The Ship Model Forum

Thought this might be useful to someone out there.... I taught this stuff for years and mixing colors is my profession; so it's only fitting that I write a blurb about the topic as it relates to ship modelling.

When it comes to ship colors, we are often confused by certain colors and aren't sure why they aren't correct. Threads are written about certain manufacturers and their mixes of certain naval colors and their accuracy is debated as they relate to other manufacturers. Vague terms such as "shade" and "more bluish" are used to describe what is actually a very technical and easily learned science: Color theory. That's what this is about.

Whether you mix your own colors like I do or buy pre-mixed tints, I find it very useful to understand the mechanics of what color is and how they interrelate with each other.

Basic Colour Theory

Theoretically, every color imaginable is created by combining the three primary colors and modifying them with white or black. This is an oversimplification, but fundamentally this is correct. Put more realistically, Reddish colors, Bluish colors, and yellowish colors are know as the primary triad. With these colors you can mix the secondary colors: Orangy colors, Greenish colors, and purples. In real life, 'Earth colors" (reddish browns, woody yellows, and chocolate browns also play a key role in modifying and mixing colors.

Attached is an image of the color wheel. This is a diagram that illustrates how colors mix. It is a visualization that reduced color mixing down to the theoretical essence. The primaries are situated at the corners of a triangle. The colors that are mixed through their interaction are situated in a secondary triangle. The primary and secondary triads, as they're referred to. Notice how on the color wheel, every color has an opposite. For example, across from blue there is orange. From Red, there is green. These are 'compliments'. They're easy to remember because they are often used in art and design because they can work well together. Christmas (red, green) Easter (yellow, purple) , Halloween (orange, dark blue). Anyway, the only thing you need to know about compliments is that when mixed, they kill each other's intensity until, when mixed equally, they theoretically make gray. In reality, perfect gray is seldom the result, but the effect of diminished intensity holds true. Imagine you have a Royal Navy blue color and you are finding it way too intense. One way to soften this color would be to add a bit of an orangy color to it. A few drops of a Tamiya color such as "leather" or racing orange will soften your Tamiya bluish hue down a bit. Adding black to a color has a similar effect. I actually do most of my dulling with black and white. Regardless, this complimentary device is critical to know when mixing your own colors. The presence of a color's compliment can be an important factor in assessing it's hue. This law isn't relegated to pure primaries. For example a greenish color can be softened out and killed a bit by adding not a bright red, but an earthy reddish color such as burnt sienna (reddy brown.)

Anyway, the main thing to realize is what colors mix with what and what do they result in. That's what the color wheel is. This colors are then adjusted with white or black or other colors to yield more specific hues.
But being ship modellers, our task of mixing colors is extremely easy as you will see in a moment. They're some of the easiest colors to mix!

Colors are made by grinding pigments up and combining them with binders, curing agents, vehicles (linseed oil, enamel etc). Depending on what pigments are used, the primary colors can be very different. For example, some blues appear to be more turquoise whereas other blues appear more like the color of Smurfs, still other blues are almost purple in appearance. Fundamentally, there a limited number of primary pigments. All paint manufacturers use them and they are the backbone of the color industry. Ultramarine blue, Cerulean blue, Thalo blue, Prussian blue, are but of a handful of blue pigments used to make paint; each is vastly different than their colleagues and produce very different types of blues. Nearly all Royal Navy colors can be mixed with a combination of thalo blue and a certain measure of Ultramarine blue. This is what gives RN colors their distinctly Turquoise look. Western Approaches blue or green are hands-down thalo based colors. The US navy however has next to no colors that are thalo based. It used Ultramarine type blue-based colors almost exclusively. Side by side, US colors clearly illustrate their ultramarine origins vs. RN's Thalo origins.

For ship modelling and most military applications, there is only one thing you need to know about Primaries, specifically blue. In not so technical terms, there are blue pigments that have a hue like blueberries and bluejeans, and there are blues that are like turquoise and indigo. When considering a mix, it is crucial that the correct type of blue is used. I'm picking on blue because In ship modelling, blue is the primary color that is used the most. Each primary color (red, yellow, blue) have vastly different types of pigments that represent them. For example, some reds are like santa's suit whereas other reds are more like a cherry. This would be the difference between say Cadmium red medium and Quinacridone red. Back to ships, in a nutshell, the RN used a combination of both turquoise (thalo) blues and Ultramarine blues; the thalo aspect which giving them their distinctly turquoise appearance while the US Navy seems to have no thalo (turquoise) based colors.

