\ said:
I absolutely agree John. Paint colour will vary for so many reasons; thinning ratios, background, number of coats are just three.
Paint charts are merely a guide. If the colour one wants has to conform to an accepted standard, such as RLM or RAL, then look online at the brand(s) who are judged the most accurate.
But even getting the paint to be 100% accurate is not the full story. Different scales, weathering etc will all alter the colour. Nothing's better than the Mark One Eyeball
Absolutely, for decorating, thay can be a guide, if a poor one, for artists and, to be fair, modellers, they are next to useless. When I switched from using paint, to making digital art, I bought a Pantone Swatch, it cost me £80, years ago, but I figured that with a 4 colour printer, it would be very useful. All it taught me was how limited it was in use, and that colours I was able to mix with my brand of paint always seemed to sit inbetween two pantone colours! They live in two completely different worlds. Paint, as we know it, is made up from pigments, binders and mediums. Different manufacturers have different suppliers of pigments. When Rowney ceased to make Cryla Flow, I lost colours that were part of my personal palette, try as I might, I couldn't replicate them with Winsor & Newton or Liquitex etc. The only way to learn about paint is to use it, and that goes for what colour it is too! These paint charts have been made on a computer, using, most likely the pantone sytem, or something similar. They will have been generated at 300-600 pixels per inch, then compressed to go onto websites, thus rendering them all but useless. Some folks will dowload a PDF, which may be high resolution (min 300 PPI), but to print them, you'll need a high quality printer with at least 4 separate colour inks, and using top quality, high resolution photo paper. Given all this, I'd still maintain that they can only be a rough guide. Add to this the poor quality control I'm experiencing with modern paints, you can see why I give praise to Jim (grumpa) and others for using simple paints, and
learning about them through use, not theory. I supect that this is also true of folks using enamels, they tend to be dyed in the wool users, and consequently, through a lot of use, know their medium!
Sorry, rant over.
