figure for this tutorial is the female sweeper from Reaper Miniatures' Townsfolk 2825 "Commoners."

Painters have always been encouraged to paint red over a white base coat for brightness. True, this does make everything bright, but it also means highlighting has to go higher -- and that's where we risk making the red "too pink" or "too yellow."

To avoid this highlighting problem, we'll go in the other direction. We make a bright red our highlight and tone down. Other painters have discovered this trick, using dark browns and even dark greens. In this tutorial, I'll use black as the base coat. Yes, black!

But don't worry as we won't be leaving it black for long. Immediately in the next step, we add a 50/50 mix of black and a dark red such as VMC Cadmium Maroon or ProAcryl Burnt Red. This is applied just about everywhere except the deepest folds. Keep the coverage smooth and even.

The next stage is predictable: a thin, smooth layer of the dark red, unmixed, covering a smaller area than the previous coats.

Next begin glazing a brighter red like GW Khorne Red.

I've applied the highlights consistenly in the direction of the cloth (in this case, from top to bottom). Try to keep the coverage smooth and even, but don't worry if the layers appear streaked at this stage. That'll be fixed later.

Mix your brightest red in with your midtone red, just enough to lighten it from the previous layer. Even though we've begun mixing in some of the topmost highlight colour, we're still only working on midtones, so keep that in mind.

Here we're using the brightest highlight, but we're not applying it as a final highlight. When everything is done, this will be our uppermost midtone.

Also note that with this bright colour, it's important to keep the brushstroke in line with the positioning of the cloth.

Bang! Zoom! You don't have to say that at this stage, but I find it fun to do so. Here we've taken our favourite deep red wash (something like GW Flesh Tearers Red, Pro-Acryl Transparent Red, or even Tamiya Clear Red) and covered everywhere. Even in the shadows.

This does several things. First, it tones down our strong highlight colour. Second, it smooths out our transistions. Third, it lends a red tone to our deep black shadows. Any time the transistions become too apparent or obvious in later stages, thin down some of the ink or glaze and apply again.

Now we officially move into working on the highlights. We'll start by setting the stage with a little of our second brightest red, applied thin so as not to overwhelm previous layers. Focus this colour on the uppermost areas of the figure, places where highlights would naturally fall.

I also line the edges of cuffs, dresses, shirts, etc, to strength the outline of the red area. A small amount of our brightest red mixed in helps this effect. As mentioned previously, a thinned application of our ink/glaze colour may be necessary.



Ah, finally the upper highlight colour actually applied as a highlight! Keep the highlight colour thin -- we don't want to ruin our carefully built up red -- but highlight normally.

Notice how drastic the change has been: we still have a very deep, almost black red in the recesses, yet we've got that sharp blood red colour on the highlights, and the transistions flow well thanks to thin layers.

This stage is optional.

To sharpen the highlights even more, use a 75/25 mix of your brightest red with a tiny bit of orange. Use a small brush, as we want to avoid the "orange" look.

If your brightest highlight red is something like Scale75 Aldebaran Red -- which is already a bit orange -- you may prefer to skip this step entirely.

Here's how the red looks on the finished miniature.

There are some other optional tricks you can use here. After finishing the figure, you may want to better define the areas of red from the rest of the miniature. Use a thinned down mix of black and green, applied as blacklining (that is to say, only along the edges of colour).

May you never fear red again!