HISTORICAL MINIATURES JOURNAL ISSUE NUMBER 2

PUBLISHED BY GEORGE GRASSE

EDITORIAL

By George Grasse

A STANDARD COLOR REFERENCE FOR MODELERS - - - - Never Happen!!

One of the complexities in painting is paint color.  When I first started putting models together and painting them, I relied on the box recommendations or, if not satisfied with their choices, I watched a color movie to get an idea of the shades to use.  As it turns out, no one is correct on a particular paint color to use because you and I don't see the same color.  How do I know that?  Well, pick a colorful object and ask someone to describe its color, say, using one or two adjectives; for example, "fiery yellow orange" or "majestic crimson sunset".  Except for a few color standards and their associated paint chips, we would not know how to converse in color much less be able to interpret what they are.  Most hobbyist rely on paint manufacturers and kit recommendations.  For example, a model airplane kit instruction sheet will point to an area that is to be painted "E".  In the instructions there is a table of paints used for the kit, say, from "A" to "H".  The letter "E" on their chart might refer to "olive drab" and next to that entry might be three, four, or more paint manufacturer equivalent colors: Humbrol "123 - khaki drab" or Testors "456 - green drab dark" or Vallejo "789 - ochre green brown".  

The available but not always affordable color standards are a convenient way to cross reference a color.  There's Federal Standard 595B, Methuen, Pantone, and others.  But the problem persists.  For example, the following is a hypothetical cross-reference: Fed Std 595b color 30117 might cross-reference to, say, Methuen 29D5, which might cross-reference to Vallejo VC0901, or Humbrol HUM113, and so on.   The problem is that most hobbyist simply can't afford original volumes of paint chips.  Even if you could see a Vallejo paint chip on your computer monitor and compare it side-by-side to Fed Std 595B, what you see is muddled for the following reasons: 1) the method by which the sample you are viewing is captured on a database; 2) your computer interprets the source differently; 3) your monitor displays the source differently; 4) your viewing of color is different than mine; 5) you don't own a photo spectrometer.

It's redundant, confusing, and it will never be resolved to a single standard. . . . . . however, consider RGB or CYMK digitized computer values.  Someone on the internet has probably done some work on digitized conversion values by manufacturer.  You would think that each manufacturer would present those values for their colors on their website as a standard.  If you find something like that on the internet, send me email.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GO TO?

© Copyright by George Grasse