Turquoisy blues:
Thalo, Prussian, thalo green,

Blueberry blues:
Ultramarine


Kind of like both:
Cerulean, Cobalt
Using the correct blue in a ship mix is crucial.
RN= turqoisy+ultramarine
US=Ultramarine


As ship modellers, blues and greys are our most predominantly used colors. Understanding the look of the root colors will help you to understand why a color isn't looking correct. In most cases when it comes to bluish tints, the culprit is the type of blue used. But that's not all; which leads to a discussion of WHY colors are incorrect and understanding with greater accuracy what the problem is.

As I mentioned before, as well as pigments for the primary colors, there are also pigments that are know as 'earth pigments'. These pigments are usually derived from minerals that yield softer, more earthy tones such as red oxide, browns, and ocher colors (woody yellows).
These earth tones are used extensively to modify and adjust the chroma of the more vibrant colors. Interestingly, the red that hulls are painted were often the earth color red-oxide lead. This pigment was cheap and readily available hence its use. In photos, the red can look quite vibrant. In real life, it would have definitely appeared more like a moderately intense reddish rust color.



Mixing and understanding Navy colors.

Most WW2 naval colors begin their mix with black and white to make gray. Some grays contain more white, some more black. But neutral gray is the backbone of most naval colors. If you were to mix a ship color, this is the most effective way to begin the mix. To this mix, other colors are added to yield the final color. What colors? Well, military colors are surprisingly easy to understand and mix. Virtually all military and ship colors can be mixed using often just 2 or 3 of the following pigments:

-White
-Black
-Ultramarine Blue (blueberries)
-Thalo Blue (turqoise)
-Burnt Sienna (functions on the color wheel as red). It's a brick/earthy tone.
-Raw sienna (functions as yellow on the color wheel). It's an ochre type yellowy brown.
-Occasionally primary yellow (cadmium yellow light or equivalent) Lemon yellow.
-Occasionally some kind of bright red (cadmium red light or equivalent). Santa's suit
-Occasionally for RN colors Thalo green.



Nearly every commercially produced military color is a grey base with the addition of only one or two colors...usually an 'earth color' (burnt sienna, raw sienna).
I recently was commissioned by a guy to mix him jars of every single RN and US color as they appear on Snyder and Short's color sample sheets. Most, or rather all of the colors had this kind of mixology:

black+white= 507C
black+white+ultramarine blue+thalo blue=B6
Black+white+Ultramarine blue+thalo blue+raw sienna=MS3
black+white+ultramarine blue=US navy deck
black+white+ultramraine blue (different quantities than US navy deck) = most US navy camouflage colors.
Etc. etc. etc.
Glancing at the IJN sheets, most of those gray mixes are black+white+blue. I'd have to do some mixing to assess if the correct blue is ultramarine or thalo in nature. Regardless, easy peasy.
Decks:
black+white+raw sienna (depending on quantities will make a lighter deck)
black +white+burnt sienna+raw sienna (teak)



So you can see how simplistic and repetitive these mixes are. After a while, I was able to simply glance at the Snyder and Short color sample and instantly know the mix.
Given this, I find it interesting how many colors are available to the hobbyist and am shocked by how many of those colors are simply the same colors over and over again with varying degrees of white or black!

So,
When it comes to troubleshooting a color or discussing it's nature, there is a language that can be used to achieve greater descriptive accuracy.

When a color appears incorrect, there is a limited number of things that can be wrong with it. The first thing that can be assessed is its value. The value is the color's darkness or lightness. If you were to take a black and white photograph of the color, this would be it's value. If the value of the color is wrong, it must be darkened or lightened. Perhaps simply adding some white to it could be the fix. Or may the color is too light; in this case adding more color into the mix to reduce the percentage of white could be the fix.
If the value of the color is correct, but it still feels wrong, then perhaps the hue is off. The hue is the chromatic description of the color (red, greenish etc.). The hue can be off in two ways: 1. The mix contains incorrect proportions of the component colors. "My B6 is incorrect because I've used too much ultramarine blue. 2. The mix contains the incorrect pigment. "My US deck color is wrong because I used thalo blue instead of Ultramarine blue."

People who work with color professionally could instantly visualize a color through phraseology like this: "The color is a low saturation, mid-value blue-green biased hue of thalo origins modified with burnt sienna."

