Any Tips for Painting Gingham?

[Chris Palmer]

I'm going to be painting the Dorothy figure from the Wild West Oz set soon, and I'd like to paint her in the character's classic blue gingham dress.

 Any hints for how to get the effect of all those small checks?  

Is it better to just paint it all blue since form a distance the checks kind of disappear anyway? Or is it better to paint it checkered, just with much bigger, paintable, checks?

Or is there actually some way to get that speckled look gingham has from a middle distance?

[KruleBear]

I would think the best way to simulate it would be usung Kiril's pointilism style. Imagine this turtleneck in blue and whites: http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/7551 

 

 

or for inspiration without the gingham, there is Anne Cooper's award winning steam punk Dorothy. She just used heavy white highlights on the dress.

 

 

[Glitterwolf]

***Drools***

[EvilJames]

4 hours ago, Glitterwolf said:

***Drools***

*Smacks the Glitterwolf with a rolled up newspaper* Bad wolf! Bad! No drooling on the minis!

[Cyradis]

1 hour ago, EvilJames said:

*Smacks the Glitterwolf with a rolled up newspaper* Bad wolf! Bad! No drooling on the minis!

 

^^ not a weasel licker. 

[Chris Palmer]

11 hours ago, KruleBear said:

I would think the best way to simulate it would be usung Kiril's pointilism style. Imagine this turtleneck in blue and whites: http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/7551 

 

 

or for inspiration without the gingham, there is Anne Cooper's award winning steam punk Dorothy. She just used heavy white highlights on the dress.

 

 

 

 

Thanks, KruleBear!   The pointillism looks good, but I can't imagine recreating that in 28mm (I assume that bust is much larger)...

[MojoBob]

Paint a white base coat, then a grid of pale pink stripes, and last of all, dots of a darker pink at the intersections of the light pink grid. Easy-peasy.

 

 

Note: doesn't have to be pink, of course. That's just the colour I immediately associate with gingham.

Edited July 31, 2017 by MojoBob

[Thes Hunter]

16 hours ago, KruleBear said:

I would think the best way to simulate it would be usung Kiril's pointilism style. Imagine this turtleneck in blue and whites: http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/7551 

 

 

or for inspiration without the gingham, there is Anne Cooper's award winning steam punk Dorothy. She just used heavy white highlights on the dress.

 

 

 

Thank you for posting this. I needed to see that turtleneck pattern, and be inspired by knowing what was possible. 

[Chris Palmer]

10 hours ago, MojoBob said:

Paint a white base coat, then a grid of pale pink stripes, and last of all, dots of a darker pink at the intersections of the light pink grid. Easy-peasy.

 

 

Note: doesn't have to be pink, of course. That's just the colour I immediately associate with gingham.

 

 

Thanks for the thoughts, MojoBob; and if I was going to paint a checkered shirt that's exactly how I'd do it.

 

 

     But the checked pattern on Dorothy's dress is so small, I don't know if it's humanly possible to do it the way you suggested on a 28mm figure, (Certainly beyond my skill level), and not have it turn out like a checkered dress as opposed to the tiny checks of gingham. 

 

I was hoping someone had advice on how to get the impression of gingham without hopefully having to paint the impossibly small pattern.

 

 

 

Edited July 31, 2017 by Chris Palmer

[KruleBear]

My initial thought was similar to MojoBob's to recreate it using a tartan style of painting, but agree that that would be mind numbling impossible at 28mm (at leadt for us mortals). 

 

As for the pointilism, I took Kiril's class at Adepticon on leather. He had us practice on busts that were probably 75mm as you suggest. I learned a couple of things like I am old and blind, so my painting sucks. However, there was one person in the class that brought his own 28mm figure and applied it. I have also seen Sprocket and Andy G on the CMON forum apply it to 28mm figures. Granted in all those cases they were using it to creat a texture, but it suggests to me that maybe if you paint the dress white with blue shading as a base and then use dots of two different shades of blue it might suggest what you are looking for. Remember at this scale if you can sell it in a few places on the dress the eye will fill in the blanks. 

[Grayfax]

I remember the WIP times when everyone on CMON was painting Gokan the Guardian.  Some of the tartan patterns were pretty dang amazing.  So I went back and looked... and even as small as some of them got it didn't compare to that tiny gingham print.  Not to mention that Gokan is 54mm which helps.  If you want to dive through that route, look for Gokan in Bailey03 (or on David Powell's website), AndyG, 10Ball, Kretcher or SkelletS.  Others painted that same one at that time but these are the slayer sword / golden demon trophy winners over there (and I may have missed some... I haven't been over there a lot in the last year). Yeah, Sprocket is also in that list but I can't remember if he did the Gokan figure.  

I don't envy you trying to do the lines though.  Not at all...

 

Actually... at that size.  You may want to do a blue dress and then put down lines of the smallest white dots that you can do.  The draping of the lines of dots in two directions would then be the challenge.

[Chris Palmer]

Thanks for the continued ideas everybody!   I don't know about doing this; it may be a notch above my skill level.  I'll give it a try, but will probably get frustrated and just go with a mid-blue dress. 

[Doug Sundseth]

I would generally recommend not trying to paint something like that to scale. Instead suggest it with a larger version of the same pattern. People do scaling in their heads very badly anyway, as can be seen in every single thread about cars for 28mm heroic figures, so I doubt they will actually notice the difference between what you did and what they're expecting.

[wdmartin]

I wouldn't try to paint perfect squares.  I'd paint the surface the blue that I want, and then use the tip of the brush to dot white all over it in an even, regular grid pattern.

[ttuckerman]

Or a pin.