Achieving vibrant , high-contrast blue

[9x19 Parabellum]

I am unpleased with how my sisters of battle cloaks have turned out. They are too drab and faded. Here's a shot of a few:

I'm looking to get a more vibrant blue, but still register as a "navy blue", something like this:

Let's please keep...off-color commentary out of the thread, thank you.

[Rik Lightstar]

It's probably worth you doing a test on another model, but I'd try the following:

 

• Start with either a white or incredibly light cream undercoat (I like cream/ivory undercoats as I think they give a bit more vibrancy)
• Basecoat with the brightest blue you want to use, probably a pretty bright cobalt
• Take your darkest intended blue and paint it into the deepest recesses
• Get your "midtone" blue that you'd like as your base colour and thin it down to the point where it's translucent on your palette
• Use this thinned midtone on the areas where the dark shades should be meeting them, this may take a couple of coats to get a noticeable change in tone
• As your thinned layers build up, move them gradually closer to the highlights

Be patient and this should get you there.

 

One other thing to mention, is that you might struggle to get the same degree of shimmer as in the picture of the dress, to work around this you could use a satin varnish once you're done to give it a more noticeable effect.

 

Rik

[Indefragable]

This is for purple, but very useful for overall guide on how to "think" in terms of cloth for painting on miniatures, if it helps:

https://youtu.be/2o2oPm1eW5c 

[9x19 Parabellum]

thanks both of you.  Going to look more in depth at both of these when I get home and see how to proceed.

[Ovidius Incertus]

Differential priming and then paint your blue with an ink.

 

Trovarion and Marco Frisoni both have good videos (I believe their Black Templar videos) that show the idea of differential priming and/or value sketches.

[DarkMark]

Vince's deep dive on blue.

[Firedrake Cordova]

Given the rather large changes in brightness over short distances, it looks like you want to try a non-metallic metal technique, but with blues (I'm guessing something like Kantor/Night Lords Blue and Teclis Blue).

 

Zumikito paints the highlight and shadow areas as basecoats, and then blends the transition zone: