Mixing the highlight colour
To mix a lighter colour than the one that you’re highlighting, you will mix with either white or a light colour, such as an ivory or off-white.
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Step 1: Materials
You will need to look for the following items
- acrylic paint, preferably weather-resistant
- brushes
- varnish spray (optional)
Prepare your surface by covering with some old newspaper and place your figure on top.
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Step 2: Paint It On
Once you have decided on a colour scheme, you can begin to paint the base coat. Based on my style the gnome wear a jeans with a hoodie.So, I am using grey for the shirt, blue for the jeans.
You just fill in the colours. You are trying to get a nice, opaque covering of each area.
Don’t load your brush with too much paint at a time to keep it from flowing outside of the area you’re painting. Wipe off any excess paint from your brush on a paper towel or napkin.
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Step 3: Washing
Washing is a technique that involves highlighting shadows by allowing a thin mixture of colour that is darker than our base colour to flow into the cracks, creases, and crevices of the figure.
Mixing the darker colour
You will mix some of the base colour with a bit of a darker colour, making a shadow version of the original.
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Outdoor paint for garden gnomes
DON’T BREATHE TOO MUCH OF THOSE FUMES – LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO ME!
Let’s see, the basics – I believe I already suggested that you should use exterior latex paint if you wan to keep your Noam gnome outdoors and again I personally use a basic exterior water-based primer as the initial protective foundational coat. – for the actual painting you’ll want at least the five foundational colors: red, blue, yellow, white and black – and I also use a metallic silver paint for the glasses and belt-buckle. All of these are water-based latex except for the silver (which so far I’ve only found an exterior pain in oil-based form). Also the yellow doesn’t have to have a very bright pigment in this case (high-pigment yellows can sometimes be tough to find and usually cost substantially more) – I use a lot of these whole colors and also have premixed colors for various parts of the painting process.
* I start off with Chomsky’s jacket and initially paint it a light-brown or beige color. – at this point I really don’t worry about being neat and if anything i prefer to paint into the wrong areas rather than underpaint an area and have to go back and touch it up later. The later stages of the painting process get progressively more precise. Also it’s likely that some parts of the painted surface will have some patches of lighter color in this first coat – but I wouldn’t worry about that as later layers of lighter colors should make up for that.
* I usually paint 5 or more Chomsky gnomes at a time as sometimes you have to wait a while for paint colors to dry – especially with the first big color areas. but after the beige is dry I go back and probably paint the next-largest surface area – probably the flesh color – on his face (and ears) and hands – again cover thoroughly and don’t worry about perfection.
* Then while waiting for that to dry I’d probably paint some solid blue on his pants. Here I start to be careful not to intrude the blue paint onto the beige of the jacket’s underside.
* and then if I’m feeling daring I might put the first coat of red on his hat.
* And then as that’s drying I’d do a first coat of brown on his boots. – you can see that basically I’m moving back and forth from the top to the bottom of the Noam gnome to avoid running the new paint into paint that is still drying on the other side. You of course still need to be careful not to bump into the other side while you’re holding or moving around your gnome buddy. – Which I have certainly done many a time over the years. (*you want to be especially careful around his hat as red can be a very staining color.)
* Then I’d start with the ‘dry-brushing’ – a method of lightly adding a layer of a lighter color to the foundation color of an already painted surface – in this case his jacket and then face and hands. essentially you dip your brush into a little of the color to be dry-brushed and then lightly brush it over a newspaper or similar surface so that there’s not much actual paint on the brush and what’s left will just get onto the raised surfaces of the figure you’re painting – thus creating an accentuation of those surfaces to mimic the look of light-and shadow as it appears on real life-size figures/people.
– I use a relatively pale yellow to dry-brush the jacket and flesh color mixed with a little white for his face and hands.
* That’ll dry quick – but you still may want to give it a bit of extra time and go do something else for at least and hour or so – because the next step is kind of opposite and you may not even care to do it – though it can ad a bit more of a lifelike quality to your Noam – and that step is doing a ‘wash’ – again kind of opposite of dry-brushing – as to do a wash you basically get your color ‘extra wet’ by mixing in extra water to a little drop of the color you want to wash on – and where dry-brushing added a lighter color to the high surfaces a wash will basically ad a nearly transparent bit of a darker color to the lower-deeper parts of a surface – further enhancing the light and shade effect as well as kind of ‘smoothing’ the overall contour and look of the surface. I generally use the same wash color for both the skin and jacket surfaces – a warm reddish-brown – a little more on the brown than red side. Again you mix this color with a bit of water and swish it over the whole surface area of both the jacket and face and hands – then after it’s started to dry a little bit – after a minute or so depending on how much wash you’ve put on – I’ll come back and gently wipe the wash color off much of the higher surfaces – usually just using my hands – cause I’m kinda sloppy like that. – as you can probably tell the ‘wash’ process is a bit of an intuitive ‘art’ that you get used to over time – but it’s not really all that tough – and if you’re concerned but still want to try it then just use less paint color pigment in relation to the water and you can’t go too wrong. but at the same time don’t get the previously painted surfaces too wet for too long (like 5-10 minutes or more) as that could damage the paint that you put down earlier. (*Latex paint does dry to be very weather resistant but although most of the drying happens in the first hour or two it takes about a month to gain its full strength and hardness.) – sorry that got kinda complicated – again – optional step. Anyway if you do the wash make sure it’s dried well before moving on to the next step.
