Howdy…
Here's another article I put together for the IPMS/Mid-Carolina Newsflash a few months ago. I don't claim to know everything, so if you have something to add, please do...
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Its Wayback Machine time again. Set it for late 1982. Let’s see if you remember this:
(Images: FineScale Modeler, Fall 1982)
That was the first print advertisement I saw for the new Testor Model Master Paint system. Before the advent of these paints, there were precious few paint lines that were specifically formulated and guaranteed* (note the fine print in the enlargement—you had to stir, not shake the paint to be assured of an “exact match”) to match any of the established color collections, especially the modern ones--in this case, Federal Standard 595A that had been developed by the U.S. Government in the mid-1950’s. It was a follow-on to the old AN/ANA classification system of colors used during World War II.
Matched Colors
Testors wasn’t the first hobby paint company to attempt to match model paints to known color collections. Floquil, Pactra (in their Authentic International Colors line), and Polly-S had paints that tried to match several World War I and World War II colors, as well as some modern U.S. colors. Humbrol developed an “Authentic Color” line, too. They all tended to be hit and miss—some were close, others were not even in the same neighborhood to what they were supposed to be.
A lot of study was going into the subject of wartime colors. Several books had already been published—Thomas Hitchcock’s work on German WWII colors (the Official Monogram Painting Guide to German Aircraft, 1935-1945), and the two volumes on Japanese colors (one title covered the IJA aircraft, the other handled the IJN planes) by Donald Thorpe were eagerly snapped up by “serious” scale modelers. On the armor side of the coin, Bruce Culver’s three volume Panzer Colors series covered the Wehrmacht’s machines from 1935 through the end of the war.
Pactra offered, at one point, their Pactra Authentic Military Color Mixing Chart, a paper slide-rule type device that showed what paints you needed to mix in order to get a specific color. I have one lying around here somewhere; it was a neat little guide—if you used Pactra paint. (I’ve already told the tale of how I discovered Pactra’s Authentic International Colors lines of paint as it was being discontinued.)
If you used any other paint—and in my day, that usually meant Testor square bottle Pla Enamel and Pactra ‘Namel, although you could also find Humbrol locally—you were either using the TLAR (That Looks About Right) method and using them off the shelf, accuracy be damned, or you were matching your paint by mixing them and comparing them to published color chips.
That, in and of itself, could be a minefield—unless you had an official set of color chips made from the paint itself, you were looking at a mass-printed reference, and colors derived from printing inks at the time could vary widely from the original. The best one could do was get it “in the ballpark” and move on—which, as we’ll see later, might not be such a bad concept.
Then, in the late 1970’s, Compucolour from the UK became one of the first paint manufacturers to claim their paints were out of the bottle matches (so the sales pitch went) to match to FS595A colors (they also offered WWII colors with similar claims at some point, too). I never saw them in a shop, only in magazine ads. At about the same time, a paint line out of New Jersey also promised “Matched to Specs” paint—they were called “Official Paints”, they were mostly matched to the WWII U.S. AN/ANA specifications, and they didn’t last long. From there, other paint lines jumped on the train and began formulating their paint colors to match official references. Some, Aeromaster for instance, even included a “scale effect” into their paints.
(The theory of scale effect and scale color is another story for another time. We’ll go there one day, but it won’t be today.)
Color Standards and Color References
“So”, you ask, “what exactly *is* a ‘color standard’, anyway? And what is a ‘color collection’?”
In a nutshell, a color standard is how colors are quantified and/or reproduced. The two most used standards are the Munsell System and the Pantone Matching System. The former uses a system to quantify hue, chroma, and value; the latter is a color reproduction system usually used by printers. Munsell color standards were sometimes used to develop paint colors, but in and of itself modelers seldom standard to match colors for their models.
Those color matching systems we modelers think of when we’re looking at colors—Federal Standard, British Standard, U.S. Army Quartermaster, RLM, RAL, ANA, etc. — are merely references, hence the phrase color reference. Generally speaking, the specified shades of paint are created by the originator (usually some government entity or military service who decides what is required) and applied to a collection of sample chips which are used as controls. These chips are then distributed to contractors who make the coatings—they match their paint to the standard chip. Each contractor mixes colors to match the color on the chip, usually employing spectrometers, spectrographs, and other light wavelength measuring tools to get a perfect match in a coating that meets the requirements of the contract. Of course, these days there are digital system that can replicate color much more accurately than what had been used in “the good old days”, but the principles remain the same.
Most other nations have a color reference similar to FS595. You’ve no doubt seen references to RLM (German WWII), RAL (modern German equipment), British Standard BS381C, BS2660, BS5252 and BS4800 (modern British equipment), U.S. Army Quartermaster (QM), and so on. Like FS595A, these color references have been used throughout the globe at various points in time.
So, if you’re building an RAF Tornado or West German Leopard tank, asking “What FS colors do I need?” might not get you the answers you seek, since those subjects never wore FS colors. Know your subject, understand the auspices under which it was built and operated, and use the correct specifications and you cannot go wrong.
