Colour questions for night/low light minis.

[woodenanteater]

Hey fellow CMON'ers!

I've been giving some serious thought to painting an army by night, going for something like a GW high elf sea patrol, on the sea, under starry skies and the moon.

First of all, I'd expect to either use zenithal lighting on the mini's, or from a slightly angled direction. What I'm having problems with is colour selection. Taking for example the basic high elf colour scheme of royal blue and white with silver armour - how would you say the colours would change?

Would it be simple enough to say that the colours would lose saturation (given that the eye gets less efficient at viewing colour in low light), or would it be a complete pallette change? Also, I'm looking at doing my metals in metallics, any tips painting very bright, clean, metals in low light conditions? I imagine the transition from shadow to highlight would be more stark than in normal light conditions, with very hard highlights.

Most of my thoughts have come from tutorials like emopainterguy's twilit skeleton, (which was great, by the way). Can you guys recommend any other tutorials or reference material which would help?

Thanks in advance

 

[Shawn R. L.]

A simple rule of thumb is to add a touch of black and white to any of the colors you are using. Try to avoid washes with pure colors (Other than, maybe, an overall very light wash of blue). In moonlight, colors go dull and somewhat pastel....sort of.

 

[Einion]

What I'm having problems with is colour selection. Taking for example the basic high elf colour scheme of royal blue and white with silver armour - how would you say the colours would change?

Best tip for how it does look (versus how you might choose to depict it) would be to take something shiny and something around the right blue outdoors on the next moonlit night and see the effect firsthand.

Unfortunately this is an area where photography is definitely not the best reference; some photos will be fine, but others can show odd colour shifts in low-light situations.

Would it be simple enough to say that the colours would lose saturation (given that the eye gets less efficient at viewing colour in low light)...

Yes. Given low enough lighting the eye stops being able to perceive colour at all, since the rods (which aren't colour sensitive) take over completely from the cones, but I'd imagine you wouldn't want to go that far.

Also, I'm looking at doing my metals in metallics, any tips painting very bright, clean, metals in low light conditions? I imagine the transition from shadow to highlight would be more stark than in normal light conditions, with very hard highlights.
...
Can you guys recommend any other tutorials or reference material which would help?

For something along these lines I often recommend skipping over hobby-based tutorials for something higher up the food chain so to speak, here I'd suggest looking at how moonlit scenes have been done in paintings to see the artistic interpretation of the basic effect done by the masters.

You can use Google to search of course, but another good way to look for this kind of thing is to use Artcyclopedia.

Something else that occurs to me is that many of the classic Dutch still-life paintings feature polished silverware and other reflective surfaces in low lighting so they'd also be worth looking at for inspiration.

Einion

 

[bsop]

Id also suggest using some sort of OSL either within the units themselves, or on some of the models... perhaps the unit's standard having a magical "light" on top; maybe torches on the corners of movement trays, things of that nature. I mention this because your army on a normal table could very well just give the appearance of being dark, and not necessarily "in the dark" I think some well placed OSL could remedy that problem.

Of course if your simply painting an army for display reasons... go crazy.