At the risk of sounding like a pitch-man for Golden Acrylics:
Imagine being able to mix large quantities of your own modelling colors as per the exact hue and value you want? It's a great skill to have. It's also dirt-cheap. A single large bottle of Golden Airbrush high flow paint is 25 bucks. One small tin of model paint can be nearly ten dollars! I can mix a cup of B6 for next to nothing.
Given my ability to mix paint (and it's nothing more than what I've outlined in this post), I ultimately decided to use High Flow acrylics for airbrush by Golden exclusively in my modelling. These paints are airbrush ready out of the bottle, clean up with water, cure in minutes and hand-brush like a dream out of the bottle. I have large bottles of the base colors I listed and I mix all my modelling colors from these. I save bundles of money doing it this way and feel I have greater control over my color mixes.

Modifying hobby paint

Based on everything I said earlier, it should come as a revelation that nearly all colors that you can buy for ship modelling are based on a very limited number of pigments that are repeated over and over in differing quantities. Give this, it shouldn't be too hard to modify hobby paint to be more accurate should you feel that the mix is incorrect.
1. The mix is based on a black+white architecture. Is the color too light or too dark?
2. To the grey framework, one or two colors have been added. If the color appear bluish, a blue pigment has been added. Is the blue pigment correct? If it appears turquoise, then thalo/cerulean blue has been used. If this turquoise color is incorrect, then the wrong blue was used. I've seen RN colors made with Ultramarine blue or too much Ultramarine blue and it's the main reason for the inaccuracy.
3. Is there a pigment in the manufacturer's line that approximates the desired addition to the color or is closer in color to the desired effect? Is there a color in the line that can be added to the offending color to achieve the desired effect?

Separate the problem of mixing color into its value and chroma components.

Ocean Colors
The sea can be painted in a vast range of hues and values.
When mixing a sea color, you have to consider the darkness or lightness of the sea and it's blue-base (thalo or ultramarine based). They have different looks. Predominantly, the ocean is a combination of the two leaning towards thalo bias. A typically 'blue' sea in it's rawest look is quite close to Cobalt blue.
When mixing an ocean color, first choose what blue you want to use. If you want, you can then add black and or white to this blue to modify its intensity and darkness/lightness. To this mix, you can then add an earth color; either raw sienna or raw umber. Of course, any color can be added, but you'll be amazed at the versatility of simple 'earth' colors.
The wake color is that minty, frothy color of the sub-surface churn. It is most often a soft, light value minty, thalo-based green-blue. Much like mints in a jar. Technically, this color occurs as a result of white foam that is under a few feet of blue water resulting in a darkened hue. The sun, in combination with greenness of the water produces the minty quality. Sometimes, the subsurface churn is simply a lighter version of the sea color. I made a chart that describes this all visually and provides some ideas for different ocean colors.
Rule of thumb:
On an overcast day, colors are less saturated and appear more gray. Rich color saturation is a product of more intense light. A stormy scene might benefit by having many greys and low intensity minty colors in the wake. A hot, sunny day in the pacific might have more intense blues and a more punchy mint color in the wake.

The diagram says it all.
Anyway, color and painting is my favorite and most confident part of a build and I hope that this can be useful to someone out there...if even just as a new way of understanding and describing color. "Bluish grey" means little ..... "Medium-low vlaue, high saturation Ultramarine blue-green" means a whole lot more!

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Every time the PE sticks to your tweezers, you lose a minute off your life.

Sticky this please mods!!!!!!

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Drawing Board:
1/700 Whiff USS Leyte and escorts 1984
1/700 Whiff USN Modernized CAs 1984
1/700 Whiff ASW Showdown - FFs vs SSGN 1984

Slipway:
1/700 Whiff USN ASW Hunter Killer Group Dio 1984

Color theory has always been a challenge for me, thanks much for this explanation (and your previous post on scale color).

Cheers,

Keith

Stickied. Another great write-up!


Chris, you might want to use the "Place inline" function to make the photos appear next to he paragraph/line that refers to them.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

Thanks Tim,
I didn't know there was such a thing...I'll give it a try next time!

_________________
Every time the PE sticks to your tweezers, you lose a minute off your life.

Okay I am tryin your painting technique and water technique on my current builds. I am trying to find the sign up sheet for the Chris School of Model Building..... Good lord you are a wealth of information

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Gabriel

As someone who has also studied colour theory and applied it in different genres of scale models I must say: this is a great write-up, and IMHO a must read for every modeller (ships, armour, figures, ...)!

