I have been playing around with adding white to colors to achieve the effect of haze and scale viewing distance from the subject with a 1/4" scale model.

I have concluded that it is not worth the effort. Also, the group at the local hobby shop brought up some good points, among them:

  1. Black is black.
  2. There wasn't nearly as much air pollution even 50 years ago, so there would not have been as much effect from haze; and
  3. No one can dispute the exact colors because the eyewitnesses are all dead.

Any opinions from this group? Specifically, is there a scale at which you would use scale effect, but would not at larger scales?
{Bob Andreotti}

In the age of sail there was a tremendous amount of air pollution from lamp oil, dung, garbage, trash, leaves, wood, charcoal, and coal being burned for cooking, for heating, and (later) for steam power. The actual historical atmospheric pollution load has been measured from its frozen black remains in the ice layers of both the North and the South Poles. So, perceived colors during the age of sail would have appeared more subdued than today - the haze would have been much greater, as it has been scientifically measured to have been.

To render a scale color, one must add a small amount of the complementary color (opposite on the color wheel - to gray the color - black will not work to do this kind of graying) and then add white - producing a color that matches the prototype color when viewed from an actual 75 to 150 feet away for a 1:48 scale model that will be viewed at 18-to-36 inches away (twice the prototype distance for 1:96, etc.). Scaling the colors for application on a model, along with using several shades (layman's term) of the same color (several highlight shades and several shadow shades), makes a tremendous difference in making a model appear to be a prototype that has been reduced in size and is still in the glaring sunlight (or moonlight, when appropriate as in a night-time diorama) - rather than a caricature of a prototype in toy colors (single prototype colors applied in scale ... pity). A side-by-side comparison of two similar or same models, each painted one of the two different ways, is very telling - once the difference is seen, toy colors are left behind.

Why spend a year or more building a model only to cover it with inappropriate colors, especially colors of only one shade that happen to be way too saturated and unscaled? Paint your ship model the same way that a military miniature soldier is painted - there is absolutely no reason that the painting techniques of soldiers and ships should be different - for best effect. The soldier painting technique is not difficult and the results speak for themselves when they are applied to a scale model ship.

Black is not black (same for white) - even in prototype. Anyone thinking thusly has not been observant, especially for scale effect. In scale, black is properly a very dark gray (sometimes cool, sometimes warm - depending on the surroundings) and white is properly an off-white (showing the various reflected colorings of its surroundings - not a uniform off-white by any means).

Get a black poster board and cut it into one square as large as can be made. From the remaining strip, cut a small black square as large as the width of the strip will allow. Prop the large black square on one side of a room. From the other side of the room compare the perceived black colorings of the two squares while holding the smaller black square. If they are different, how are they different? Try this simple experiment again in the sunlight at the prototype distance for your scale viewing distance. We did this simple experiment at a South Bay Model Shipwrights club meeting at night and indoors only - there wereno disbelievers in the need to scale black to a dark gray that was surprisingly much lighter a gray than what was initially expected.

I hope that someone tries this easy experiment and reports their findings (to include the distance(s) across the room, and/or the yard, and the hand-held distance) to this listing.

I have actual paint manufacturing formulae for interior and exterior paints for the painting of houses and ships that were published in 1812, to include the exact pigments from early 1800s America. Having made such paints, I can tell you they were all dead flat within a day's drying time - which would have to be even flatter in scale to appear correct. (Yes, you must also scale the shine.) The eyewitnesses of early 1800s American ship paints and their colors are not all deceased - for several have seen my 1812 paints at South Bay Model Shipwrights club meetings (southern San Francisco Bay area).

Every scale model, regardless of scale, needs its colors scaled. A scale model is an attempt at creating an illusion and nothing destroys that effect quicker, except for poorly executed human figures still on their bases, than poorly executed painting of the model. Unscaled, saturated colors on a scale model scream, Look at me! I-m not real!

