Synthetics (plastic, rubber)
How plastic and rubber react to light, so you can paint believable shiny, matte, soft, or rigid surfaces.
What it is
Synthetics are man‑made materials with simple surface behavior. Plastics range from hard and glossy (a phone case) to soft and matte (a PVC toy). Rubber ranges from dull and chalky (eraser) to slightly satiny (car tires). In practice, you decide how sharp the reflections are, how deep the color reads, and how much the surface blurs or distorts what it reflects.
On glossy plastic, highlights are tight and clearly shaped by the light source and environment, but they sit on top of strong local color. Think of a red plastic cup: the specular highlight is almost white, but the midtones are saturated red, and form shadows stay colored, not gray. Edges of reflections are crisp but not as perfect as chrome; small bumps and molding lines break them up.
Matte or soft‑touch plastics and many rubbers blur and spread light. You paint broader, softer highlights, often as gentle bands rather than pinpoints. Values step down more gradually across the form. Color stays rich in the midtones but can turn slightly gray in shadow. Rubber often shows subtle subsurface effects at thin edges or where it's stretched: light can brighten edges or make them look more saturated, and compression folds create darker bands with softer transitions.
You'll use this whenever you paint toys, phone shells, keyboards, cables, car interiors, shoe soles, or sci‑fi armor with plastic plating and rubber gaskets. You decide which parts are rigid plastic, which are soft rubber, and which are glossy versus grippy, then render highlights, shadows, and edges to match.
Why it matters
Without a clear sense of how synthetics handle light, plastic and rubber collapse into the same generic “painted thing” — hard plastic reads as dull clay, rubber reads as metal. Props lose their designed feel: game controllers stop looking injection‑molded, tires stop looking grippy, and armor stops separating into hard plates and flexible joints. Get this right, and everyday objects snap into focus — viewers read function, quality, and wear level from the material alone.
You can check it when
- ✓You can paint the same simple shape as glossy plastic, matte plastic, and rubber, changing only the way you handle highlights, reflections, and edge softness.
- ✓Your plastics keep strong, believable local color in both light and shadow; highlights sit on top rather than washing the color out or turning everything gray.
- ✓Your rubber surfaces look slightly softer and more light‑absorbing than plastics around them, with broader highlights and less mirror‑like reflections.
- ✓In multipiece props (like a game controller, sneaker, or sci‑fi helmet), you make it clear at a glance which parts are hard plastic and which are rubber, even in grayscale.