* and then you can move onto – ..maybe the foundation stand and Noam’s hair. – painting the initial layer a medium-darkish gray – at this point you don’t have to be too careful about getting a little gray on the base of his boots as you’ll have to put another coat or two on them anyway and the brown and medium gray have similar tones. But try not to get the grey on his face as it’s pretty well painted now.
* Then I think I’d do the first layer of a light-blue for Chomsky’s shirt and collar.
* Now I’d start to do some dry-brushing of lighter colors of grey onto his hair and base-stand. – It’s a good idea to get dry brushing out of the way early in the process as it usually requires getting a bit of the wrong color on adjoining surfaces. I’d start with a slightly light medium grey – going over the hair and the base – being sure to get the area between the feet – and being careful not to get it into the letters on the front of the base – so they’ll end up standing out – you may even want to do a wash into them in a black or darker-grey color too. Also at this point I’ll usually do a coat of medium grey on the glasses – as a foundation for the silver to be painted on later.
* Then do another coat or two of even lighter grey dry-brushed onto a relatively smaller and ‘higher’ area of the hair and stand (emphasizes corners and edges on the stand). I usually do one last dry-brush coat on the hair and sometimes the stand – of totally white paint just to ad that final bit of emphasis.
* It’s a good time to ad some other white spots of color here and there – probably good to start with the books – the pages may already be white from the primer – but I’ll make sure they have a uniform white color by painting on more if I need to. Then you can also paint the basic areas of the eyes white – and if you’re painting a version II Gnome Chomsky you can also dot his shirt buttons white. Also you can paint the bit of Chomsky’s T-shirt that still shows behind his button-down light-blue shirt.
* Now I generally move back and forth to and from the areas that have just a basic paint color (red, blue, brown) and need another coat or two until they’re pretty solid looking. Also during this stage I’ll paint one of the book covers red while adding another coat to the hat (red surfaces usually need at least two-to three coatings as their pigments are so bright and contrast with the blank primer color). I’ll paint the other book cover black sometime around now.
* You can also use a bit of brown to paint the belt (which may take two coats to cover well), touch up the bottom edges of the boots if they still need it and also paint the inside front edges of the jacket where it runs into the light-blue shirt (I usually water down the brown just slightly so it blends more subtly in this area. You also may want to use a light line of (similarly ‘watered’) brown around where his jacket’s sleeves meet his hands/wrists – and maybe even where his neck meets his clothing.
* Now you should nearly be there – use a relatively small-thin brush and do a semi-circle line at the top of each eye (probably the part that takes the most steady hand), touch up any of the black book cover that needs it and maybe darken any of the name-label on the stand. Oh yeah, also carefully dot the eyes – so that the black pupil-circle extends from the top black line to (or near to) the base of the white part of the eye. (of course careful here as the eyes convey a lot of a gnome (or person’s) personality and slight variances in that black dot placement can have significant effects. – remember you can always try again too – that’s what the white paint is for. If you want to be really obsessive you could always paint a colored iris before putting in the black dots – I’ve haven’t quite taken it that far myself and couldn’t tell you what color Chomsky’s actual irises are though – but he seems to be a pretty friendly guy so he’d probably tell you if you email him.
* I think that’s nearly it – besides the silver – – you could always ad some gray to the belt buckle to help the silver cover better. – and if you’d like you could paint some clever titles on the book covers and spines. Sometimes I also do a light dry-brushing onto the light-blue shirt to give it more life – being careful not to get any of the wrong color onto the jacket or belt.
* Now I believe you’re ready for the silver – which I always save for last as it’s fumes are relatively obnoxious (and I usually where a respirator and use a well-ventilated area too). carefully paint the silver onto the glasses frames and the belt buckle and you should be all done with the painting stage. I let the silver dry for a day or more as it seems to take that long to lose its tackiness.
– * – clear coating: – I use an exterior grade water based clear coat for extra protection – as well as to unify the tone or sheen (shiny-ness) of the whole figure.
I’m writing this from memory so please feel free to tell me if I seem to have forgotten something and let me know if you have any questions otherwise. I hope this helps. – Steve H – 5, 2013.