An extra note: all of this doesn't only apply to mixing base-colours, but also very much to weathering.

ya for sure. I narrowed the topic down to ships; but it applies to just about everything...diorama colors, weathering, most military subjects, natural colors etc.

_________________
Every time the PE sticks to your tweezers, you lose a minute off your life.

Chris,

Very impressive and the page is bookmarked.

I'm a Golden fan also and have done several models from primes or something close to it. If you don't mind I would like to quibble about the "easy peasy" theme. Color mixing in my experience is something that is simpler in theory than in practice. I don't doubt that someone that knows the ropes very well could duplicate the Snyder and Short samples pretty quickly. I'm not so sure if it's a drop dead dunk if you're coming from the world of standard model paints.

First, when you're using Golden colors it's a good idea to get the basics right. Titanium white (a wonderful paint) is very different from the far less opaque Zinc White which is really a mixer. Likewise, carbon black has more punch than bone black. And heaven knows they have blues and greens that have very different effects when put into a mix. I had great fun using Golden's recipe for a Chromatic Black using both platho blue (red) and platho blue (green): they both looked black but showed their difference when cut with white. They're aren't lots of gray/greens on ships but lots on aircraft and even armor. And if you want to start with something that's very close to neutral gray, a Canadian company called Tri-Art makes a rendition that's just a bit thicker than Golden Fluid but still easily manageable. (I'd sure add Golden Buff to my collection: very nice for creating multi-shaded wood. Actually, now that I check their page they've added a few new colors to the fluid range that look neat. Still don't have a neutral gray. Wonder what would happen if one cut Payne's gray. Just what I need - more paint.)

Probably the biggest learning curve is applying the stuff. I've found that Golden does not kid you when they warn against using more than a very small amount of water for thinning. Golden is a vinyl acrylic that lays down a kind of mask as it dries - very different than Tamiya which is really a lacquer. Anyway, too much water and that film will start to get fragile and ultimately fail to cohere. So you become familiar with various mediums & extenders especially if you want to use an airbrush. (The stuff is terrific to hand brush as one might expect considering their main market.)

I had plans to master the craft and to do more or less what you suggest - make almost everything out of a handful of colors functioning as primes. In the real world I found it easy to get lazy and every time I was on Scale Hobbyist or another site that sells them, I was picking up a couple of bottles of Vallejo Model Color which act very much like Golden but are premixed. You know: only $2. After a while I find myself with a pretty good collection of Vallejo and Golden. No accident that Vallejo started as the maker of high quality artist acrylics and still sell a lot of them.

I love working with either - so clean, no smell and terrific colors. (Golden warns people not to forget to wear a mask unless you're sure the pigment is benign. Stuff like zinc, even though it is odorless is not. One thing nice about the Golden website is such details are available along with guides to opacity.) That said, for some kind of airbrushing it's tough to beat Tamiya or Gunze. If something requires a very thin coat at very low PSI (probably more typically armor or a plane) the lacquer/acrylics really come into their own.

Quibbles aside I encourage others to give the artist acrylics a try. They're mostly sold to serious amateur and professional painters and can't be beat for lovely color. And if you liked finger painting as a kid, color mixing is great fun. It's a rare day when I hit a color on the head with the first brew, so I'll end up spending some serious listening to music and making pretty colors. And eventually even I'll get there. A mellow task from start to finish and totally lacking the "should I end it all" moments that show up when working with PE.

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A model boat is much cheaper than a real one and will not sink with you in it.

I certainly didn't want to sound glib with my easy peasy remark! mixing color is a tricky thing. It's made very easy though by the fact that all these naval colors can be done with such a short list of pigments. Still though, it takes experience to know which colors to grab and use and in what quantities. I take this skill for granted perhaps having spent most of my life standing at an easel painting! Still though, with that limited palette, it's easier than you might thing. As I mentioned above, most mixes start with titanium white and mars black (for modelling, the black doesn't really matter). From there, you're only one or two colors away from the final tone.

Regarding spraying etc.
The Golden high flow acrylics need never be thinned for spraying. I've never had to thin them once. I spray them and brush them out of the bottle with smooth and very perfect finish. Some of the acrylics are very transparent such as quinacridone red, thalo blue/green, etc.