How FS595 works
Since the article started with a discussion on the initial Model Master colors, let’s stay on that road. Federal Standard 595A—properly, FED-STD-595A, later superseded by 595B and then 595C, was the color collection in use from the mid-1950’s through 2017. In 2017, the General Services Administration transferred STD-595C to SAE International (the former Society for Automotive Engineers). FED-STD-595C was, in effect, cancelled and re-designated AMS-STD-595.
Every color included in AMS-STD-595 is given a name and a code. As far as STD-595 is concerned, the name is not official. The only valid color identification under this system is that 5-digit number. You could call the color Sam or Fred, and unless you have that 5-digit number it does not matter.
Let’s look at that 5-digit number
As an example, we’ll use Federal Standard color code FS36118.
The first number describes the reflectance (think “sheen”) of the finish. 1=gloss, 2=semi gloss, and 3=flat, or lusterless.
The second number is an arbitrary color group that best describes the color. 0=Browns, 1=Reds, 2=Oranges, 3=Yellows, 4=Greens, 5=Blues, 6=Grays, 7=Miscellaneous (whites, blacks, metallics, etc.) and 8=Fluorescents and Day-Glo colors.
The last three digits are the individual color code, unique to each color.
From the information above, the color would be a lusterless (3) gray (6) coded 118. Simple, yes?
The name bestowed upon this color is Gunship Gray. The word “Gunship”, by the way, is not a descriptor of the color (they could have easily called it “Dark Engine Gray”). Instead, it refers to a type of finish that was known as “Gunship quality” paint—there was also a color called Gunship Green, and this group of finishes was intended to be used in several tactical camouflage schemes, European I being perhaps the most well-known. The Gunship quality paints were polyurethane based with improved sheen and reflectance properties and increased durability, and were initially tightly controlled by the USAF.
Color Tools You Can Use
If you want to be dead-nuts, balls-on accurate, you can buy official AMS-STD-595 paint chips. A boxed version with 692 (!) individual chips in protective envelopes will set you back a mere $895 American:
https://www.sae.org/servlets/otherProduct?PROD_TYP=RM&PROD_CD=EA-CHIPSET
Individual 3”X5” chips in protective envelopes can be had for $35 each.
If you’re not that picky about having a dead-nuts, balls-on accurate shade of paint but still want an “official” gizmo to compare your colors to so you can be close, a fan deck—consisting of what SAE International calls “representational only” colors--can be bought for the low, low price of $210:
https://www.sae.org/servlets/otherProduct?PROD_TYP=RM&PROD_CD=EA-FANDECK
Yeah, that’s a heap of change. I bought an FS595A fan deck years ago for around $30 along with the IPMS Color Cross-Reference Guide by David Klaus. The guide was particularly helpful—it summarized several color reference systems along with an extensive listing of which hobby colors were available for most of the given colors.
With the advent of the internet, there are other ways of getting things in the ballpark. There are several websites that show all of the colors—but there’s a rub (isn’t there always?). How well is your monitor calibrated to display colors? The watchword here is to remember the limitations of your equipment. And, if all you want is the ballpark, it should be good enough.
http://www.federalstandardcolor.com/
For other nations’ color references: https://www.e-paint.co.uk/chart_options.asp
Hobby Colors and Accuracy
For as closely matched as Testors colors were, things have shifted the other way with paint over the years. Vallejo, especially, doesn’t seem to pay too much attention to color references although they do print them on the labels of some colors in the form of RAL, RLM, and FS numbers—even though their paint doesn’t necessarily match the spec color. Part of the answer is that they expect you to follow their “weathering” techniques (including color modulation, zenithal lighting, flood washes, pin washes, chipping, glazing, and the like), so in their mind it is of little consequence that the actual colors in the bottles don’t bear any resemblance to the nominal colors they are supposed to represent. I use them frequently, and do a spray-out on a white index card. Once the paint dries for a while (at least two hours, longer is better since some pigments don’t develop their full color until the paint has fully cured—PollyScale was a particular offender, especially with their blues), I’ll compare it to a reference and, in those cases where the color doesn’t match the reference to my liking, I’ll alter the paints using those “Old School” techniques I learned back in the dark ages of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.
(And I can already hear some of you asking “What’s color modulation? Zenithal lighting? Huh?” Perhaps this too can be another discussion for another time.)
Tamiya, likewise, has their own color theory, and their kits often show mixing formulas to obtain the “correct” colors. Some modelers I know have compiled them into complete charts, and they are fairly easy to find on the internet. You can add GSI/Creos to that list, too—many Hasegawa and Dragon kits show paint mixes using GSI Aqueous and Mr. Color mixes. Airfix kits rely on Humbrol paint numbers. And so on.
But how do you know that the color listed is correct? Use your resources. Perhaps the two best model color resources I know of online are the following:
https://www.paint4models.com/ has the Ultimate Paint conversion chart, and includes most, if not all, of the available paint brands. Be advised—it requires Adobe Flash, which is reaching End of Life shortly. Some browsers won’t even let it load…
Michael Benolkin’s Cybermodeler website has quite a color reference section, too: https://www.cybermodeler.com/resource6.shtml . Check it out…
Mixing paint is not as difficult as you might think it is. The most useful tool you can obtain is a $2 color wheel from Michael’s. Learn to use it, and pretty soon you’ll be mixing colors like you’ve been doing it your whole life. You’ll be able to look at a color and determine that it needs a little more gray, or a touch of yellow. One tip I’ll give you up front: Mix your color, write down the recipe (use a dropper to count drops of paint), and then do a spray-out on some white card (I use index cards) as outlined above. Let the paint dry completely before you compare it to your reference, and then adjust as needed.
