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Dark Earth too Dark?


Buddyboy12

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After painting my Hurricane, the Dark Earth appears to be darker than i was expecting and what i have seen on other Hurries on the forum. What do you guys think?

I used Humbrol 29 which i thought i stirred thoroughly & granted it was a pot from a starter set! Im thinking buy a proper pot and test before the next project?

580f3083-34ac-4158-8a96-acbf98491e4c_zps

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I've always struggled to find a decent Dark Earth paint. But it's all in the eye of the beholder (modeller), some will be happy with it and some will not. In my opinion, Humbrol 29 is way too dark.

Some people recommend MrHobby Gunze Sangyo Dark Earth. Me? I'm still searching for a Vallejo Dark Earth that looks right but I've not found it yet

Neil

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I don't think it's too bad.



On the contrary, most models I see on here are painted far too light to pass as Dark Earth and too even in coverage to pass as heavily weathered Dark Earth. Dark Earth was quite dark. Otherwise, it would have just been called "Earth".


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I think it's fine, for a newly-painted aircraft, and H29 is a good match for the official colour swatches. Dark Earth did fade fairly quickly to a lighter shade, so it rather depends how you are going to make your model. A light Dark Earth would be out of place on a "factory fresh" model, whereas out of the tin H29 arguably would not be appropriate for a battle-weary example.

it is a colour which is affected by the change in colour film from orthochromatic to panchromatic film. It will look darker, almost as dark as Dark Green, on ortho film but show much more contrast on Panchromatic film.

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I chucked this together a year or so back using Colourcoats' Type-S Sky, Dark Green and Dark Earth just to have something to put on display for our launch at Perth last April. I don't subscribe to "scale effect" lightening. I consider models to be miniatures, not fullsize ones viewed from miles away which is the distance where reflected light starts scattering and tending to fade, but I have dirtied it up a little bit.

20150111_155819_zpsf3rvni3q.jpg

20150111_155751_zpsya6rtonz.jpg

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I agree humbrol 29 is too dark, I use xtracrylix, and which wilst can never say there is 'one proper match' feel like thats the ballpark to aim around, as they matched to the post war official paint standard which came about from the WW2 paint standards which included dark earth. Heres a colour photo of a dark earth painted spit

CIMG1186_zpsu7vhyraj.jpg

a9becb993f844616425a8b585d2b13be.jpg

Edited by PhantomBigStu
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I remember standing by the wingtip of a Jaguar holding a strip of plastic card painted with several different dark greens. I raised the strip, looked at the fuselage and selected a colour. I then walked up to the fuselage and placed the strip on the green, and the selected colour was not dark enough. Please don't tell me that colour only fades over "miles away" - this simply isn't true.

Painting an Airfix Jaguar using the matched colour resulted in it looked far too dark.

I admit rarely "toning down" colours out of the tin, but that's laziness and not attempting to produce the "best possible" model. Thanks for giving me a useful term "miniatures" to salve any conscience pangs!

Edited by Graham Boak
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It's a highly personal thing. I'm not telling you that you're wrong, only that my perception and preferences do not match yours.

It's controlled entirely by how far away you're looking at things from and thus what you expect (or even want) to see.

Even still, some brands offer matches to Dark Earth which don't. They may coincidently match Dark Earth viewed on a sunny summer's day from 132 metres away, and if that correlates with what someone expects to see on their model then great, but it's not matched to Dark Earth.

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I can absolutely guarantee that I didn't expect or want that colour to come out as dark as it did! However fading with distance is not purely subjective, as you state, but a matter of physics. It is determined by what happens between the object and the observer. How the observer then interprets (voluntarily or involuntarily) this effect is indeed subjective, but nonetheless it is based upon a very real effect.

Edited by Graham Boak
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I've always struggled to find a decent Dark Earth paint. But it's all in the eye of the beholder (modeller), some will be happy with it and some will not. In my opinion, Humbrol 29 is way too dark.

Some people recommend MrHobby Gunze Sangyo Dark Earth. Me? I'm still searching for a Vallejo Dark Earth that looks right but I've not found it yet

Neil

Do not use Vallejo dark earth. I just used it on my spitfire build, and it was so dark that it blended in with the green to where you could barely tell the difference in the colors.

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Yes mine almost blend together in low light as well. Will a clear varnish darken it even more? Suppose there is only one way to find out!

Experimenting with paint colours/ manufacturers is all part of the fun I guess!

Thanks for all the input

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Do not use Vallejo dark earth. I just used it on my spitfire build, and it was so dark that it blended in with the green to where you could barely tell the difference in the colors.

Damn right, that was one of the first Vallejo's I bought and the bottle's hardly been used since. In fact I'm not sure what i could use it on ... <_<

Currently I'm looking at Vallejo english uniform or Vallejo new wood as possibilities, maybe mixing the 2 together. But, for others reading this thread, I accept that my perception of what I want DE to be (having a golden tint to it rather than chocolate tint) will be completely different to other modellers ... ;)

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After painting my Hurricane, the Dark Earth appears to be darker than i was expecting and what i have seen on other Hurries on the forum. What do you guys think?

I used Humbrol 29 which i thought i stirred thoroughly & granted it was a pot from a starter set! Im thinking buy a proper pot and test before the next project?

580f3083-34ac-4158-8a96-acbf98491e4c_zps

Looks Perfect to me. But some variance is always good. I have seen darker and lighter versions and they all look good. Depends how

After painting my Hurricane, the Dark Earth appears to be darker than i was expecting and what i have seen on other Hurries on the forum. What do you guys think?

I used Humbrol 29 which i thought i stirred thoroughly & granted it was a pot from a starter set! Im thinking buy a proper pot and test before the next project?

580f3083-34ac-4158-8a96-acbf98491e4c_zps

Looks fine to me :)

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I agree with most of above - it looks fine to me. I personally think that many of these so called dark earths are far too light* resulting in a considerable contrast between the colours (they look more suited to desert camo). You can argue that it's dangerous to use photographs as some form of reference, but it can be very difficult to make out the deliniation between colours on wartime imagery.

* There's a build of the new Airfix Hurricane in RfI that looks to me as having a 'pale' dark earth. But knowing the builder and having seen his actual model, the colour is very similar to the Xtracrylix Dark Earth that I have used. So maybe it's the photography of actual models that is subliminally influencing how we now expect these colours to look . . .

Nick

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I don't think it's too bad.

On the contrary, most models I see on here are painted far too light to pass as Dark Earth and too even in coverage to pass as heavily weathered Dark Earth. Dark Earth was quite dark. Otherwise, it would have just been called "Earth".

I think the same. The clue is in the name. Its a dark colour in reality though I am sure some faded. Also some people seem to get HU29 mixed up with HU26.

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Comparing the DE on the model against the pic of the real Spitfire in post #6 I think it's close enough. My problem was trying to shake off images of incorrect colour profiles showing DE as LE after seeing so many of them. Currently it's trying not to paint IJN Zero's in light grey instead of grey green.

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