Regarding toxicity:
Wear a mask and have perfect ventilation. I would recommend this with any product by any manufacturer. Golden high flow are clearly labelled with Carcinogenic warnings. To their credit though, they don't make any paints using any of the potently carcinogens such as Cadmium.

If you're starting out with a new goal of trying mixed paints/acrylics; give Krylon Matte finish a try. It is the most outstanding base 'primer' I've ever tried. A good coat of that left to dry over night becomes a lovely, paper-like surface for airbrushing and hand painting. It bonds very confidently to styrene.

_________________
Every time the PE sticks to your tweezers, you lose a minute off your life.

Well, shut my mouth. You do learn things every day. When I first contacted Golden about using their paints on plastic models one of their top gurus spent some time with me. He strongly recommended Fluid Acrylics over what they called Air Brush Colors. Now I've checked their web site and it turns out that in mid-2013 they replaced the Airbrush line with a new batch called High Flow. I've never used those, and I'll give it a try - although as noted, the last thing I need is more paints. But anything in the name of science or art. Regardless I've found Fluid Acrylics to be very good indeed when matched with the right medium - they're very like Vallejo Model Color which are likewise very good.

When the Golden guru was describing the Air Brush line he made it sound intended more for things like fabrics. So I put the thought aside until I stumbled on a set of paints called the Iwata Com.Art "Real Deal Weathering Set" they were pushing for model railroaders. (Described at length http://www.iwata-medea.com/products/pai ... ering-kit/). New paint, had to try. I wouldn't attempt to paint a model with this stuff, but I've found it terrific for weathering. It's absolutely impossible to describe but if you're ever near a Blick art supply store they've usually got a few dozen bottles. The useful colors are transparent and I use black and blue/gray smoke for pinwashes on almost everything. At $3 a bottle, one will last for five years or so. (Great bottles with BBs in them.) Easiest stuff I've ever used to remove and it's perfect for panel lines if you don't want them to stand out too much - a common sin among aircraft modelers in my view. It also leaves a kind of grainy texture which gives a really neat "lived in" look that works well for almost any military subject. Turns out that the Real Deal was just a selection from a much larger line of Com.Art paints that cater to almost anyone except plastic modelers. I wonder if the original Golden Air Brush line might have been akin.

Eric

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A model boat is much cheaper than a real one and will not sink with you in it.

I found some Testor's airbrush colors at my local "aart" store and gave this a thrash. With some experimentation I came up with a pretty decent haze gray to spray the hull on my 1:192 Missouri. I di like the way these sprayed straight and they tended to clog the airbrush almost not at all compared to the thinned model master acryl. I see that Blick carries the golden line. The high flow and high flow matte seem attractive though they are not available locally.

Thoughts on the high flow and high flow matte for ship usage?

Next question: Suggestions on mix colors for a hull red similar to Mr Color #29?

Regards: Tom

I paint my models the same each time
-base 'primer' of Krylon matte finish
-Colors are mixed and sprayed using airbrush. Golden high flow acrylics.
-weathering is done with artist's oils.
-Finishing coat of golden matte polymer varnish. This mixes 3:1 varnish to water and finishes beautifully.

_________________
Every time the PE sticks to your tweezers, you lose a minute off your life.

Chris' work on color mixing strikes me as being spot on - especially if working with paints is fun for you.

If you want the color matching done for you and still want to use water based acrylics (I love them because they are so easy to clean, low odor etc: easy to forget the mask which is a bad idea because all paints have pigments) a Brit fanatic at IPMS compiled a large chart giving recommendations for which of Vallejo Model Color's blizzard of colors matches various measures used by the major navies of WWII (also some pre and postwar). Easiest way to get it is to google "Vallejo WWII Naval Color Equivalents" - that will take you right to a PDF file. These are for Vallejo Model Color which are thicker than Vallejo Model Air so you have to use airbrush medium to airbrush with them. They are very much like Golden Fluid Acrylics. (Just as Golden High Flow are very like Vallejo Model Air: same pigments but considerably thinned.) The resemblance is no accident: Vallejo started in Spain to be a European version of Golden. About ten years ago they saw the modelling market and have since split off a separate division for it. But a water based acrylic is going to be a close relative regardless of brand. The Italian company LifeColor also makes water based paints and is coming out with more military colors every year - huge number now. I've used them and find them very good. Their Navy Blue, Deck Blue and Haze Gray are very close to WEM's rendition. (Lifecolor is widely available now, but Pacific Coast Models was their original importer and have an excellent line. http://www.pacmodels.com/index.php) Tamiya and Gunze really make lacquers and should be treated very differently but have undoubted strengths and deserve their popularity.

