Effect of scale on paint-what are people's views?

[Housesparrow]

I thought it was interesting what I saw in a video showing effects with Vallejo primer paint. The darkening of the model, was arranged for already with the primer stage, using different shades of primer. Seems like a subtle way to add subtle shading, without overdoing it.

[Pat C]

If the tank was authentically built to scale it would weigh

1.714285714 tons.In proportion to your tonnage system used.

Ah - bear in mind that as the dimensions of the tank shrink by any factor, the volume of the tank will shrink by that factor cubed. So you would need to divide the original weight by 42,875.

Pat

[Kallisti]

Scale colour is a misnomer, its not really about scale but about replicating the appearance of the vehicle far enough away that it would appear as small as the model. So comparing it to scale weight is comparing apples to oranges.

Distance has a huge effect on how colours appear. Unfortunately you then also have to deal with the mind's interpretation of the colour. The mind is a complex pattern matching device which will fool you into thinking something is a different colour to reality. So because you KNOW the colour on that wing in the distance is dark green, you will SEE it as dark green, whereas its most likely a muddy green at this distance.

There are various optical illusion that fool the eye into "seeing" a different colour - there are some superb ones here:

http://brainden.com/color-illusions.htm

Mainly the scaling of colour is an effort to replicate the effect distance and atmospheric conditions would have on colours. I personally very seldom use black anymore. Usually I use Tamiya Nato Black which is very dark green instead. I also tend not to use raw white either anymore, but instead add a touch of grey or yellow. These substitutions soften the extremes of the colour pallet and give a IMHO a better representation of the scale effect.