Color Punch is a short range of very intensely pigmented acrylics that is not about base coats at all. The shades are built to be added to a colour you have already mixed, pushing it towards a strong highlight or a deep shadow. The selection holds two flesh shadow tones, a saturated red, a brown, two greens and a black purple.
Used straight they cover like any opaque paint, but most of the work happens on the palette. Think of the range as a multiplier: five colours on the bench become fifteen usable tones. How much to add before a figure starts looking artificial is the subject of the notes below.
Darkening a colour with black is the classic beginner's mistake — the surface greys out and the life goes out of it. Color Punch offers coloured shadows and coloured highlights instead: saturated, high-pigment tones added in small quantities to a base colour. Two are tuned for flesh shadows, the rest cover red, brown, two greens for organic work and a dark purple that stands in for black.
This is not a replacement for a base palette. It is the thing that makes a small base palette behave like a large one.
Add a drop of the accent to your base shade on the palette and apply the result. One step up and one step down give you three tones from one colour. A palette and pipette from bottles, pipettes and palettes make the metering easier.
The flesh shadow tones work where light does not reach: under the jaw, into the neck, inside a cupped hand. Taken across a whole face they shift the colour somewhere unnatural.
The slime green and black purple suit cloaks, armour and monsters, where the colour owes nothing to a reference photograph. There they work as standalone opaque shades, provided the base under them is light enough.
For the same maker's full palette, including documented armour shades, continue to AK Interactive model paints.