Are tree trunks brown? Mostly no - most of them are gray! The major exceptions are the conifers and the palms. This comes from seeing - not looking with a preconceived, incorrect notion. Model paints should have of nature and of the physiological and psychological perception of seeing (not merely looking). One must still, however, be observant in an unbiased manner with no preconceived notions. We should strive to duplicate what is actually seen ... rather than what is wanted to be seen ahead of time. Color can not be described a priori - you have to mix-to-match the prototype color while positioned the prototype distance away from the prototype color that the model will normally be viewed in scale distance, as above.
{Ray Morton}

Bob, you've just hit one of my buttons;-)

There are a number of factors that affect the way in which we view and use colour, and what suits one may not suit another. My own preference is for the judicious use of scale colour, and I rather think a number of your assertions could be open to comment.

The first thing I would caution anyone against is the simple adding of white in slavish adherence to some mystical formula as has been proposed by the model aeroplane press in particular. There are far too many variables of weather and light for this to be an effective approach. You need to develop an artist's eye for what is right - look at paintings and see how much pure black and white is used, look at the way distance lowers the overall contrast and shifts any colour toward its complement - reds tend towards cooler shades, blues to warmer. Add the fact that over any body of water there is a lot of light scattering and the effects may be even more noticeable.

Even with this you may get stuck on occasion, which is what happened to me very recently when trying to scale down a red-oxide colour which kept going murky brown on me.

Here I really must disagree, black definitely isn't black at more than a few feet, though it may be less susceptible to the effects in some conditions. Even a first year art student will know not to use pure black or white on a painting. If you make no other attempt at scale colour, I would seriously think about toning down that black, not with white, but with a warmish light brown. Similarly let down the white with a drop of grey

Not nearly as much air pollution? Harrumph:-) Well, in some places maybe but not round these parts - the air's a lot cleaner than it was 50 years ago. We're also looking at haze caused by water over sea, which is potentially a rather different proposition to a blanket of yellow smog in it's effect on different colours - why do you use a UV filter when taking photos over water? Remember that haze is only one factor in the scale colour effect, atmospheric scattering does most of it.

I'd be more convinced by a small scale model where the modeller had made an effort to just tone things down a little. And, yes, you can dispute the colours to some extent to the extent that it was say Home Fleet grey and not Mountbatten Pink - what we can't do is say that it was painted FS36014 and that is how it looked at 10:00hrs on the 3rd July 1943, in a sou'wester off the Azores. That's where the eye of the artist comes in.

It's not so much the scale as the reason for building the model that would affect my choice of the nature and intensity of an colouring system.

In case 1 we might be looking at a dockyard model of a Stuart warship. I'd be very dubious about applying scale colour here, since the reason for the model was to display natural wood, with the carving gilded and coloured. Here I'd suggest you might almost want to emphasize colour, by using artists oils and making the richness and depth of the colour a feature. Similar reasoning might be applied to a formally displayed model of clipper with her yards squared and sails unbent.

Case 2 could be a 1/700th model of HMS Compass Rose, in a sea setting, weathered and battered by the wartime North Atlantic gales. Here, I'd really think hard about the use of not only "scale" colour, but also colour tempered by the grey light which might further lower the contrast. In this second case we are really thinking about what is effectively a 3D painting, the paint serves to give the sense of time and place as much as the model itself.

In between these two cases are a myriad of possibilities; how successful the model is will to a large extent depend on how clear your vision of the final product is. If the approach is consistently one of displaying craftsmanship to the highest level all the way though, then scale colour may be superfluous. OTOH if, like me, you are generally trying to produce 3D paintings, where the model only serves to give the paint the right shape, then you might find developing an eye for scale effects will help breathe life into your models.

Lastly, please do paint her under the same type of light that you intend to display the model under - artificial light can do weird things to your carefully chosen mixes.
{Aidrian Bridgeman-Sutton}

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