40 Shades of Grey

[Guest]

When I came back to modelling I thought a dozen colours or so would cover most eventualities.

But now amongst my collection I have (almost) 40 shades of grey. Overkill maybe?

Humbro l

Sea grey

Slate grey

Light grey

Tank grey

Steel grey

Ocean grey

Extra Dark Grey

US Dark grey

US Medium grey

US Ghost grey

US Compass grey

Gull grey

Medium grey

Light grey (satin)

Blue grey

Dark sea grey

Medium sea grey

Light aircraft grey

Revell

Medium grey

Mouse grey

Grey!

Gunship grey

Stone grey

Light grey

Dust grey

Tank grey

Grey (silk)

Tamiya

JN Grey

JA Grey

Light Sea grey

Neutral grey

Dark sea grey

German grey

Field grey

Light grey

Ocean grey (RAF)

Model Master

RAF medium sea grey

Grau RLM 02

[Guest]

Errr....you have some problem with the grey color?

You can open a shop with all them!!!

[Guest]

I take it you like Grey then lol.

Andy

[Guest]

I think if I'll have to make up swatches. I can then select the best matches for all the shades needed for all the scale model aircraft I am likely to build in the near future. There can't be that many!

[yak face]

That seems like a lot of greys doesnt it , but the truth is a lot of the modern jets ,despite looking all one colour, are usually a combination of several . Ive found that i have accumulated quite a few very similar looking grey shades , a well as loads of greens!! A good example of this is the Eurofighter Typhoon - all the different nations using it all paint it in different greys!! tony

[mossiepilot]

I've found the same with shades of brown and beige. I've recently bought 5 vallejo paints for my Jackal, all variations of sand (yellowy brown) and beige (browny yellow). Not just aircraft then.:shoot:

Tony.

[Guest]

The thing is if you haven't got the exact grey and you add white or black to an existing one .... then, at the end of the day, you could cut your grey collection down to just "black" and "white" and make it up as you go

[stona]

The thing is if you haven't got the exact grey and you add white or black to an existing one .... then, at the end of the day, you could cut your grey collection down to just "black" and "white" and make it up as you go

Nice try Colin,but what about all those blue/greys or green/greys ? :lol:

Steve

[Guest]

Ok i failed at being funny there then eh ?

Anyway ... yep, you're quite right there's quite a plethora of tainted greys available .... when i was in the dying and finishing trade we had colour swatches with literally tens of thousands of shades of one colour for colour-matching ... quite an eye opener when you first see them all .... still we had the use of a spectro-photometer which made matching a breeze

[Ian M]

I s'pose the Black+White bit is OK if you know the base for the black.

Some are green base others blue. So you could be OK some of the way Colin...

I read an article on mixing paints, and one of the hardest things, apparently, is to find the right base colours. A mix that works perfectly in Humbrol might not give the same result in Revell, or an other brand.

Ian M

[michaelm]

Got a lot of greens too.

[Guest]

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When you think about it we used to mix our own shades from black to white and add other colours as required but now you can buy a "set" of any particular colour such as these from Andreas. There are six shades of the same grey for starters!

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[Guest]

I s'pose the Black+White bit is OK if you know the base for the black. Some are green base others blue. So you could be OK some of the way Colin...

If we're going a little further into technicalities then red is a base for black/grey too

for example, Slate grey (by some standards) has a feint blue/red base ... creating a lilac tone.

For what it's worth i don't buy any preset colours, i mix my own from the basics i have here.

getting the colour right (or as close as pos) gives me the same buzz as scratch building parts. I must admit i don't feel the need to be as accurate as i was at the lab at work where we worked to 0.01 tolerances ... companies such as Marks and Spencers wanted this close a match in QC ... they even had a flourescent light specifically allocated that we had to match fabric colour under.. it was called "M&S TL84 daylight"

Them were the days