A friend of mine was with the RAF in Saudi during that same time. They ran out of their “official” paint and started using house paint, which would only last one mission before the sand and wind would scour the paint off. They used paint rollers to repaint, and the adherence to the official paint chip was shall we say a bit footloose? If you built a Tornado and a Typhoon and painted one tan and one pink, you would be more accurate than a slavish adherence to the standard.
Now we just need to convince some of these contest judges…[:D]
I use the same criteria as they did when they came out of the factory/production line…
CLOSE ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK…
C
In this case…literally
There’s an exception that no one has mentioned, one that has bitten me on the butt more than once, so I thought I might bring it up for discussion: SPACE.
The problem can be summed-up with a variant of that old tagline: IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM that the color looks wrong (because it does!). Color modulation, scale color, all the rest — they all assume that that you have this flimsy thing called “air” and when you don’t… (It’s what logicians call an unstated assumption.)
I know this isn’t going to thrill you rivet-counters, but this is a two-headed snake: When the real image looks fake:
How to make the fake look real? (As this doesn’t:)
This isn’t a question; it’s just something SF and Space modelers have to deal with, more than most. It’s a piece of a larger topic: what do you do when what’s photographically accurate just doesn’t look believable (AKA Hollywood vs. reality).
What fascinates me are people who obsess over ancient photos and try to exactly match the paint to the photo.
That seems flawed to me for several reasons. First of all, the photo has faded. Say it is a WWII photo, that is around 70 years of sitting (probably in someone’s attic at best) wearing on the photo, or slide, or negative. Secondly, early color film had a pretty noticeable color shift. Look at something shot on Kodachrome, Ektachrome, or even a Technicolor movie if you have any doubt. These mediums all produce beautiful colors, however, they are not a perfect reproduction of reality.
As for me, I don’t really obsess much at all. If it looks right, it’s good enough for me. I don’t compete.
Far too many variables to consider. The elements, method of application, variation within the same manufacturer, etc. Approximate shade is good enough for me.
You’d better obsess about it, lest the paint police knock on your door.
Another thought that comes to mind in this discussion is mixing paint. I have some buddies that will not build a model unless they can buy the correct shade of paint in a bottle. There is nothing wrong with mixing your own colors, as long as you stay within the same brand and type (do not mix acrylics and enamels, for instance).
The human eye is actually a pretty good color matcher if you have a reference (within the limits of what I have already said about accuracy of printed photos). If you are reluctant to try it, pick up a book on oil or acrylic painting at a library, and maybe even buy a color wheel at an art store. Mixing your own paint opens up a whole world of new colors.
One simple mix is adding a little flat white, flat gray, or flat tan to flat black to make a more realistic tire color. Give that a try as an intro to mixing your own colors.
TLAR is a good one, as is my favorite, “DILLIGAF”, when Rivet-Counters strike… Even made a smilie for 'em…
It translates to “Does It Look Like I Give A “F”(F-word here)?”
My concern for the right shade of O/D was cured after seeing a photo of a B17 that looked like it had been painted up using about six different shades…and thats before thinking about how the tint in the picture might have changed.
Reading about painting during Desert Storm also confirms your chances of getting 100% perfection are nil.
IMO does it look right… after reading up about it ? The main thing to watch is kit color schemes as they ll be geared into convenient paint colors which might not be right.(Was it was Revell who years ago had box art with a P51D with a lot of red, which should have been O/D (tho that may ve been correct in the instructions)? Im sure Ive built US Navy planes with the undersides shown as white.
That’s one serious acronym Hammer!
Hans the old SLPD Third District softball team had jerseys made for one season that all had “Dilligaf” on them.
That was a fun summer…
G
Got a few more that are in the same vein, and unique to the US Army Chemical Corps, but this is a family rag…[whstl]
It’s only three sylables… “DILL-a-Gaf”…[;)]
Sounds like my kind of team, G… I played softball with the MPs BNCOC Instructors one year, called themselves “The SWAT Team”… Kinda corny, IMHO, but then, they were MPs, so they got a pass…
I hear ya.
