Scale colour

[Guest]

I'm looking for advice about using scale colour. I'm returning to modelling after a number of years and I'm trying airbrushing. After a lot of practice on scrap I'm reasonably pleased with the finish I'm getting, but in a lot of books on finishing they talk about scale colour and 'lightening' the colour from the pot. Reading builds in magazines not many if any talk about this and I'm wondering what people think?

I'm about to embark on building a p-47d razorback, and I'm thinking do most people use shades rather than lightening the colour, especially with how badly olive drab faded in service?

Interested in opinions.

[Guest]

In my opinion, the smaller the scale, the lighter the particular colour should be.

I've not done aircraft, but I've always added a little yellow to olive drab for the upper surfaces that catch the light.

A little more for areas that would become worn or especially bleached by the sun.

In your case, I'd think much rests on where the P-47 was based in terms of wear & tear. I've seen pictures of them (along with P-38s) in Italy that had much of the bare metal showing through.

[Guest]

Thanks, that's kind of the conclusion I've been heading to. I've chosen a Duxford based aircraft, so it might have kept some of its paint, and I've gone for a tamiya 1/48th kit. I'm thinking lightest on the back and wings, but not going too far for my first attempt.

[Guest]

Nice tip on the Yellow thanks Patrick.

Also as have discovered to late on the Merlin. Used a sand coloured primer. Where I have put on the first coat, Olive, the primer shines thro. in places and look really good. Problem is it shines in all the wrong places.

Laurie

[stona]

Thanks, that's kind of the conclusion I've been heading to. I've chosen a Duxford based aircraft, so it might have kept some of its paint, and I've gone for a tamiya 1/48th kit. I'm thinking lightest on the back and wings, but not going too far for my first attempt.

Don't confuse weathering, the way a paint degrades over time and with exposure to the elements, and the scale effect.

Lightening a colour for scale is really a way of tricking the eye. It's about the way we perceive colour on large objects further away and small objects close up. I'm sure a quick google will throw up the relative percentage of lightening recommended for various scales but I just go by eye. It is an artistic endeavour, not a scientific one in my humble opinion

For weathering it is likely that the paint on the upper surfaces with additional exposure to the sun and elements will weather more than that on the undersides. Don't forget the vertical fin though!

Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

in my experience, both hue, saturation and surface (gloss / matt) are greatly subject to scale. Hue is a difficult one to quantify, but trial and error will eventually pay dividends! You only have to look at early die cast toys (Corgi, Dinky etc.) to see a glaring example of this! A thick coat of paint at 1:72 becomes a very unrealistic curtain at full scale, imagine this effect in 1:600! Any visible brush strokes at 1:35 become heavy wood grain at full scale! As a returner to this game (but one who has had many years of Architectural/Interior/prototype model-making experience) I am all too aware of this issue, and that an airbrush is probably essential to achieve realism in this area - although I once told myself I'd never pick one up again!

[Guest]

Yes in some ways John this is one of the most difficult to achieve scale colour. Just be weathering a model on gloss. When finished after matting with varnish it is amazing the difference it has brought to realism.

Interesting to hear of your architectural model making. Ran an architectural practice for many years. A few models we made but most were given out to specialists like yourselves who were making them all day long. We soon got wise to making sure the model maker could actually read drawings and interrupt them.

Laurie

[stona]

in my experience, both hue, saturation and surface (gloss / matt) are greatly subject to scale.

I agree with you, but the problem for modellers is that the effects are so difficult to quantify. I've read articles in which a percentage of white is added to standard model paints to lighten them for various scales but would advise against it, not least because white is not always the best colour to add. Some paints even claim to be lightened for scale, but what scale I don't know!

The object is to make a model appear more realistic and less toy like (the old Corgi and Dinky die casts you mentioned being a case in point) and this is very largely an artistic endeavour.

I'm not even sure what I do sometimes. I just fiddle about until it looks okay to me.

It's worth saying that some in the modelling fraternity would disagree with every word above and reckon the entire question of scale effects is just a storm in a tea cup invented by devious minds to make things more complicated than they are .

Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

Yes in some ways John this is one of the most difficult to achieve scale colour. Just be weathering a model on gloss. When finished after matting with varnish it is amazing the difference it has brought to realism.Interesting to hear of your architectural model making. Ran an architectural practice for many years. A few models we made but most were given out to specialists like yourselves who were making them all day long. We soon got wise to making sure the model maker could actually read drawings and interrupt them.

Laurie

Ha Ha, you are so right, and that went for contractors too! Fortunately, I also taught Technical Drawing, and it was a familiar language to me.

