Xpress Omega Blue

Omega Blue: a dark blue with no gray

Against the gray-blue tones of the same line, this is a clean, deep blue with a slightly violet undertone. It is used anywhere blue is meant to be grave and formal: heraldic cloaks, uniform tunics, the wings of insect-like monsters or the armor of space infantry. In the bottle it looks almost black, but over a light ground it lights up.

A second application and how a dried coat behaves

This line is built so that the binder stays sensitive to water for longer than is usual with covering paints. When you pass a wet brush over a dried place, the tone beneath is partly released and washes out. A modeler can make use of that: transitions can still be softened once dry and edges rubbed away to nothing. If you do not want that property, however, lead the stroke in one direction and do not go back into an area that has already become tacky.

Before you start on further techniques

Starting on washes, setting decals or working with pigments makes sense only on a surface sealed with varnish. A separating layer will prevent a solvent or water from a further technique reaching the colored area, and at the same time it settles the saturation of the shade. Let the varnish cure well; haste at this point of a build does the most harm.

Where a blue like this comes from

A blue of this depth has a historical basis too: dark blue tunics were worn by the line infantry of Napoleonic France, after them by a number of German states, and formal naval uniforms keep to the shade to this day. On a figure it therefore looks orderly and disciplined, which comes in useful even where the army is an invented one.

Storage

Keep the bottle at room temperature and do not let it freeze; frost curdles an acrylic dispersion beyond recovery and the paint then goes on in lumps.