I’m curious how often others blend paints (from the same manufacturer) to achieve custom colors. I’ve got quite a few of one brand of paints that I haven’t been thrilled with, and primary colors (and a few others) for a brand that I’ve quite taken to. I don’t wish to spend a fortune (re-)acquiring many colors when I tend to model 1/72 and use so little, so I’ve been doing a lot of calculations with an iOS app (“iModelKit”). Is this more common than I think, or am I the weird outlier over here, calculating instead of modeling?
For those of you (if any) that do this as well, what colors do you find are the hardest to match? (I find reds are terribly hard to match, and sometimes greens as well…)
I’ve developed a spreadsheet that I can use to calculate a mixing ratio to match a given target, now I just need to make some time to do some testing. If this works out, I’ll never need more than 10 bottles of paint again! [;)]
The few times I have done paint mixing I have printed out a color photo of what I’m trying to match and then put dabs of paint from the various ratios directly onto the photo and let those dabs dry. Whichever color essentially blends in with the photo, that’s the ratio I go with. Just mixed some old Model Master Enamel FS36440 Gull Grey with some old Model Master Enamel Aluminum paint 3:1 to make a little jar of Corrogard. Its a color nobody seems to make, so I mixed my own for that one. Had to do the same kind of thing for the kind of pale orange pressure suits of some 1/72 SR-71 flight crew. Both look pretty much dead on compared to photos of the real thing. Aside from colors that nobody makes though, I pretty much just buy the color I need. Not big on mixing.
I’ve mixed my own paints regularly since the mid 1970s, when I found formulas for mixing Luftwaffe RLM colors…using Testors ‘square bottle’ enamels…in an IPMS/USA publication. When I switched to using Tamiya acrylics around 20 years ago, mixing was pretty much necessary due to their then-quite-limited range of colors. (It’s gotten a little better since then.)
I never had any trepidation about mixing my own colors. But I also served as manager of a retail paint department for a number of years, so I wound up mixing paint all day long. That experience was useful among other things for giving me a better awareness of subtleties of color…and the thousand different shades of greys and off-whites that existed. [:D] But it also clued me in to how a tiny drop of a non-intuitive color here and there might give you that ‘perfect’ color match in a modeling context.
Mixing my own has probably saved a lot of cash over the years. I can’t help but snicker a little when I read of modelers buying a half-dozen different mfgs’ versions of a single color…hoping one will be ‘right.’ A little color theory and 15 minutes playing with actual paint might solve their problem.
As to formulas, for Tamiya there are quite a few out there…of widely varying quality. I keep copious notes when I try out and adjust mixes…or just come up with my own. But like Eagle, I am usually inspired by a particular photo or illustration, and use that as my guide with the old Mk VIII eyeball.
I’ve done some paint mixing over the years, but with most paint brands, the colors that I needed were readily available. However, every now and then, that paint color is out of stock, or more recently, some lines have gone out of production, so I’ve done a bit of mixing. It’s fun, but I usually have to eyeball my own mixes. All that aside, I did come across this site that has Tamiya mixes for all sorts of colors in various military lines that are quite useful if you use their paints.
I found that a color wheel is a great aid to mixing colors. I bought mine from an art/office supply store. I have lost it in the junk, but no problem- I found a sustitute online, free, and handier. Many graphics programs will also analyse a color sample and show you the hue, saturation, and lightness. This is a help too.
I just realized in the op is the question of what colors do we find most difficult. To me that is a true looking saddle brown, a true maroon and a nice claret maroon. To add to this confusion is the primer color used and the difference between wet paint in a mixing cup and dried paint on various medium or colors of primer. I might have nailed the formula but screwed up the painting process.
I also don’t know what made Model Master Classic Black different from other blacks ( by that I mean the elements that made it classic black, not just the visual). I come up with stark black or some dark shade of grey but not Classic Black, it was special. Black is not just black, there are so many variations. I do like, though it’s craft paint not enamel, FolkArt Licorice black. Great color for many things. It’s not Classic Black enamel though. I have half a bottle of MM classic black I don’t want to use up lol. Because I don’t need much at a time to make a color swatch for comparing. My latest thought is along the lines of I may be barking up the wrong tree regarding hue difference in the CB vs the standard black but that it’s more about a minor difference in gloss.
Whites are tricky but the good news there for me is that for me at least close enough will do as long as I’m not color matching old paint work.
Thanks, all, for the comments. I’ve been using the ol’ Mk I eyeball for years, but…it ain’t all that great. I think Greg’s experience is something I’m really lacking, because apparently that intuitive bit just isn’t there for me.
What’s really getting to me lately is that I decided to try a more “colorimetry” approach (finding a way to convert ‘subjective’ colors to ‘objective’ numbers) so I could try using math to help, but I’m really not having any luck there, either! Perhaps it’s my starting colors that are off, but 3 different calculators aren’t even coming close to the final product, a dark green. Perhaps I just need to go back to the eyeball, or start adding additional paint manufacturers to my inventory so I can just pick out what I need from the stash…