Many of the enamel fans give White Ensign Colorcoats top billing. Snyder and Short, the folk that operate the wonderful USN Ship Camouflage site appear to have a complete collection of WEM enamels in now. I don't like enamels, but did buy a tin each of USN Navy Blue, Deck Blue and Haze Gray which I've used as kind of color chips: a muse for making my own home brew colors. Also use them for dry brushing sometimes. Check:
http://www.shipcamouflage.com/colourcoats.htm

Eric

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A model boat is much cheaper than a real one and will not sink with you in it.

Also linked to on our FAQ thread on paint conversion sites.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

A real labor of love no doubt. I wonder who did that Urban chart. Frankly I find it so comprehensive that it's almost hard to use. There's another very large Vallejo chart (includes equivalents for Federal Standard, RAL and RLM) at http://www.hobcen.com/paints/vallejo.htm. I have a soft ware program called Paint Assistant ($20) that has been a genuine help - but is known to err. And there's always the Federal Standard 595 Color Server http://www.colorserver.net/#search.

However, when you start tracking down color details like this interesting research on RLM at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/enc ... olors.html it's kind of easy to figure that there's no single "right color." Tracy White has posted here that every US warship was given big tins of purple and white paint from which they made all their blues and grays. Tracy knows a lot and experience gained trying to make a variety of "chromatic blacks" indicates to me that he's right. So maybe we should get into the ball park and let the devil have the details.

Eric

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A model boat is much cheaper than a real one and will not sink with you in it.

You're absolutely correct about letting the Devil have the details.
To this I will add one thing:
There is probably a fair bit of variation in the original colors....mixing their own paints aboard, slight differences in batches, etc. However, one thing that should be correct and likely wouldn't change is the nature of the blues used. While the value of the color and the overall chroma can be off by slight degrees by virtue of quantity, the exact blues in the mix should be right or the color will be incorrect for the given navy.
Black+white+either pthalo blue or Ultramarine blue (or a bit of both) is the largest determining factor in mixing ww2 navy colors.

Total speculation alert for the following:

At some point it was decided what colors and patterns the ships would be painted in. The artists/designers who came up with these ideas did their initial work on paper or canvas using artist's paints. I assume these plans were then handed to contractors who make paint. Depending on the availability of certain pigments and given the large quantities needed, the correct material sourcing would have been nailed down and adhered to for long periods. The colors in multi-paneled schemes would be based on tints of the same base colors to keep it simple. If you analyzed these paints closely enough from a mixing point of view, I'm certain (and actually came to realize when I was mixing all the S&S chips) that they're all based out of a small number of root colors that have been lightened or darkened. 90% of them black, blue, and white. The purple you refer to that the US navy was given to mix their own was most likely a very dark, ultramarine based blue with a bit of black in it giving it a slightly purple hue. From this, they could easily mix lighter tints with white...giving you the classic USN colors.

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Every time the PE sticks to your tweezers, you lose a minute off your life.

Just when you thought you were safe from more paint craziness, I stumble on something neat on the Golden site. They've got liquid medium's to recreate the "resin" look and four experimental "chromatic blacks." It looks like they were messing around with producing some chromatic blacks - don't think they did it, but somewhere else on their massive site they have recipes for chromatic black. Anyway, they have a pic of four and one has a definite purple look - just as Tracy indicated. I'd assume that the crew would have simple ratios for the various colors and off you go. Check it out:

http://oldsite.goldenpaints.com/justpai ... ticle7.php

Looks like the local Blicks gets more of my money. (As luck would have it I have a Blick outlet within a mile of my house in Berkeley and my house in St. Paul Minnesota. It's fate.)

Eric

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A model boat is much cheaper than a real one and will not sink with you in it.

Still looking for some suggestions toward a mix for hull red. I have some vague ideas by working with the color space in photoshop but someone's experience might save time and materials.

Regards: Tom

Burnt sienna+cadmium red light in equal measures (or play with it until you like it) + the smallest amount of black and a prick of white might do it. It should look like a dull near-brick rusty red. 'Apparently' the oft used wine color or deep crimson color is quite incorrect. It's actual pigment in the real world was red oxide lead. So quite close to burnt sienna. Burnt sienna+cad red light or medium is about it.

_________________
Every time the PE sticks to your tweezers, you lose a minute off your life.