Painting Guild Ball Masons - Shade

The next step on my Mason models was to begin shading.  My first pass through used ~1:2 ratio* of paint to Vallejo Glaze Medium**.  The following were applied into the deeper areas of the models and where shadows should (mostly) naturally fall from an overhead light source:

• RMS  Tanned Shadow - Skin Shade
• RMS Breonne Blue - Clothing Shade
• RMS Muddy Brown - Leather Shade
• AP Dark Tone - Armor Shade.  Brick, Tower and Flints hair Shade
• Dave Taylor's Magic Armor Wash - Armor Second Shade

With the exception of the shading done with the AP Dark Tone, I thought the shading applied was way to subtle, even after a couple of passes.  This was most true for the Skin Shade.  I should have taken pictures at this point to show but I forgot.

In any case, I decided to do another pass with less glaze medium (~1:1 ratio*) into the deeper areas.  For the skin tone on the second pass I used a thinned:

• RMS Tanned Shadow mixed with RMS Chestnut Brown (~1:1)

Individual shots:

I think things are still too subtle with the shading and I have gotten a little sloppy, but I'm going to press on to highlighting.

*Remember, part of the purpose of this write up is for my own reference.  I am not advocating this particular thinning ratio or thinning ratios in general.  All things matter and affect these kind of ratios:  age of your paint, your thinner, your style, palette preference, how bad a day you had, etc.  I always hear the "thin to the consistency of skim milk" but honestly feel like that is just as much of a crap response as any other.  My advice, grab a scrap of paper that has text printed on it and do a test stroke across the text.  Does it have the opacity that you want?  Does it seem smooth?  Does it flow off brush evenly and well?

**Note, like in part one on the Basecoat and thinning airbrush paints, for brush painting I also once narrowed several choices down to this being my preferred thinner.  I'm not advocating it, there are other good options I just found this seemed to work well for me.