We mostly drank…
G
My main concern is getting to where it looks right after weathering… I use MM OD right outta the rattle can, then start there with the weathering process, as that’s basically the way it works on the prototypes…
I like the WW2/Korean War USN colors of blue as MM makes them, so they get shot right outta the can as well…
Overall though, folks that obcess over the exact shade of a particular paint needn’t do so, unless that’s part of their process… I’ve been in the Army through four different Army-wide tactical vehicle camouflage schemes (Overall OD, 4-color NATO, 4-color NATO DESERT, and MERDC), AND the Desert Sheild/Desert Storm camo, which, in our case, was so hastily applied that it was chipping off in large areas almost before they got to KKMC… We didn’t even paint the Howitzers and the FAASVs. They were still in the MERDC scheme or (the newer ones) NATO scheme with CARC, although the soft-skins got repainted with the Desert Sand CARC in most cases…
This next nit is more about technique than color, but I gotta say something about it anyway…
There was an article in FSM some months back that featured a track with varying shades of the base-color that sticks in my mind… While it looked fine in the magazine, I suspect that using the Mk I Eyeball, in person, that paint would have looked like what it was, three or so different shades of paint… I’ve seen that before, in oerson, and gotta say that’s not only a lot of work, it’s a lot of work for nothing, because it doesn’t (to me) look like the same color of paint under various lighting conditions…
Frankly, it looks fine if the primary purpose of the paint job is for a magazine article or the like, since you’re showing a 3-D object in a 2-D format, but it doesn’t look right if the lighting ever changes angles and intensity… The only place this type of base-color painting would be desirable is if it’s in a shadow-box, where the viewing angle is restricted to one, and the lighting is controlable, IMNSHO… “Shading” a model vehicle of aircraft is just asking for trouble on the contest-table… A builder has no more control over the lighting and angles used than he/she has over the weather outside the venue… However, I digress…
Getting the “exact” shade of a particular prototype is a pipe-dream… I have a mild color-vision problem, for one thing, and I judge at contests too, lol… (Red-Green Color Discrimination is what the doc called it and before y’all start, IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH POSSUM LODGE OR THE LOCALS LIVING AROUND THE POSSUM LAKE, CANADA AREA)… [;)]
Even if you do get it, using the same paint from the same can that you got from the factory isn’t gonna look quite right… So, TLAR applies in most cases and will go a long way in allowing you to build and paint more, and research a little less… Most model paint manufacturers went to a lot of work getting the paint the right “Scale” color in the first place… Duplication of effort is rather a waste of bench-time (if such a thing matters to you, that is) While I don’t claim to know about the atmospheric influence on paint shades that’re scaled down, I know what “looks right” in my eyes… So I go with that…
Another thing I touched on, but didn’t expound upon, is the fact that one can look at a line of M60A3, M109A3s, or Ex-RAF P-40s from the Umpteenth Fighter Sqn, Eleventeenth Fighter Group, Eightish Air Force and see ten different “shades” of colors, all dependant on what day of the week they were initially painted, how long they’ve been out in the weather, the amount of salt-air, desert winds, arctic temperatures they were exposed to, etc, etc., etc., and if they were painted with factory paints, or locally procured shades (VERY common in the 8th AF in England, especially with the OD used)…
So the bottom line for me is, Don’t sweat it… Judges don’t carry color-chip booklets with 'em (same thing goes for the Pilot’s Operating Handbook or the Dash 10if they do, they got issues, are probably still living in their parent’s basement and you’re screwed anyway… Might as well leave the seam in that metal barrel…[:P])
Oh… One more thing, and then I’ll shut up about it… Being a shade or two off, or having the curvature of the camouflage demarcation line a scale two inches too low is not an issue… However, just because there’s a bit of wiggle room it doesn’t mean you can conjure up totally ridiculous patterns and colors, unless you’re doing, on purpose, a “What If?”-type of build or contest, and you need to be able to explain that if asked… And don’t try to pass off Olive Green as Olive Drab, Dark Grey as Panzergrau, light blue as RLM Lichtblau or Khaki as Tan…
It’s kind of like Creative Gizmology, wherein the Gizmologist doesn’t try to duplicate, bolt-for-bolt, nut-for-nut, types of added details, but suggests them, while still maintaining a good bit of Imagineering… Suggestion, rather than Duplication, is the key… It’s quite acceptable, it’s far less money and time, and it’s, above all else, it’s YOURS…
[quote user=“Essexman”]
My concern for the right shade of O/D was cured after seeing a photo of a B17 that looked like it had been painted up using about six different shades…and thats before thinking about how the tint in the picture might have changed.
I liek this quote…as I site here and watch the History channels Air war in color. I remember when I first started modeling…B-17 were OD Green all over. Then the color photos and videos came out and people noticed the Dark green blothches on the spine and verticle stabilizers. This of course does not even take into consideration the repair patches used (usually from wrecked planes) where the OD green was…let just say not the same.
Very nice thread.
Yes I have been guilty of trying to find that exact match inthe past. After a few years and the help of a paint conversion site I found that a lot of the acrylics I work with have similar hues but different names…but in the end they are close enough for me! And as has been noted once the weathering and washes go one the original color gets lost.
Just remembered this pic I found:
[View:/themes/fsm/utility/
:550:0]
Talk about a patchwork of grey!!![:D]
The OD paint from the USAAF stocks were quickly exhausted in 1943 and the 8th AF went looking for the closest match to it with RAF colors and whatever they buy from the locals…
One thing to keep in mind too, is that those patches of OD green on the Early F-models were, in fact, camouflage patterns designed to break up or disguise the outline of the aircraft as it sat on the ground… The documentary of “The Memphis Belle” showed it well on the 91st BG’s Forts…
Close counts in horse shoes, hand grenades and scale modeling!