That’s a lot of work. Do I really need to go that far?
Like all things in our hobby, what you do and how you do it is not regulated by law. If you just want something close enough, use your best judgment and go with it. However, if you want to dig down and make a more accurate* model, these are the things you should do. It is always your call…
(*Always remember that the subject of “accurate color” is a highly subjective subject, and that IPMS and AMPS judges are specifically told NOT judge accuracy, color included!)
The next question we should ask: Just how accurate are the actual paints that the contractors supply to the Government? If I were to go by what a friend of mine (a former corrosion control technician in the Navy) says about Navy aircraft touch up paint, not very. He could requisition two cans of touch up spray paint from supply, and even two cans from the same manufacturer and same lot may or may not match each other, and they rarely matched what was on the aircraft being touched up. Why? Well, in the case of the touch up cans, how they are shaken and prepared before use can alter the color—one guy shakes his can like it owes him money and the other only treats is like a dry martini, and you have slight color differences. One guy does a better job of cleaning the area to be touched up. Add to that the fact that the existing paint on the airframe has been in use for an indeterminate time, so it has been exposed to sun, weather, erosion, and other environmental factors plus normal day-to-day maintenance tasks, and it will be subtly different that the original specs, too. This should now explain why Navy airplanes, in particular, can take on a rather tatty appearance after a cruise.
So, it all boils down to this—don’t be too uptight about using an absolute “correct” color. Get something that is close enough to satisfy you. That’s where paint lines like the Model Master Paints showed their utility—a modeler could simply buy a bottle of color and it would be a close match for what they were looking for. If they wanted something “more accurate”, they could doctor the color from there. It saved a lot of mixing just to get common colors, and was a real boon to folks who had difficulty mixing and matching their paints.
After all that, yeah, I said it…get it close and move on.
Putting the Color Where It Belongs
I’ll close with this—once you figure out what colors you need, how do you know where to put them on the model? Honestly, to me this is the more important aspect of color and camouflage. So, what’s telling the paint shop how to decorate these machines?
The same way the government describes the colors, they have documents that describe the use of them. For example, if you model USAF aircraft from the Cold War to the present, the applicable document is called Technical Order 1-1-4. Follow the link for a little bit of light reading…
http://f4phantom.com/docs/TO_1-1-4.pdf
In addition to T.O. 1-1-4, the USAF has several more T.O.’s covering markings, maintenance placards, paint maintenance, paint removal, etc.
If you want to look at a few more U.S. paint scheme guides including U.S. Army and Navy/Marine Corps aviation, look here:
https://www.daveplattmodels.com/Links/US%20Military%20Markings/Markings.htm
For the WWII U.S. ships, the schemes (known as Measures) and colors are what SHIPS-2 is all about. Of course, modern ships also have their own finish instructions that are also based on SHIPS-2, revised over the years to accommodate new types of coatings.
An example for the modern armor guys would be the MERDC (Mobility Equipment Research and Development Center), MASSTER, and NATO 3-color scheme specifications as shown n Technical Manual (TM) 43-0139, Technical Bulletin (TB) 43-0147 and TB 43-209.
And lest you auto modelers think this is not pertinent to you, you might reconsider. If you want to build OEM-correct models, the auto manufacturers have their own paint specs—both color AND application. The colors were usually contracted out to paint manufacturers such as Sherwin Williams, Ditzler, and DuPont. When it comes to color, the best bet is to go online and search out the make, manufacturer, and model year—with a little work you’ll be rewarded with sample build sheet specs that call out exterior and interior color combinations for the car in question.
Back in the day, if you wanted OEM-spec colors on your model cars and used hobby paints, you mixed color—you didn’t have much of a choice unless your car was black or white. Or, you used a vial of touch-up paint from the auto parts house—if you could find an aerosol, great, but usually you had the vial of brush-on paint and nothing more. These days, more manufacturers are producing OEM-spec colors that you can use right out of the bottle or spray can—Testors themselves added automotive colors to the Model Master line in the mid-1990’s (and a base coat/clear coat lacquer line in the early 2000’s), and House of Kolor and Model Car World (MCW) had their own lines of colors, including NASCAR specific colors. Both lines have faded from view, but these days Tru-Color and re-formulated MCW paint lines are now available. You’re always free to go with the TLAR solution, too--and I do this often when I use an off-the-shelf Tamiya spray color on a car body.
Of course, if you build customs all this is moot…
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I’ve once again fed you a 7-course meal through a fire hose—sorry, as a Technical Writer, I live for this kind of thing. Take some time to digest all that, and we’ll look at some of those other topics I’ve touched on here (scale color, weathering) down the road.
Thanks for reading! Be good to one another, and, as always, I bid you Peace.
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