[Guest]

I agree with you, but the problem for modellers is that the effects are so difficult to quantify. I've read articles in which a percentage of white is added to standard model paints to lighten them for various scales but would advise against it, not least because white is not always the best colour to add. Some paints even claim to be lightened for scale, but what scale I don't know!The object is to make a model appear more realistic and less toy like (the old Corgi and Dinky die casts you mentioned being a case in point) and this is very largely an artistic endeavour.

I'm not even sure what I do sometimes. I just fiddle about until it looks okay to me.

It's worth saying that some in the modelling fraternity would disagree with every word above and reckon the entire question of scale effects is just a storm in a tea cup invented by devious minds to make things more complicated than they are .

Cheers

Steve

I'm not sure that adding white or black entirely answers this problem, as it is saturation that needs reducing, in many cases. This is, as you say, very difficult to quantify, and only mixing colours many, many times will give the modeller insight into how pigments actually work. Many art schools used to get students to make a whole sketchbook filled with small squares, and make as many variants of individual colours as they could! Clearly, this could end up as a lifetime's work, but it did give empirical experience of the way that pigments behaved. For example, an inexperienced student, on being asked to make a spectrum orange, would reach for tubes of spectrum red and yellow, and wonder why they ended up with brown! What they actually needed was crimson and lemon yellow - two "cool" colours mixed together make a "warm" colour. So, sometimes a colour can be reduced in saturation by adding either a cooler, darker colour of the same hue, e.g. add a crimson to a vermillion to knock the vermillion back a bit!

Absolutely agree about the appearance of realism, and weathering does seem to go an awful long way towards this, as it calms down the original colour, and we are so familiar with things that have a "lived in" appearance. Just fiddling about until it looks okay is a pretty good plan, on the whole!

[Guest]

On the Merlin Helicopter which is basically a dark to mid green (that covers about 50% of greens) I tried many colours and mixes over a number of evenings.

I was trying not only for scale but also the harshness of Afganistan. Eventually came up with green 2 to white 1 mix. I suppose it also depends on what colour you start with. The colour, in this case green, as it comes out of the Westland factory or after it has been in Afganistan 6 months. My goal was the latter.

I have found it very difficult to tone down colours. One thing that I have cottoned on to recently are mediums which actually thin the colour without thinning the paint ie as thinning with thinners. This for want of a better way of expressing it thins the basic paint compound.

Basically I find it is the harshness of the colour. Looking so definite. Where for instance the line between camouflage colours looks better slightly mingled into each other (blue tack rolls etc.). All though not a true representation it softens the whole thing for scale.

Interesting subject.

Laurie

[stona]

I suspect that what you describe as the 'harshness' of the colour is a function of the saturation of the colour rather than its hue. It's something John alluded to above. It's always hard to describe the properties of something perceived like colour, you might say that the camouflage colour appeared to dense.

There are many aspects to this and it really is a complicated subject. I have attempted to light everything from theatre stages to football stadiums in my second career and am well aware of the complexities of colour and light

Chemistry was a lot more....errr...scientific!

Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

Similar experience in architecture Steve. Put colour on a drawing and it looks the bees knees. Soon discovered that every colour we used on a building had to be viewed real life in a large dollop and in good day light mid day.

Rather like looking at the multitude of colours in the paint card section in B & Q. Take a sample home put a large section on the wall and "oh no".

Probably in some ways explains the difficulty with colours in scale model work. The paint manufacturers cannot produce the number of colours that ICI Dulux produce. Always amazes me to see the colours going in the paint mix. Bright reds and black how is that possible for light fawn ?

Spoilt my day Steve. I thought chemistry was a bit of this then that then lets add a bit more of that one. Colour looks good must be right.

Laurie

[stona]

Spoilt my day Steve. I thought chemistry was a bit of this then that then lets add a bit more of that one. Laurie

Weighing things to a thousandth of a gram used to be quite normal! I find cooking far more fun. It's a bit like chemistry, but without the precision

The way I mix and dilute my paints is not exactly a titration either. It's more along the lines of half a dozen drops of that followed by a squirt of that !

Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

This sounds all very difficult to understand so here is my two pennies worth, rather than trying to be all scientific about it, get some good photos and just interpret the colour by eye, if it is close but not perfect then what does it really matter, by the time washes and weathering have been completed 9 times out of 10 it will look like it does in the photos, using your eyes is usually always better than trying to measure gauge and quantify everything. Quite frankly I think you will enjoy the experience more.

scott